Following the tragic suicide of Republican gubernatorial hopeful Tom Schweich in Missouri, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder is the leading GOP candidate to succeed lame-duck Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon in 2016.
On Monday, a source revealed to Newsmax the results of a poll reported in the confidential Missouri Scout political newsletter showing Kinder, who declared for the race two weeks ago, handily leading a crowded GOP primary field.
According to the survey conducted by Remington Research among likely Republican primary voters, Kinder has 30 percent of the vote to 10 percent for former state House Speaker Catherine Hanaway. A former U.S. Attorney, Hanaway had been considered the leading rival to Schweich for the nomination until his death.
Schweich, the state auditor, died Feb. 26 after being taken to a hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In third place in the Remington poll with 7 percent of the vote was multimillionaire businessman John Brunner, who lost a primary bid for the U.S. Senate in 2012. Four other candidates drew at most 3 percent in the poll and a whopping 42 percent of the likely primary voters are undecided.
The eventual nominee will face two-term State Attorney General Chris Koster, 51, who switched from the Republican Party in 2007 and is considered the certain Democratic nominee to succeed Nixon.
Reached by Newsmax during a campaign swing across the Show-Me State, Kinder — 61, and, like Koster, a bachelor — explained why he recently switched from what was thought to be a likely bid for a fourth term as Missouri’s second-highest official to a race for the top job.
"I saw the other candidates running conventional Republican campaigns," Kinder told us, "and I decided Missouri needed a campaign and leadership like it’s never seen before."
The Cape Girardeau conservative was referring to his history of reaching out to and making inroads into Missouri’s minority community. Like the late Jack Kemp and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Kinder has taken his party’s message of lower taxes and smaller government to black voters who are historically Democratic, and gotten results.
In 2008, as the McCain-Palin ticket was losing the city of St. Louis by 108,000 votes, Kinder was losing it by a much smaller margin of 90,000 votes. In both 2008 and 2012, he was the lone Republican to win statewide office in Missouri.
Kinder said he probably doesn’t get 20 percent among black voters, "but I think it’s pretty safe to say I get in the high teens among Missourians who happen to be black."
Earlier this year, Kinder was the lone statewide official to both attend the funeral of Michael Brown, whose fatal shooting by a police officer precipitated the Ferguson riots, and be invited to address the state NAACP’s annual dinner. In both cases, Democratic Gov. Nixon was not invited.
Any interview with Kinder eventually comes around to Nixon. It is no secret at the state capitol in Jefferson City that Missouri’s two highest elected officials hold each other, as one wag put it, "in minimum high regard." In Kinder’s words, "Jay Nixon embarrassed our state by the way he handled what happened in Ferguson. In mobilizing the National Guard, he saw that Busch Stadium [the home of the St. Louis Cardinals] and the county seat of Clayton were protected, but he made the decision not to send the Guard into areas such as Ferguson and Dellwood.
"And that meant that a lot of small merchants and shopkeepers, black and white, lost their family businesses in the ensuing violence."
Kinder told the story of a couple, the Rev. Eddie and Jeniece Anderson, who had their family-run store in inner-city St. Louis burned out in the violence earlier this year. The Andersons, whom Kinder recently had lunch with, "lost everything and only a tiny fraction was repaid from insurance."
Of likely Democratic standard-bearer Koster, Kinder simply pointed to just-released statistics showing homicides in St. Louis up 58 percent since the Ferguson riots, and robberies, burglaries and violent crimes rising at double digits in what is called, in Missouri, "the Ferguson effect."
"Asking voters for a promotion while that happens on his watch is going to be difficult," said Kinder, "and his pro-abortion record is not going to go over well in a strongly pro-life state." Vigorous pro-lifer Kinder was in the news over the weekend calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
With the primaries not scheduled until August 2016, it is impossible today to predict the nominees or the next governor of Missouri. But at this early stage, one thing is certain: With only 10 states electing governors next year, it is a race that will be closely watched far beyond the borders of the Show-Me State.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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