Jack Danforth Prepares to Stick his Aristocratic Nose Back into Missouri Politics

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

John C. "Jack" Danforth, a former Republican Missouri Attorney General and three-term US Senator from the show-me state, has more-or-less been retired for a quarter-of-a-century, but politics is a hard mistress to quit.  Danforth, a St. Louis aristocrat who is an heir to the Ralston-Purina fortune, waded back into public view in 2018 when he promoted the senatorial candidacy of Josh Hawley in Missouri, an act of support that he came to regret and has since dubbed "the worst mistake I ever made in my life."

(Others might argue that promoting his former Missouri Assistant Attorney General Clarence Thomas for a seat on the US Supreme Court was by far the most serious stain on Danforth's political legacy!)

But previous colossal screwups aside, it now looks as though Jack Danforth, the "retired" Missouri politician, is once again fixing to try and influence another Missouri US Senate election.

A report out this morning suggests that Danforth is part of a committee that yesterday launched a website encouraging John Wood, a former federal prosecutor who is now the lead attorney for the House January 6th Select Committee, to run as an independent for the US Senate seat that is being vacated by Roy Blunt in Missouri.  With Missouri's primary election coming up quickly on August 2nd and the general election occurring on November 8th, an "independent" candidacy would need to take shape and start gaining traction almost immediately in order to have any hope of winning a seat at the Senate trough in November.

But apparently Jack Danforth is not satisfied with any of the half-dozen or so GOP candidates vying to succeed Ol' Roy Blunt in the Senate (nor should he be), and while some thought that the late entry of Trudy Busch Valentine, also a St. Louis aristocrat, into the Democratic primary for the Senate seat might have been a stealth move by Danforth to keep god-fearing plutocrats in charge of American democracy, that apparently was not his doing.

So as Missouri prepares to winnow its major party candidates down to only two, Jack Danforth and a few of his meddling friends are making plans to shake up the odds and rattle the bookmakers by leading a third horse onto the track.  An independent candidacy by a relative political unknown is almost sure to fail, and it would be more likely to harm the Republican nominee than the Democratic candidate.

I that is your long game, Jack - godspeed!