WILL SCHARF

influential organization that for decades has been placing conservative judges at all levels of the judiciary. Unusually for a lawyer who’s spent all but a few years of his career working for the government, in January, Scharf donated $500,000 to his own campaign.

In Missouri, Scharf worked for Catherine Hanaway’s campaign for governor in the 2016 race. He took an aggressive tack against Hanaway’s then-opponent Eric Greitens.

“He was sending opposition research out on Greitens to all the other campaigns and trashing him. He was one of the biggest haters out of all the staffers,” says a longtime Missouri Republican consultant about Scharf.

“Then, of course, Greitens wins the primary. And within a couple of weeks, Will goes to work for Greitens.”

When Greitens assumed the governorship, Scharf became his policy director.

The Republican consultant describes Scharf as one of a handful of Greitens staffers who stayed with the now-disgraced governor until the very end. Amid a sexual assault allegation and other mounting controversies, Greitens resigned the office in June 2018.

The following month, President Donald Trump nominated Federalist Society member Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and Scharf worked on the Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett confirmations.

The assistant U.S. attorney who spoke to the RFT says that in addition to Scharf’s obvious ambitions, it was also clear that he came into the prosecutor job highly connected. He recounts that in March 2020, the position for which Scharf would be hired hadn’t even been posted, but a monthly office birthday email went out, and Scharf’s name was among the recipients.

“You know you got fucking juice if the job isn’t even posted and you’re already on the office birthday list,” the assistant U.S. attorney says.

Despite his elite upbringing, Scharf has leaned hard into rural Missouri’s culture — and its culture wars. He’s posted to social media photos of himself at the shooting range (captioned “Sunday #gunday”), a photo of a Ronald-Reagan-themed birthday cake and video of himself flash frying a turkey. (To his great credit, Scharf, who is Jewish in a state whose Re- publican party is not without a history of antisemitism, also posts pictures of pastrami on rye, Kosher delis and his hanukiah burning bright.) Even though he lives in ritzy Clayton, he drives a pickup truck and has a penchant for cowboy boots. He regularly posts photos of red meat that he’s prepared, as well as very un-red-state dishes like ceviche.

“I’m not trying to knock anybody for making money,” says the longtime Missouri Republican consultant. “But where I do have a problem is trying to rebrand yourself into some warrior for the common person when you are the son of a multimillionaire.”

Since leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Scharf has lambasted “critical race theory” and questioned why the Missouri Department of Transportation has a director of diversity. Those tweets and others would seem to signal that, like Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley before him, he’s not afraid to do battle in the culture war.

When Governor Mike Parson appointed Bailey, the current attorney general, Parson said that he did so because he wanted “some stability in the attorney general’s office. I think Andrew is going to bring that.” At Bailey’s January 3 inauguration, the governor jokingly said that he made Bailey swear a “blood oath” not to run for a different office in 2024.

It’s easy to see why Parson felt that such an oath was necessary.

Despite vowing to serve a full four-year term before running for a different office, Hawley was only 10 months into the attorney general job when he announced his bid for senator in 2017.

Eric Schmitt, appointed to replace Hawley, held the job for just four years before he too ran for Senate.

Though Schmitt held the position for the equivalent of one full term, it was obvious he viewed it as a stepping stone to national politics. He went to battle every day against all things woke, suing financial service companies for putting 401(k) money in “environmental, social, and governance” investments, suing China for COVID-19, suing Biden for student loan forgiveness and suing local school districts over their mask mandates.

“I think it’s fair to say that most politicians engage in some level of performative politicking, but I particularly think that anyone who is in the AG office as part of their path to higher office would use that as a chance to take public stances to ward off potential challengers and gain publicity for future elections,” says Anita Manion, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

“We have certainly seen these lawsuits and public feuds be used as avenues for fundraising as well.”

As evidence of the office being a holding spot for ambition, Manion ran down the list of Missouri attorney generals over the past 50 years. “Danforth went on to the Senate. Ashcroft went on to be governor, a senator and U.S. AG. Webster went to prison for embezzlement. Nixon went on to be governor. Koster ran for governor. Hawley and Schmitt, senators,” she says. “So, clearly, this office has been a stepping stone for those with higher aspirations.”

At his inauguration, Bailey pledged to run the attorney general’s office with a steady hand.

However, with a looming (and likely crowded) primary, the “steady hand” era at the state attorney general’s office seems to have lasted less than a month.

In January, the conservative National Review got under Bailey’s skin by stating that he is unlikely to do battle in the national culture wars with the same élan as Schmitt, suggesting Parson chose Bailey because he wanted a “business-friendly, local approach.”

To many Missourians, it might seem like a turn in the right direction for the state’s top cop to do something other than pick performative fights in service of raising their profile, getting on Fox News (or Newsmax) and parlaying the attention into a run for higher office.

But what is good for Missouri isn’t necessarily good for a candidate in a Republican primary.

On January 27, Bailey tweeted: “The National Review posits that the Missouri Attorney General’s Office is stumbling. Here’s a couple examples of us ‘stumbling’ this week alone:”

He proceeded to tweet a list of what his office had “accomplished” to date. It included updates on many of Schmitt’s virtue-signaling lawsuits, as well as mentions of no fewer than four lawsuits the office was pursuing against President Joe Biden.

Some incumbents are afforded the luxury of running as a public servant who has proven they can “put their head down and do the job,” Manion says.

That may no longer be the case for Bailey.

“It’s different when there are already people who want to challenge you in two years. You’ve got to have a public-facing record of accomplishment,” she says.

Of course what is meant by “accomplishment” depends on who you’re talking to. Republican primary voters are likely to have very specific ideas as to what constitutes a feather in Bailey’s cap.

In that sense, the attorney general was just handed an incredible gift two weeks ago by Jamie Reed, a 42-year-old St. Louis woman who worked for four years at the Washington University Transgender Center and who has now publicly accused the pediatric clinic of “permanently harming the vulnerable patients.”

There is no issue in the culture war that burns hotter than the intersection of young people and transgender health care. Now Bailey has a clinic that specializes in pediatric transgender care to investigate. The drip, drip of whatever his investigation uncovers will likely be enough fodder for tweets, press releases and Newsmax interviews until the primary.

Scharf will undoubtedly do his best not to be outdone. He recently tweeted about how Biden is trying to take assault rifles from gun enthusiasts and tips from waiters and bartenders. He also tweeted a photo of his own very large assault rifle laying atop a workout bench.

And he won’t be alone.

Manion, who spoke to the RFT prior to Scharf’s official announcement, says, “I feel like some of these folks are like vultures already circling.”

Indeed, at Scharf’s campaign launch there was mention that former U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison of Springfield might get into the race. The retired Marine colonel has himself been tweeting as if he’s gearing up for a primary run.

Manion also mentioned U.S. Representative Tony Luetkemeyer (RParkville), who recently changed the name of his political action committee from “Luetkemeyer for Senate” to “Luetkemeyer for Missouri,” hinting he may challenge Bailey. (Again, reading tweets as if they’re tea leaves, Luetkemeyer’s feed has been more about legislative work and the Chiefs’ Super Bowl run than about riling folks up over the culture wars.) A report filed by Luetkemeyer for Missouri earlier this month suggests the committee has about $930,000 in cash on hand.

For his part, in addition to the half-million he gave himself, Scharf raised $300,000 in December.

According to the Missouri Independent, Bailey raised $72,000 from a fundraiser in Chesterfield in December.