roy blunt led jason kander 50 percent to 45 percent when the associated press called the race after 2 a.m. eastern time. | ap photo incumbent staves off challenge from kander, who couldn<u+2019>t escape clinton<u+2019>s downward pull. by maggie severns 11/09/16 02:19 am est gop sen. roy blunt has won reelection in missouri<u+2019>s senate race, defeating democrat jason kander. gop sen. roy blunt bested democratic challenger jason kander in the missouri senate race tuesday night, securing republicans<u+2019> senate majority and seeing off a stronger than expected challenge. story continued below blunt led kander 50 percent to 45 percent when the associated press called the race after 2 a.m. eastern time, with 90 percent of precincts reporting. kander, the missouri secretary of state, outran hillary clinton by more than 8 percentage points, but it wasn<u+2019>t nearly enough to overcome blunt, a household name among missourians after decades in public office. blunt represented a springfield-area district in the house of representatives from 1997 to 2010, including two terms as majority whip. he won election to the senate in 2010. blunt<u+2019>s son matt served as governor of missouri and now heads a powerful national auto lobbying group. over the years, blunt has played a considerable role building up the republican party in missouri, building a network on the ground in the process that helped him hold his seat this fall. kander, a 35-year-old afghanistan war veteran and missouri secretary of state, launched a bid for senate in february 2015. over the year and a half that followed, kander steadily attacked blunt<u+2019>s two decades in washington and family members who work as lobbyists, while playing up his status as an outsider and veteran. as the race became increasingly tight, it became a key battleground for democrats attempting to take back the senate and a barrage of last-minute outside spending from both parties flowed into missouri. ultimately, donald trump<u+2019>s strong performance in missouri made it extremely difficult for kander to prevail. while many of blunt<u+2019>s senate colleagues struggled over whether to support trump, blunt consistently stood by the nominee, and trump outran him atop the ticket. blunt<u+2019>s low-key, moderate nature is a sharp contrast to trump<u+2019>s style of politics. but he maintained that a clinton presidency would be more damaging than a trump administration, especially when it comes to obamacare and filling vacancies on the supreme court. state republicans expected blunt to benefit from the support of rural, white trump supporters turning out to vote for the presidential ticket in droves. even as other candidates condemned trump in the wake of an access hollywood video of him making lewd comments about women, blunt didn<u+2019>t budge. asked by reporters if his views had changed days after the video, blunt replied <u+201c>there you go again,<u+201d> and said the question had been <u+201c>asked and answered <u+2014> like 10 times.<u+201d> kander tried to play to an independent streak among missouri voters, as well as trump supporters<u+2019> desire for candidates not already steeped in washington politics. he consistently outperformed clinton in public polls and <u+2014> though he was overall far outspent by blunt <u+2014> raised more money than him during two fundraising quarters. blunt at first brushed off kander<u+2019>s attacks, which had been tried on him in past elections by other candidates. but by fall, blunt was increasingly on the defense. he began tying kander to hillary clinton more and more often. <u+201c>when hillary clinton went shopping for help with her liberal agenda, her first stop was jason kander<u+2019>s headquarters,<u+201d> said one recent ad that attacked kander over the $500,000 clinton spent in the state. <u+201c>jason kander will be a blank check for clinton<u+2019>s liberal agenda.<u+201d> clinton ultimately trailed by more than 20 percentage points in the state when the senate race was called. results: http://politi.co/2fr7p4w by bill scher by joshua zeitz by thomas wright by jack shafer
blunt holds on in missouri - politico
maggie severns jack shafer