Politics: 2020 Missouri Governor Race

As we get to another upcoming election that I’m blogging about, I might as well skip the part where I explain why I’m blogging about it and just switch to the part where I explain the race in question. The incumbent governor of Missouri is Republican Mike Parsons. He is running for reelection. He is being challenged by Democrat Nicole Galloway.

Mike Parsons was not elected governor of Missouri. But he was elected lieutenant governor. After the previous governor, Eric Greitens, had numerous scandals and ultimately resigned from office, Mike took over. I forget what else he’s done offhand.

Of course, we should get to any issues that he has. There was a possible tax credit controversy that I don’t quite understand. He might have benefited from it going one way and just happened to get what he needed to when things went a certain way. I didn’t quite understand it.

There was also an appointment controversy over the fact that he appointed a new lieutenant governor when it seemed like it was outside of his power to do. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in his favor to make a new number two despite the fact that it would seem the constitution of the state stated that this wasn’t allowed. What is worth noting is that you’d think there would have been enough time to do a special election for it since he took office in June and the primary in 2018 wasn’t until August that year, which would have given plenty of time for all sorts of candidates to come into the race.

Now there may come a time when I start doing an analysis of various governors after they have left office in a different political blog. The main reason for that is so I can talk about all of the men and women who were governors during the coronavirus. Now, Mike wasn’t doing stay at home orders at first due to, I’m not sure. Maybe he just didn’t want to. He eventually caved in after numerous cities did what he wasn’t doing. But he fails to reign in the issues that constantly are happening at Lake of the Ozarks. I forget if Missouri is doing badly compared to other states in terms of coronavirus which could be due to the fact that less people live there.

He has made some controversial statements recently. The first one is covered in this article as he wound up telling people not to vote if they felt too sick or worried about going to the polls. He also is not expanding voting by mail, despite the fact that many want to do it during times like these that are going on today.

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article243081151.html

Another point of controversy with him relates to the couple who were pointing guns at protesters who support the Black Lives Matter movement. He said that he might pardon them and we still don’t know if they will have charges filed against them yet at all.

Perhaps the biggest controversial thing that he has done or said relates to his dismissive way he is treating coronavirus during the school reopening debate. While it might be more like an ordinary sickness in the future, it isn’t like that yet as it is more like the flu when it first spread as a pandemic a century ago near the end of World War I. For one, there is no vaccine yet. For another, the infection rate remains high. This article explains a good deal about why reopening schools is a bad idea while including his ignorant quote about it.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/even-if-school-kids-survive-covid-19-they-won-t-be-spared-contagion-guilt/ar-BB179XHf?li=BBnbcA0&ocid=mailsignout

Now let’s get to Nicole Galloway. She is currently the only woman who holds state wide office in Missouri and the only Democrat as well. (This obviously excludes people who represent only part of the state, unless my information is wrong.) She would be the first female governor of the state of Missouri if she wins the election. She does have experience as she currently holds office and had held others too. I believe that she’s the auditor of the state, whatever that means, but am not sure right now as I forget to note it while preparing this post.

She is not without controversy of her own as there were possible issues with the Sunshine law being broken by her based on something that seems dumb relating to texts she got that were then deleted automatically. Since the Republican Attorney General seemed to clear her of any wrongdoing (and I haven’t even seen this touched upon in ads), then I wouldn’t worry about this being that big of an issue right now.

There is a dumb seeming thread to me among the political ads that I see in Missouri. It seems that all a Republican has to do to win is call an opponent too liberal and this liberal loses. How can they be duped so easily? I can only hope that this fails at some point in time, but am not sure that it will this election since Democrats seem posed to do badly with governor elections this year based on polls last I checked.

Now I might as well close this with the endorsement of who I think should win and thus, who people should vote for in the general election in the state of Missouri. While Mike is currently saying that he won’t run in 2024 if he wins this year, I say that it isn’t worth keeping him around for now. The only good vote of someone who would actually care about Missouri is Nicole Galloway and if you can vote in Missouri this election, then vote for her for governor.