Eric Schmidt triumphs in the GOP Senate primary in Missouri.

Up until it wasn't, it was close. The top three candidates for the Missouri GOP Senate nomination—state attorney general Eric Schmitt, former Governor Eric Greitens, and U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler—were neck-and-neck-and-neck for much of the past year, all within 20 points of one another in the contest's sporadic public polls, with each contender exhibiting different signs of a potential surge at different times.

Schmitt had coasted to victory, with forecasters calling the race after only a few precincts had reported their results. However, the dust had barely settled Tuesday night when the results became clear. By the end of the night, when almost 94 percent of the votes had been counted, Schmitt had 45.7 percent, Hartzler had 22 percent, and Greitens had stumbled into third place with 19 percent.

This November, Schmitt will compete against Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine in a contest that he is widely favored to win. If so, he will join the Senate group led by Sen. Josh Hawley, who served as his immediate predecessor as attorney general.

Several factors contributed to Schmitt's overwhelming victory in a race that had previously been close, but the most significant was how the attorney general was able to establish himself as the most logical replacement for former governor Greitens, who was attempting a Dark-MAGA comeback just four years after resigning from office in the wake of an unsavory sex scandal. Because of Green's baggage, many Republicans in the state and throughout the nation thought he may lose the seat to a Democrat in the upcoming election.

They felt even more pressure to end Greitens' campaign before it ever got started after his ex-wife, Sheena, accused him in a court of abusing her and their children. Outside parties invested a lot of money in the contest, paying for advertisements that informed voters of Greitens' prior issues and promoted Sheena Greitens' assertions. Greitens, who had been the early favorite in the polls, never recovered.

Schmitt had anticipated precisely such a decline.

Although he occasionally attacked Greitens, he mostly ran his campaign against Hartzler as if there were two candidates, calling her a "part of the D.C. swamp" who had spent her decade in government "getting richer off our tax money" in advertisements. Donald Trump's disdainful anti-endorsement of Hartzler, claiming "I don't think she has what it takes" to take on the left, the media, and weak Republicans, gave him a big boost in this campaign.

But in the end, Schmitt's advantage against Hartzler was due to more factors than just Trump's approval. In a different political climate, the six-term congresswoman, a retail-politics guru with deep Missouri roots who speaks fluently in the social-conservative jargon of rural evangelical Christianity and boasts strong ties to issue constituencies like the Family Research Council and the state farm bureau, would have likely squared off as the more formidable contender.

But many Republicans in power right now aren't excited by the idea of a candidate who's prepared to enter Congress, don her aprons, and get to work on the committee and constituent work. Instead, they are seeking someone who will go to Washington and start hitting Democrats in the mouth. Schmitt has taken advantage of his position as attorney general since 2019 to demonstrate that he is precisely the kind of candidate these voters are looking for, despite having previously served as an aisle-crossing moderate in the state Senate. The stump speech line, "I get up in the morning, I go to work, I sue Joe Biden, and I go home," was routine, efficient, and true.

Even while Greitens and Hartzler lost support in the final weeks of the campaign, one crucial wild card remained: Trump's endorsement. In addition to a few others, all three major candidates spent a lot of time and effort trying to convince Trump to support them over the past year. State party strategists predicted that receiving significant backing from Trump would likely be decisive for whoever was fortunate enough to do so.

However, Trump ultimately engaged in nothing but a farce, waiting until literally the night before the primary to make the now-iconic claim that I'm happy to say that ERIC has my complete support because I believe the Great People of Missouri to make the right decision in this case.

Even a strong vote for Greitens at that moment might not have made much of a difference unless it prevented the former governor from having to take third place in public.

According to former state senator John Lamping, a former Greitens ally, "Schmitt won once Trump agreed not to endorse someone early." "Five or six weeks ago, he won the race."