Eric Greitens, the Maryland Heights native who turned his service with the elite Navy SEALs into a national brand and, then, into his debut political campaign, emerged from a bruising four-way primary Tuesday as Missouri’s Republican nominee for governor. Mike Parson won the Republican primary for lieutenant governor Tuesday and will face former U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan and Libertarian Steven Hedrick in the November general election. That left Greitens and Lt. Governor Peter Kinder on the Republican ticket.
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“I grew up in a Missouri I was proud to call home”. He garnered about 35 percent of the vote by casting himself as a conservative outsider in his first political campaign.
Koster is well-known in the state after serving two terms as the Missouri attorney general. He is the only lawmaker to have served as the leader of both the Missouri House and Senate. He won his primary easily, defeating minor candidates.
Koster scheduled a bus tour to begin early Wednesday in Harrisonville to kick off his general election campaign.
“Are you ready to take back our state?” a jubilant Greitens shouted to supporters in a Chesterfield rally after the results made it clear he had won.
Greitens set up a committee for a potential gubernatorial run just days before the February 26, 2015, suicide of Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich, another gubernatorial candidate. All four are expected to attend a Republican planning session Thursday. They support expanded gun rights and tax cuts and have sharply criticized the way Nixon responded to protests at the University of Missouri in Columbia previous year over racial concerns and to riots following the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
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Like presidential politics, Southwest Missouri stood out on the map of which counties favored which candidate. Brunner has self-funded much of his campaign. Greitens received the largest single donation in state history from a Washington D.C. based super PAC “SEALs for Truth”, while Brunner’s largest cash contributions came from himself.
