When Mike Kehoe takes the oath of office at noon Monday in Jefferson City to become Missouri’s 58th governor, he’ll do so under far different circumstances than his predecessor.
Then-Lt. Gov. Mike Parson was ushered into the role amid political scandal in May 2018, when Gov. Eric Greitens resigned while facing criminal and ethical investigations that had led the legislature to the precipice of an impeachment process.
Kehoe, a North St. Louis native and a longtime mid-Missouri car dealer who became an influential state senator, was Parson’s appointed pick to replace him as lieutenant governor and was elected in November to succeed him in the governor’s office.
“I want him to have the smoothest transition that any governor could possibly have simply because of what all I had to go through. I don’t wish that on anyone,” Parson said in an interview with Spectrum News this week, where he also talked about Kehoe’s challenges ahead, and what you don’t know about the office until you’re squarely in the job.
“The one thing I’ve learned from the governor’s office until the final day….it just doesn’t slow down much. Every day there’s something going on in the state of Missouri,” he said.
“The phone’s’ always going to ring, it doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday or Sunday or evenings…The biggest thing Governor Kehoe will have to deal with is just the demands of the job and the time it takes to do it and there’s no easy way around that. It is a daunting task to be governor day in and day out.”
There will be tough decisions impacting residents and thousands of state government employees spread out over 17 cabinet-level departments. Kehoe is keeping several of Parson’s department heads in place, or moving them to lead different agencies in his administration.
That could come in handy in the early days of the administration, when Kehoe will need to work with lawmakers to pass a supplemental budget. The spending bills passed by the General Assembly in May came in at roughly $51 billion, which was less than Parson asked for, and left officials at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to predict the need for the “mother of all supplemental budgets.”
Parson in turn vetoed about $1 billion in spending on projects and programs that didn’t have long-term funding options or were deemed as local in scope.
“It’s going to be a huge supplemental (budget), there’s no question about that…but I think they all know that. Now that the dust settled and the politics got out of it now you’re back to the reality to say ok this is what it’s going to be, what the price tag’s going to be,” Parson said, insisting that the state is financially in the best shape it’s ever been, with less debt than when he took office.
“They have a long runway to be very successful,” Parson, said, if the flow of revenue keeps going.
As the new leader of the Republican party in Missouri, Kehoe steps in for Parson, who drew the ire of the conservative wing of the GOP in the General Assembly and particularly in the State Senate, where there was opposition to the growth of government spending as state coffers were flush with federal COVID-era relief, along with some battles over appointments that became roadblocks for other legislative goals.
In the gubernatorial primary, Kehoe defeated one of those conservatives, now-former State Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring. Now, Eigel has eyed a run for State GOP Chair, challenging Kehoe’s endorsed candidate former Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder.
Another member of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, State Rep. Justin Sparks, was soundly defeated in an upstart challenge in the race for House Speaker on Wednesday.
Parson said initiative petition reform and solving the problem of childcare affordability, two things that didn’t get done last year despite Republican supermajorities in both chambers and control of the governor’s mansion, will still be waiting for Kehoe.
“Make no mistake about this,” Parson said about initiative petition reform. “This is not a Democrat-Republican issue this is a Republican issue. The Republicans are the ones that have actually stopped that from happening. Honestly for us not to get that done was pretty ridiculous and politics played a big role in that. I truly believe you gotta do something to reform the system regardless which side you’re on.”
Parson tried and failed to get legislation providing tax credits for child care.
“I don’t think that’s government’s job to run daycares but I do think there’s ways we can incentivize businesses, corporations to help with that….It is an issue that’s not going away and the only way you’re going to continue to keep Missouri moving forward is to be able to find a better way than what we have with our daycare across the state.”
Parson cleared the decks for Kehoe when it came to a backlog of requests for clemency. Last month, Parson, a former Polk County Sheriff, commuted the sentence of Erik DeValkenaere, a white former Kansas City police officer convicted in the shooting death of Cameron Lamb, a black man after DeValkenaere entered his property without a warrant. Kehoe had said he would do it if Parson did not.
Something Parson won’t get done by Monday is a deal to keep the Chiefs and Royals in Missouri. The long term future of the Kansas City franchises has been up in the air as each deals with questions about stadiums. Last spring, Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax referendum that would have funded a new downtown ballpark for the Royals and improvements to Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs.
The state of Kansas has been open in its pursuit to lure either of them through special incentives approved last year.
Parson said he was involved in a meeting about the stadium issues this past week. While he had previously predicted a deal would come about before the end of 2024, he hinted this week that more information was forthcoming shortly.
“I think there’s a lot of things that are going to be teed up for the governor coming in. I still believe we’re in the process of making sure that the Chiefs and the Royals stay in Missouri. I think there is a path moving forward,” Parson said. More publicly can be addressed in the very near future, some things are gonna be happening….I still strongly believe that we’re going to maintain the Chiefs and the Royals in the state of Missouri.”
It’s still unclear if that will come through existing state incentive programs or if it will require legislative action.
At 12 p.m. Monday, it will be Kehoe’s job to worry about it.
“I get to come up here for the last time on Monday and then I’m going home. It’s been a true honor to serve as governor of this great state…but I feel good about going home also. I do think there’s time to go home and my time is now,” Parson said.
As for Tuesday?
“I don’t have anything I gotta do. I just want to get up that first morning and realize I don’t have to worry about a phone I don’t have to worry about too much of anything other than what I want to do that day when I wake up.”
