The junior senator seat for Missouri should safely remain in Republican hands in 2016, though whether strident conservatives opt to put up a candidate to challenge Sen. Roy Blunt remains to be seen, according to the Capitol Hill newspaper
Roll Call.
Blunt, first elected in 2010, already has a Democratic challenger in the Show-Me State’s secretary of state, Jason Kander, a 33-year-old former Army captain and Afghanistan War veteran who announced in February that he would run. Kander was elected to his current post in 2012.
Republican sources tell Roll Call they are confident the seat will remain Republican, an opinion with which the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report concurs. It currently rates the race as "Safe Republican."
The senator is considered somewhat of a power player in Washington, according to Roll Call, noting that he chairs the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee.
He had also raised more than $1 million in the first quarter of 2015 and had more than $3 million in cash on hand as of March 31.
While a Kander challenge may not be overly concerning to Blunt, a candidate funded by the fiscally conservative Club for Growth could cause him some heartburn.
His less than stellar 47 percent rating by the organization shows its members' displeasure with Blunt’s performance in Washington, according to Doug Sachtleben, the Club for Growth’s communications director, who said the figure "would raise concern."
Blunt, a former congressman and Missouri secretary of state, easily won his seat in 2010 and 2016 shouldn’t be much more challenging, according to
USA Today, which in February reported that despite the reputation of "an entrenched, establishment Republican," political strategists don’t expect intraparty fighting to dim his chances of re-election.
"Blunt may get a nominal challenger," experts told the newspaper, "but he won't have a real battle on his hands."