Now Running for Missouri AG: Will Scharf, an Outsider from Harvard Law

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is too moderate — or at least that's what about 50 people who packed into Krueger's bar in Clayton last night seemed to indicate. They were there to support former Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Scharf, who announced he's running for Bailey's job.

"There's a big difference between Republicans and conservatives. We have a lot of Republicans in the state of Missouri, but we have many fewer true conservative warriors,” Scharf said.

“Conservative” was the word of the night, as the Princeton and Harvard alum billed himself as a conservative activist and a political outsider.

“We’re going to win this race by bringing together conservatives from around the state of Missouri, conservatives who are willing to stand up for what’s right, conservatives who are willing to take on the establishment, conservatives who are willing to fight for the state of Missouri,” Scharf said.

He touted his bona fides as someone who worked behind the scenes on the confirmations of Brett Kavanaugh (Scharf says he helped him “beat the smears”) and Amy Coney Barrett.

He dropped Clarence Thomas’ and Donald Trump’s names as well.

The man who introduced Scharf, former State Senator Bill Onder (R-St.Charles), dropped another name.

“If you like the direction the attorney general's office took under Eric Schmitt, then I think you'll like Attorney General Will Scharf,” Onder said.

Talking to the RFT, Scharf said he was "excited to present a conservative contrast to the kind of leadership that the people of Missouri have been getting out of Jefferson City."

Though Scharf’s campaign kicked off in earnest last night, close observers of Missouri politics — as well as former Scharf colleagues — have suspected the run for quite some time.

One day before Thanksgiving last year, not long after leaving his job as a federal prosecutor, Scharf had an 11-tweet thread go viral. "Things I learned working as an Assistant US Attorney prosecuting violent crimes in St. Louis, America's murder capital," the first tweet read.

The thread contained a handful of Scharf's takeaways from his time as a federal prosecutor that mirrored nationwide GOP talking points, including supporting police and cracking down on China's fentanyl exports.

The tweet's virality led to Scharf appearing on right-wing cable news outlet Newsmax later that week and by the end of the month he'd announced he was running for an unspecified statewide office.

Scharf's announcement was no surprise to some former colleagues, including one current assistant U.S. attorney who told the RFT that it was met with "a collective eye roll."

"Scharf talks about things he's learned prosecuting violent crime and America's murder capital, but I'm not aware of a single murderer that he prosecuted in America's murder capital," this prosecutor said.

The assistant U.S. attorney, who asked the RFT not to print his name, stressed that Scharf is obviously a smart man who worked hard during his two years on the job. But when Scharf joined the prosecutor's office in 2020, his political ambitions were apparent from day one, and the perception that the job was merely a stepping stone for him rubbed some people the wrong way.

"He'd been a prosecutor for a little over five minutes and he's talking about Missouri AG," the assistant U.S. attorney says, adding that Scharf came into the job with no prosecutorial experience and mostly handled "getting your feet wet" type cases during his two-year tenure.

Court records show that of the roughly 150 cases in which Scharf entered an appearance as an assistant U.S. attorney, a little more than half were for gun possession crimes, with “felon in possession of firearm” by far the most common charge. Another fifteen or so cases involved gun possession charges along with other crimes like drug trafficking.

The remaining cases were against people accused of robbery and kidnapping, dealing fentanyl or crack, or who had escaped from halfway houses. None of the cases Scharf prosecuted, much less made an appearance in, involved a murder charge.

The assistant U.S. attorney who spoke to the RFT said that it's not necessarily uncommon for attorneys to come into the office with no prior prosecutorial experience, but they usually stick around for several years and gradually take on more complicated cases.

"Other prosecutors are not just checking the box, literally counting the days from the moment they get there to when they can leave," the former colleague says. He adds, "You'll never be able to convince me that he didn't plan on getting just over two years. So he can say 'years' instead of 'year.'"


The 36-year-old Scharf comes to Missouri politics from an elite background. His father worked in private equity and Scharf attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for high school followed by Princeton University for undergrad. At Harvard Law School, he was president of the Harvard Federalist Society, a chapter of the highly influential organization that for decades has been placing conservative judges at all levels of the judiciary. Unusually for a lawyer who’s spent all but a few years of his career working for the government, in January Scharf donated $500,000 to his own campaign.

In Missouri, Scharf worked for Catherine Hanaway's campaign for governor in the 2016 race. He was aggressive about distributing opposition research about Hanaway's then-opponent, Eric Greitens, but went to work for Greitens when he became the nominee.

When Greitens assumed the governorship, Scharf became his policy director.

A longtime Missouri Republican consultant described Scharf as one of a handful of Greitens staffers who stayed with the now-disgraced governor until the very end. Amid a sexual assault allegation and other mounting controversies, Greitens resigned the office in June 2018.

The following month, President Donald Trump nominated Federalist Society member Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and Scharf worked on the Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett confirmations.

The assistant U.S. attorney who spoke to the RFT said that in addition to Scharf's obvious ambitions, it was also clear that he came into the prosecutor job highly connected. He recounts that in March 2020, the position for which Scharf would be hired hadn't even been posted, but a monthly office birthday email went out and Scharf's name was among the recipients.

"You know you got fucking juice if the job isn't even posted and you're already on the office birthday list," the assistant U.S. attorney says.

Despite his elite upbringing, Scharf has leaned hard into rural Missouri's culture — and its culture wars. He's posted to social media photos of himself at the shooting range, a photo of a Ronald Reagan-themed birthday cake and video of himself flash-frying a turkey. Even though he lives in ritzy Clayton, he drives a pickup truck and has a penchant for cowboy boots.

"I'm not trying to knock anybody for making money," says the longtime Missouri Republican consultant. "But where I do have a problem is trying to rebrand yourself into some warrior for the common person when you are the son of a multimillionaire."

Since leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office, Scharf has lambasted critical race theory and questioned why the Missouri Department of Transportation has a director of diversity. Those tweets and others would seem to signal that, like Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley before him, he's not afraid to do battle in the culture war.

When Governor Mike Parson appointed Bailey, the current attorney general, the governor said that he did so because, "I really want some stability in the attorney general's office. I think Andrew is going to bring that." At Bailey's January 3 inauguration, Parson jokingly said that he made Bailey swear a "blood oath" not to run for a different office in 2024.

It's easy to see why Parson felt that such an oath was necessary.


Despite vowing to serve out the full four-year term before running for a different office, Hawley was only ten months into the attorney general job when he announced his bid for senator in 2017.

Eric Schmitt, appointed to replace Hawley, held the job for just four years before he too ran for senate.

Though Schmitt held the position for the equivalent of one full term, it was obvious he viewed it as a stepping stone to national politics. He went to battle every day against all things woke, suing financial service companies for putting 401K money in "environmental, social, and governance" investments, suing China for COVID, suing Biden for student loan forgiveness and suing schools’ mask mandates.

"I think it’s fair to say that most politicians engage in some level of performative politicking, but I particularly think that anyone who is in the AG office as part of their path to higher office would use that as a chance to take public stances to ward off potential challengers and gain publicity for future elections," UMSL political science professor Anita Manion says. "We have certainly seen these lawsuits and public feuds be used as avenues for fundraising as well."

As evidence of the office being a holding spot for ambition, Manion ran down the list of Missouri attorneys general in the past 50 years. "Danforth went on to the Senate. Ashcroft went on to be governor, a senator, and US AG. Webster went to prison for embezzlement. Nixon went on to be governor. Koster ran for governor. Hawley and Schmitt, senators," she says. "So, clearly this office has been a stepping stone for those with higher aspirations."

At his inauguration, Bailey pledged to run the attorney general's office with a steady hand.

However, with a looming (and likely crowded) primary, the "steady hand" era at the state's attorney general office seems to have lasted less than a month.

Last week the conservative National Review got under Bailey's skin by stating that Bailey is unlikely to do battle in the national culture wars with the same elan as Schmitt, suggesting Parson chose Bailey because he wanted a “business-friendly, local approach.”

To many Missourians, this would seem to be a turn in the right direction for the state's top cop to do something other than pick performative fights in service of raising their profile to get on Fox News (or Newsmax) and parlay the attention into a run for higher office.

But what is good for Missouri isn't necessarily good for a candidate in a Republican primary.

On Friday, Bailey tweeted: "The National Review posits that the Missouri Attorney General’s Office is stumbling. Here’s a couple examples of us ‘stumbling’ this week alone:"

He proceeded to tweet a list of what his office has "accomplished" thus far. It included updates on many of Schmitt's virtue-signaling lawsuits as well as mentions of no fewer than four lawsuits the office is pursuing against Joe Biden.

Some incumbents are afforded the luxury of running as a public servant who has proven they can "put their head down and do the job," Manion says.

But that may no longer be the case for Bailey.

"It's different when there are already people who want to challenge you in two years. You've got to have a public facing record of accomplishment," she says.

Manion, who spoke to the RFT prior to Scharf's official announcement, said, "I feel like some of these folks are like vultures already circling."

Indeed, at Scharf’s campaign launch there was mention that former U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison of Springfield might get into the race.

Manion also mentioned state Senator Tony Luetkemeyer (R-Parkville), who recently changed the name of his political action committee from Luetkemeyer for Senate to Luetkemeyer for Missouri, hinting he may challenge Bailey.

According to a report filed by Luetkemeyer for Missouri earlier this month, the PAC has about $930,000 in cash on hand.

For his part, in addition to the half a million he gave himself, Scharf raised $300,000 in December.

According to the Missouri Independent, Bailey raised $72,000 from a fundraiser in Chesterfield in December.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story wrongly identified the member of the Luetkemeyer family whose PAC amendment suggests he will seek statewide office. We regret the error.

We welcome tips and feedback. Email the author at [email protected]
or follow on Twitter at @RyanWKrull.

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