Roy Dean Blunt (born January 10, 1950) is an American politician and lobbyist who served as a United States senator from Missouri from 2011 to 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 33rd Missouri Secretary of State (1985–1993) and U.S. Representative for Missouri's 7th congressional district (1997–2011).
Born in Niangua, Missouri, Blunt is a graduate of Southwest Baptist University and Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University). After serving as Missouri Secretary of State from 1985 to 1993, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Missouri's 7th congressional district in 1996. There, he served as Republican Whip from 2003 to 2009.
Blunt successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010. The next year, he was elected vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. Blunt, who was the dean of Missouri's congressional delegation, was elected to serve as Policy Committee chairman in November 2018. On March 8, 2021, he announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022. He was succeeded in the U.S. Senate by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
After leaving Congress, Blunt began working for the lobbying firm Husch Blackwell Strategies. He also joined as a member of Southwest Airlines' board of directors.
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Early life
Blunt was born on January 10, 1950, in Niangua, Missouri, the son of Neva Dora (née Letterman) and Leroy Blunt, a politician. He earned a B.A. degree in history in 1970 from Southwest Baptist University.
Education
Two years later, he earned a master's degree in history from Southwest Missouri State University. During his time in college, he received three draft deferments from the Vietnam War. Blunt was a high school history teacher at Marshfield High School in the city of Marshfield from 1970 to 1972; he later taught at Southwest Baptist University and as a member of the adjunct faculty at Drury University.
He went on to serve as president of Southwest Baptist University, his alma mater, from 1993 to 1996.
Early political career (1972–1997)
Greene county clerk
Blunt entered politics in 1973, when he was appointed county clerk and chief election official of Greene County, Missouri. He was subsequently elected to the position three times and served a total of 12 years.
1980 lieutenant gubernatorial election
In 1980 incumbent Republican Lieutenant Governor Bill Phelps ran for governor. Blunt, the Greene County Clerk, decided to run for the open seat and won the Republican primary, but lost the general election to State Representative Ken Rothman 56%–44%.
Secretary of State
In 1984, after incumbent Democratic Missouri Secretary of State James Kirkpatrick decided to retire, Blunt ran for the position and won the Republican primary with 79% of the vote. In the general election, he defeated Democratic State Representative Gary D. Sharpe 54%–46%. He became the first Republican to hold the post in 50 years.
In 1988, he won reelection against Democrat James Askew 61%–38%.
1992 gubernatorial election
Since incumbent Republican Governor John Ashcroft was term-limited, Blunt ran for the governorship in 1992. Missouri Attorney General William Webster won the Republican primary, defeating Blunt and Missouri Treasurer Wendell Bailey 44%–40%–15%. Webster lost the general election to Mel Carnahan.
U.S. House of Representatives (1997–2011)
Elections
In 1996 Blunt decided to run for the United States House of Representatives after incumbent U.S. Representative Mel Hancock honored his pledge to serve only four terms. Blunt ran in Missouri's 7th congressional district, the state's most conservative district, in the Ozark Mountains in the southwest. Blunt's political action committee is the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund.
On August 6, 1996, he won the Republican primary, defeating Gary Nodler 56%–44%. In the general election, he defeated Democrat Ruth Bamberger 65%–32%.
Tenure
Blunt voted in favor of school prayer and supported the No Child Left Behind Act. He voted in favor of school vouchers within the District of Columbia but against broader legislation allowing states to use federal money to issue vouchers for private or religious schools. He received a 17% rating from the National Education Association in 2003.
Blunt received a 97% rating from the United States Chamber of Commerce. He supported efforts to overhaul U.S. bankruptcy laws, requiring consumers who seek bankruptcy protection to repay more of their debts.
Blunt opposes federal cap and trade legislation and supports drilling for oil on the U.S. coastline. He does not believe in man-made global warming, stating: "There isn't any real science to say we are altering the climate or path of the Earth."
Blunt voted to prohibit lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers if the guns they manufacture or sell are later used in a crime. He has also voted to require anyone who purchases a gun at a gun show to go through a background check that must be completed within 24 hours. He has received an "A" rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF).
Blunt chaired the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group.
In 2006, Blunt successfully advocated for legislation that placed restrictions on over-the-counter cold medicines that could be used in the production of methamphetamines. The legislation, called the Combat Meth Act, was opposed by retail and drug lobbyists.
In August 2009, Blunt stated in two separate newspaper interviews that, because he was 59 years old, "In either Canada or Great Britain, if I broke my hip, I couldn't get it replaced." He stated he had heard the statement in Congressional testimony by "some people who are supposed to be experts on Canadian health care." The PolitiFact service of the St. Petersburg Times reported that it could not find any such testimony.
Blunt voted against HR 2007-018, which raised the federal minimum wage to $7.25 per hour.
Leadership
After only one term, Blunt was appointed Chief Deputy Whip, the highest appointed position in the House Republican Caucus. In that capacity, he served as the Republicans' chief vote-counter. In 2002, when Dick Armey retired and fellow Texan Tom DeLay was elected to succeed him, Blunt was elected to succeed DeLay as House Majority Whip.
Blunt served as Majority Leader on an acting basis starting in September 2005, after DeLay was indicted on felony charges involving campaign finance. On January 8, 2006, one day after DeLay announced that he would not seek to regain his position, Blunt announced he would run to permanently replace DeLay.
On January 14, 2006, Blunt issued a release claiming that the majority of the Republican caucus had endorsed him as DeLay's successor. But when the election was held by secret ballot on February 2, 2006, U.S. Representative John Boehner of Ohio won on the second ballot, with 122 votes to 109 for Blunt. In November 2006, House Republicans elected Blunt to their second-highest position during the 110th Congress, Minority Whip. Blunt handily defeated U.S. Representative John Shadegg of Arizona for the position. He announced he would step down from the position in late 2008, following two successive election cycles where House Republicans had lost seats, avoiding a difficult battle with his deputy, Eric Cantor, who was urged by some to challenge Blunt for the position.
Committee assignments
Upon entering the U.S. House, Blunt served on the House International Relations Committee, the House Committee on Agriculture, and the House Transportation Committee. In 1999, he gave up seats on the latter two committees and joined the Committee on Energy and Commerce. In addition he became a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
U.S. Senate (2011–2023)
2010 election
On February 19, 2009, Blunt announced he would seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate election for the seat being vacated by incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Kit Bond. He successfully ran against Democratic nominee Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, Constitution Party nominee Jerry Beck, Libertarian nominee Jonathan Dine, and write-in candidates Mark S. Memoly, Frazier Miller, Jeff Wirick and Richie L. Wolfe.
Tenure
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Blunt "has one of the Senate's most conservative voting records, yet he generally avoids the confrontational, firebrand style" and during his tenure in the U.S. Senate "Blunt's most significant legislative accomplishments all had Democrat co-sponsors." The Lugar Center and Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy's Bipartisan Index ranked Blunt the 11th most bipartisan senator in the first session of the 115th United States Congress.
Blunt was at the U.S. Capitol when Trump supporters attacked it on January 6, 2021, serving as a teller for the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count certification, alongside Senator Amy Klobuchar, Representative Rodney Davis, and Representative Zoe Lofgren. Before the certification, Blunt said he would support the certification of the election, in contrast to his fellow Missouri senator Josh Hawley. While Blunt observed the deliberations over the objection to counting Arizona's votes, led by Ted Cruz, the Capitol was breached. Along with other senators, Blunt was removed from the Senate floor to an undisclosed location as the insurrectionists moved closer to the Senate chambers. He tweeted during the attack that the "violence and destruction" needed to stop and that "This is not who we are as a nation." Blunt stated that Trump "was a part of it", referring to the insurrection.
In the wake of the attack, Blunt said he would not support impeaching Trump and that there was "no time" to do so. He also called it a "disappointment" that Democrats were considering impeachment. In an interview with Face the Nation, Blunt said, "the president touched the hot stove on Wednesday and is unlikely to touch it again."
As master of ceremonies for the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, Blunt delivered a short speech expounding the Constitution's Preamble, noting that unlike the Articles of Confederation or the Magna Carta, it roots and establishes law and authority in "We the People". Blunt remarked that the endeavor to create a "more perfect Union" is a continuing project and said, "we are more than we have been and we are less than we hope to be".
Senate assignments
During the 117th Congress, Blunt's committee and subcommittee appointments are as follows.
Political positions
In 2013, Blunt worked with Monsanto to author a rider called the Farmer Assurance Provision, which was added into the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013. The rider's language originated in an agriculture spending bill in the U.S. House.
Since 2014, Blunt has been the largest recipient of campaign contributions from Monsanto, which is headquartered in Missouri.
According to progressive news magazine The Nation, the rider "curtailed already weak oversight over the handful of agro-giants that control the GMO market by allowing crops that a judge ruled were not properly approved to continue to be planted." According to Blunt, who did not add the rider to the bill but who supported it, "What it says is if you plant a crop that is legal to plant when you plant it, you get to harvest it". He later led Senate Republicans in defeating an amendment by Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley to repeal the provision. Blunt claimed all the amendment did "was repeat [sic] authority that the secretary in a hearing the other day, before the Agri[culture] Approp[riations] committee the other day, said he already had. And it didn't require the secretary to do anything that the secretary thought was the wrong thing to do. Which is one of the reasons I thought it was fine".
In 2020, Blunt voted to acquit Trump in his first impeachment trial.
In 2021, Blunt was one of 43 senators who voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial.
In 2022, after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Blunt said that Trump "should have turned over all the documents" to the National Archives when he left office. Blunt also expressed concern over the timing of the search, citing the upcoming midterm elections.
Blunt has been opposed to raising the federal minimum wage.
On June 20, 2013, Blunt co-sponsored the Death Tax Repeal Act of 2013. The bill was intended to permanently eliminate federal estate tax and it did not pass.
2016 election
Blunt ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2016.
He won the Republican primary with 73% of the vote and faced Democrat Jason Kander in the November 2016 general election on November 8, 2016. Blunt won with 49.2% of the vote to Kander's 46.4%.
2020 presidential election
On November 6, 2020, while Chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee and the fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate, Blunt said Trump "should turn this discussion over to his lawyers" and "you can't stop the count in one state and decide you want the count to continue in another state. That might be how you'd like to see the system work but that's not how the system works." The previous night, Trump had alleged that Democrats were "stealing" the election.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an editorial criticizing Blunt and Senator Josh Hawley for not distancing themselves from the January 6 United States Capitol attack and their continued support for Trump. Both senators voted for acquittal in Trump's second impeachment trial.
Family and personal life
Blunt has been married twice. He married Roseann Ray in May 1967; he had three children with her: Matt, the former governor of Missouri, Amy Blunt Mosby and Andrew Blunt. All three children are corporate lobbyists. Some critics have criticized Andrew's dual professional roles as both a lobbyist for firms that might benefit from his father's influence and his father's campaign manager. Matt Blunt is also a lobbyist, as is his wife. The Blunts say they are careful not to seek influence for their clients with Senator Blunt.
Blunt married Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist for Kraft Foods and Philip Morris, in 2003. In April 2006, he and Perlman adopted Charlie Blunt, an 18-month-old boy from Russia. The family lives in Washington, D.C., and also own a condo in Springfield, Missouri. Roy Blunt has six grandchildren. He is a practicing Southern Baptist.
On August 9, 2021, Blunt was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) "for distinguished service to Australia's bilateral relationship with the United States of America, in particular to the joint Free Trade Agreement".
On February 14, 2023, Blunt was elected as president of The State Historical Society of Missouri where he has been a trustee since 2005.
ACU rating
For 2020, Blunt received a score of 74 from the American Conservative Union. He has a lifetime rating of 85.