Good people of Missouri, former Navy SEAL (and former Democrat) Eric Greitens would like to be your next Governor. And before that, he also served as a Republican state senator and worked as a prosecutor in western Missouri. To better introduce himself to more voters from the nation’s finest state, Greitens has published many YouTube videos.
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Both candidates will also face questions about their authenticity given their history of party switching, but Koster’s unique liability is that he overplays the “conservative Democrat” theme and makes himself unattractive to liberals in the state’s major cities.
Republicans John Brunner and former House Speaker Catherine Hanaway conceded Tuesday night.
Since his time at Duke, Greitens has built an extensive resume. He’s been a Rhodes scholar, White House fellow, boxer, martial arts expert and best-selling author. While deployed in Iraq, he was chlorine-gassed in a suicide bomb attack but returned to duty within days. He got one of out of every three votes statewide, with a well organized, well financed campaign.
Like presidential politics, Southwest Missouri stood out on the map of which counties favored which candidate. During one of the first gubernatorial debates during the primary race, opponents hit Greitens hard on a $1 million campaign contribution from Michael Goguen, a California venture capitalist who is the defendant in a pending civil lawsuit claiming sexual abuse. Goguen has denied the allegations.
Greitens won the split Republican primary with less than 35 percent of the vote.
In another campaign ad from June, Greitens settled for toting a comparatively modest automatic rifle while vowing to take “dead aim” at career politicians in Missouri.
Greitens said he was raised a Democrat and thought about running for Congress as a member of that party in 2010.
Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens speaks to a crowd of supporters at the DoubleTree Hotel Chesterfield, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016, in Chesterfield, Mo. The Democratic incumbent governor is ineligible to run again due to term limits. He has received the Navy Achievement Medal, the Combat Action Ribbon, the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
Greitens told the Forward in a March 2015 interview that “I’m proud to be Jewish”. His death led to at least temporary calls to tone down negative campaigning.
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