Two statewide political offices are on next year's Missouri ballots - U.S. Senator and state auditor.
Austin Stukins, the Missouri Republican Party's new executive director, told Cole County Republicans on Thursday night he's planning to help build up the state party and beat incumbent Democrats Claire McCaskill and Nicole Galloway at the polls in November 2018.
"Who here in this room is ready to stand with me and put Claire McCaskill out to pasture?" Stukins asked. "(She) lately has been visiting rural Missouri, (but) in the past six years, no one in rural Missouri has seen hide nor hair of Claire McCaskill."
McCaskill next year will be seeking her third six-year term in the U.S. Senate.
She beat incumbent Republican Jim Talent in 2006 by just over 50,000 votes - a narrow victory that can be avoided in 2018 if the GOP increases turnout among Republican voters by just 10 percent, Stukins said.
McCaskill won re-election in 2012 over then U.S. Rep. Todd Akin by nearly 430,000 votes - even though Akin received nearly 11,000 votes more in his losing effort than McCaskill received in her 2006 victory over Talent.
"No doubt she is a talented politician who's been in Washington so long she's forgotten what Missouri - her home - actually looks like," Stukins said. "We know what it looks like.
"It looks like a $2.7 million condo in D.C. and a big mansion with an elevator in St. Louis."
During an interview after his presentation, Stukins was asked why pointing out the value of her homes in Washington and St. Louis will be a successful campaign tactic, when the Democrats' similar campaign last year about fellow U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt didn't seem to work.
"The truth is, Sen. Blunt's always been sincere about who he is and the roots he holds true to," Stukins said, adding McCaskill "is pretending to be a moderate Democrat and you never see her come home except for re-election."
Stukins reminded the GOP members Thursday: "Missouri went for President Donald Trump by 19 points (last year), and yet Sen. McCaskill has taken it to her own to continue to join the resistance of President Trump and his agenda - even though her constituents spoke loudly in 2016."
Stukins repeated facts he and other state and national GOP leaders have used regularly in recent emails to supporters and to the media, that "she has voted against seven of the president's Cabinet nominees and she voted against Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch."
On the Gorsuch vote, McCaskill said in an April 6 news release: "I'm voting against Gorsuch because I cannot support a justice who lets corporations step all over the little guy (and) whose rulings suggest he believes companies should have the same rights as people."
Stukins encouraged the Cole County Republicans' Club to work together and to get their friends to work in a grass roots effort for Republican candidates.
Club President Greg Rollins noted Stukins, a Louisiana native, was policy advisor to that state's attorney general, Jeff Landry, when he was tabbed to head Missouri's GOP.
"When asked to come to Missouri by our chairman (Todd Graves), I did so and didn't even think twice about it," Stukins said.
His job as executive director is "to help grow our party and to make it a party that is visible on a national level," he said.
In last year's elections, the Republican National Committee hired Stukins as a state director and credited him with helping turn Donald Trump's support in Georgia from four points behind to winning by six points.
In 2014, Stukins is credited with helping the GOP oust veteran U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat.
"(She was) an 18-year, entrenched Democrat who forgot that she represent(ed) a 'red' state," he said Thursday. "Being from Louisiana, I knew full well - and you probably remember it, too - that Louisiana was a 'blue' state.
"Some good friends of mine can remember when you could put all the Republicans in the state in a phone booth. And Missouri was the same way at one point in time."
Stukins was a U.S. Marine whose service included a deployment to Iraq and work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.