Death and Politics: Did a Vicious Campaign Drive a Candidate to Suicide?
At Rolling Stone, Andy Kroll reports on the events that ended with the suicide of politician Tom Schweich during the race for Missouri governor. “[T]he incidents, real or perceived, that preoccupied him at the time were well-known among his inner circle: That the chairman of the Missouri Republican Party had led an anti-Semitic ‘whisper campaign’ against him; that Rex Sinquefield was bankrolling his opponents to scare him out of the governor’s race,” Kroll writes. Kroll also interviewed John Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri and Schweich’s mentor, who is also the namesake of the Danforth Center that publishes this journal.