Rep. Billy Long of Missouri likes to spotlight that he stands with former President Trump.

Long, a former auctioneer and radio show host, on Tuesday formally joined a crowded field of Republicans running in the 2022 race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Roy Blunt.

“Trump knows me, I know Trump, and he knows I was with him from Day 1,” he told a crowd of activists at a party fundraising dinner in his district in southwest Missouri in April.

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A few weeks later he held a fundraising event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. And Fox News confirmed a Politico report that the congressman met on Tuesday with the former president at Trump Tower in New York City. That encounter came hours before a recorded interview Long did Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, where the five-term representative officially announced his campaign and once again spotlighted his support and loyalty for Trump.

FILE – In this Nov. 2, 2010 file photo, then Missouri Republican Represnative-elect Billy Long speaks to supporters at an election-night rally in Springfield, Mo. Long, a conservative from southwestern Missouri, is entering the crowded race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
(AP)

Long, 65, joins a packed roster of nine contenders for the GOP nomination that includes former Gov. Eric Greitens – who left office in 2018 amid multiple controversies, state Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Rep.Vicky Hartzler in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District, in the west-central part of the state, and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis attorney who along with his wife grabbed national headlines during the summer of 2020 for holding guns outside their home to warn off Black Lives Matter protesters.

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And the field may continue to grow, with Rep. Jason Smith mulling a bid. GOP Rep. Ann Wagner, who had also been considering a Senate run, announced on Tuesday that she’ll instead campaign for reelection.

Missouri’s GOP nomination contest – like similar wide open Republican Senate primaries in Arizona and Ohio – has been a race to embrace Trump, who remains extremely popular with Republican base voters as he continues to play a kingmaker’s role in party politics and repeatedly flirts with another White House run in 2024.

The former president remains neutral so far in the showdown, but a Trump endorsement would obviously have a major impact on the Missouri contest in a state that he won by 18 points in his 2016 presidential election victory and by 16 points last November in his reelection defeat.

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There are serious concerns within Republican Party circles about Grietens, who resigned in 2018 amid investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign irregularities. Both charges were dropped, but Greitens stepped down in the face of impeachment proceedings by the Missouri legislature.

Some in the GOP fear a Greitens primary win next year would improve the Democrats’ chances of flipping the red seat blue in the 2022 midterms. That’s a scenario the GOP can ill afford as the party needs a net gain of just one seat to win back the Senate majority it lost in the 2020 election cycle.

“Multi-candidate primaries are notoriously unpredictable and the more candidates that get into the race increases the possibility that a damaged candidate – like Eric Greitens – would win the primary and potentially cost the Republicans the Senate in the way that Todd Aiken did 10 years ago,” a longtime GOP strategist and veteran of numerous Republican Senate campaigns told Fox News.

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The strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, was referring Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill’s victory over Aiken in the 2012 Missouri Senate election. Aiken, the GOP nominee, had been favored to defeat McCaskill, but he sank his own campaign with controversial comments on “legitimate rape.”

Long, in his interview with Tucker Carlson, appeared to take an indirect jab at Greitens’ political baggage.

“We need to get the Senate back, you’re not going to get anything until you get the Senate back, and I’m the guy that can win that Senate seat in Missouri and make sure that we don’t have a big race there, where we can take funds and put in Arizona and Georgia and these other seats that we need to take back.”” Long said.

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Six Democrats have already launched campaigns, including former state Sen. Scott Sifton, former Marine Lucas Kunce, and former congressional nominee Gena Ross. And a handful of other Democrats, including Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, are weighing bids.

But the Democrat considered by many pundits to be his party’s best shot at flipping the seat – former two-term Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon – announced last week that he wouldn’t run for the Senate next year