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Five Takeaways: Cole County GOP Gubernatorial Debate

Watch here.

  1. They all pretty much have the same positions. The entire field claims to be pro-life, pro-gun, and for smaller government. Their answers to most questions was to pass Right to Work and cut government. Essentially they are on the same page on the issues, which means the personal attacks could be vicious moving forward. Oh, and they all agree that they aren’t fans of the Democratic nominee Attorney General Chris Koster.
  2. Senator Kehoe did very well moderating the event, while the questions were certainly interesting choices. At times you had to wonder if he regretted not being on the stage answering questions as opposed to asking them. However, the questions were ones you could tell were selected by Republicans of a Cole County nature such as how to address transportation funding and how to provide state employee pay raises.
  3. All five candidates have a personal narrative they stress in most every answer. Hanaway is a prosecutor, Brunner is a CEO, Dixon has a conservative voting record, Kinder has been a winner, and Greitens is a Navy seal. However you could tell that Kinder, Dixon, and especially Hanaway had numbers and specific examples to their plans, while Greitens and Brunner were more broad in their descriptions in how they would approach problems and likely more fluid in their answers.
  4. Kinder was Kinder: he is the front-runner and thus more closely scrutinized. He went from puzzling the crowd by criticizing Nixon for not ensuring utility companies make enough money and saying he would be the most conservative governor since Ashcroft (skipping Governor Blunt) to dazzling the crowd with examples of how he wins general elections by reaching out to urban voters. The constrictive rules of the forum ensured there was little to lose last night, and Kinder didn’t, but he showed clear examples of why he is the front runner and flashes of why could lose that status over the next 9 months.
  5. There was no contrasting. This was a debate and not a forum, and there were rules put in place to keep the candidates from attacking each other. However, with these types of events piling up on the calendar if the candidates aren’t allowed to contrast each other’s positions its likely media attention wanes on tightly controlled Q & A sessions.