Eric Greitens showed Missouri long ago who he is. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, Missouri should believe him. Yet the disgraced former governor, driven from power four years ago by credible evidence that he physically and sexually abused his extramarital lover prior to his 2016 election, has somehow emerged as the front-runner among Republicans seeking the state’s open U.S. Senate seat this year.
That has prompted a big political question in Missouri: What on Earth are Republican voters thinking? This week, that question was replaced by a bigger one: What will those voters think now?
In court documents revealed Monday, Greitens’ now-ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, alleges he was physically violent toward her and their children and engaged in such “unstable and coercive behavior” that she and others around him limited his access to firearms.
Allegations are just that, of course, but there’s no missing the similarities between these allegations and the ones made by Greitens’ former mistress. Will this at last break the strange fever that has caused so many Missouri Republican voters to embrace this horrifically unfit candidate?
The new allegations are in some ways even more disturbing than those voiced by Greitens’ former mistress during his 2018 impeachment hearings. Among Sheena Greitens’ many claims is that he struck one of their kids and dragged him by his hair, and once “knocked me down and confiscated my cell phone, wallet, and keys so that I was unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children.”
Physical restraint was also among the allegations of his former mistress.
Sheena Greitens further claims he threatened to use his political power to destroy her life if she crossed him. This should sound familiar to anyone who recalls his mistress’s testimony, which included claims he snapped a compromising cellphone picture without her consent while she was partially clothed, bound and blindfolded, and threatened to publicize it as leverage to protect his political career.
Eric Greitens denies his ex-wife’s allegations. A court must determine who is more credible: Sheena Greitens — a publicity-shy college professor with degrees from Stanford, Oxford and Harvard — or Eric Greitens, who has been credibly accused of this very kind of behavior before, and who avoided prosecution only by cutting a deal that included his resignation from public office.
The polls showing Greitens leading the Republican pack come with an important caveat: The GOP field is crowded, which is what has allowed Greitens to rise to the top with only about 30% support among Republicans (because the rest of the votes are divided among multiple other candidates). In hypothetical head-to-head races with Democratic front-runners, Greitens does far worse than several of his fellow GOP candidates. That’s encouraging regarding Missouri voters at large, at least.
But still, for this man to have garnered support from almost a third of Missouri Republicans should occasion some serious soul-searching within the party.
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