An uphill battle for Democratic Senate candidate Trudy Busch Valentine officially became too steep when Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt registered a win in the contest to replace retiring GOP Sen. Roy Blunt on Tuesday night.
An emotional Valentine tearfully gave her concession speech expressing that this was not the result she and other Democrats expected. She said she will always be grateful for the work she and her team put into the campaign.
“Thank you for supporting me in this race and for loving Missouri as much as I do,” Valentine said.
“Tonight, did not end the way we hoped. Many of us are feeling scared right now. We’re worried about Missouri’s future and the future erosion of our rights. We feel discouraged because we worked so hard.
“It’s easy to feel like that work didn’t matter but tonight as I look back on the [campaign] trail, I know that the work that we did matters because we reached so many Missourians in every corner of our state.”
Valentine also sent prayers of wisdom and strength to Schmitt, the presumptive winner of the U.S. Senate seat for Missouri, which opened up when Senator Roy Blunt announced in February 2022 that this term would be his last.
“To Eric Schmitt, I respect the will of Missourians that put their support in you. I will be praying for you as you represent our state in the US Senate,” she said as her voice cracked.
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones made a stop at Valentine’s election watch party at the Sheet Metal Workers Union facility in St. Louis earlier in the evening and said, “At one point during the campaign I didn’t know who [Eric Schmitt] was running against.”
“Was he running against Trudy or was he running against me? I was all over his commercials. And falsely. I think he got four Pinocchios for that crazy ad that he ran saying that I wanted to defund the police and I’m a radical.
“I’m radical when it comes to my city, I’m radical when it comes to caring about people, I’m radical when it comes to wanting people to thrive and I know that Trudy is too and if that makes us a radical then we’ll be that.”
Greg and Hang Bui Harley of South St. Louis collectively expressed their disappointment in the results.
“I’m dismayed about it, because we volunteered for her campaign and put our efforts in,” Greg said.
“One of my biggest issues has been how [Eric Schmitt] wasted a lot of our taxpayer money on frivolous lawsuits suing the schools.”
“We can’t give up because there is too much at stake,” Valentine said.
“Let’s keep showing up and doing the work to rebuild Missouri. Support candidates up and down the ballot fighting for our rights. Change does not happen overnight. I’m never going to give up because Missouri is my home, and you fight for your home.
“It was the honor of my life to have the privilege to meet so many of you. I will always cherish these connections and carry them with me wherever I go. I love Missouri and will continue to work every day to work for Missouri to be the best that it can be,” said Valentine.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told the Kansas City Star that he hopes Schmitt “will get past the phoniness with which he has conducted himself in the office of attorney general for the last two years, the demagoguery with which he has approached both his campaign and his day job.”
“Instead, he decides that he wants to be a senator for all Missourians.”
