One Eric Reaps in Missouri as Another Eric Sows
Guilfoyle, according to two people who heard accounts of her lobbying efforts, sought to persuade Trump that Greitens was truly ahead in the race. At one point, they said, she cited Big Penguin Polling, a little-known outfit that has a lively Twitter presence but does not disclose the full names of its proprietors. Trump trashed polling by the Remington Research Group, a survey firm linked to Jeff Roe of Axiom Strategies, which managed Schmitt’s campaign. But Remington’s numbers proved far more accurate than Big Penguin’s.
In the end, as of early this evening, more than 45 percent of Missouri Republicans had chosen Eric No. 1, while about 19 percent had picked Eric No. 2 — a humiliating end for a man once seen by some Republican donors as America’s first Jewish president in the making.
It was also a victory for establishment Republicans in Washington as they tussle (often in vain) for control of the party with Trump’s vast alumni network, which has fanned out across the country to back one candidate or another.
Before eventually running as a Republican, Greitens considered a career as a Democrat — pressing friends for meetings with Senator Claire McCaskill, for instance, and even traveling to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008 to watch Barack Obama become the Democratic presidential nominee.
