Missouri gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL who has been running the most military-themed state-level political campaign in modern memory here, is issuing “ISIS Hunting Permits” to emphasize his toughness toward the terrorist organization.
The campaign revealed the hand-sized stickers at an event this week and is now promoting them on Twitter and in fundraising emails. It reads: “ISIS Hunting Permit; Expires: When we defeat this evil.” Along the sides are printed, “No bagging limit. No tagging limit.” Greitens’ gubernatorial campaign logo is prominently featured.
ISIS is one of several names used to describe the terrorist organization Islamic State, a top threat in the Middle East today. And, no, it hasn’t been a topic of debate in the Missouri Republican gubernatorial primary contest before now.
“Eric Greitens served in a terrorist targeting cell in Fallujah during his time in Iraq. It’s just part of who he is,” Campaign Manager Austin Chambers said in a written statement to the Post-Dispatch, when asked what ISIS has to do with the Missouri governor’s race. He said the stickers “provided a unique way to highlight [Greitens’] experience and service.”
“Clearly it worked,” Chambers wrote, “because it caught your attention.”
That, it did. As did the buzz-generating commercial his campaign aired earlier this month showing Greitens firing a semi-automatic rifle across a field to spark an explosion — again, apropos of nothing involving Missouri executive powers or policy-making, but it sure looked cool.
Greitens is competing for the GOP gubernatorial nomination with businessman John Brunner, former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder.
Though two of the candidates have military backgrounds (Brunner is an ex-Marine), Greitens is the only one playing it up — not only with the commercial and the new stickers, but with imagery all over his campaign materials showing him on duty in Iraq and offering testimonials from other soldiers.
So why all the testosterone?
It might not sound relevant to a state-level executive post, but, politically, it may actually make some sense.
First, catching the media’s attention, as Greitens’ campaign manager put it, is crucial for any campaign — and maybe especially so for Greitens, the only candidate in a crowded field who has never before run for public office.
Also, as a somewhat recently converted Democrat, Greitens arguably has more work to do than the other three Republicans to prove his red-meat conservative cred to GOP primary voters. The battlefield metaphors and camouflage imagery and the rest might be just the thing to pull the pin on that problem (not that we wish to give him any ideas).
The winner of the Aug. 2 Republican primary will most likely face Democratic Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster in the Nov. 8 general election.