WARRENSBURG, Mo. – In front of a crowd of nearly 1,000 Boys State “citizens,” Republican candidates for governor met Tuesday evening for the first time since the attack in Orlando and offered some of their solutions for that and other issues facing Missouri.
All of the candidates agreed that the shooting occurred, in part, because of a failure of leadership under President Barack Obama and that the answer was not to restrict access to firearms, but to increase it, including support for a stand your ground measure currently awaiting Gov. Jay Nixon’s signature.
“It begins with real leadership. Leadership is something that has to start at the top,” said former Speaker Catherine Hanaway, who cited her experience under the leadership of former Attorney General John Ashcroft when she was U.S. Attorney for eastern Missouri.
Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder also hearkened back to the Bush years, crediting the former president and attorney general for keeping America safe.
“I’d rather be on offense in the war on terror. That meant the choice to take the war on terror overseas to them,” he said. “Say what you want about President Bush, he was on offense and America was safe.”
Businessman John Brunner used the time to defend the rights of gun owners. He repeated a line he’s used since the attack, saying if there was one person carrying a concealed weapon, the massacre wouldn’t have happened.
“We need a strong governor that will stand behind our first line of defense… and stand behind our second amendment,” he said.
The candidates were also asked about the stand your ground bill, a measure they all supported as a personal safety measure. Kinder and Hanaway both referenced carjackings that were stopped by potential victims who had access to firearms.
As the debate moved away from guns and the Orlando attack, the candidates were asked to focus on how they would improve the future of the state, especially looking at a decade down the road when the young men in the audience would be left stewardship of Missouri.
On transportation and the state’s aging infrastructure, Brunner said the issue needed to be addressed immediately and not saved for later.
“A decade or two down the road everyone will be on horseback because the roads will be gone,” he said. “This is how we bring business back. We’ve got to rebuild our roads and bridges and we need a plan if we’re going to incorporate this vision.”
Kinder and Hanaway offered plans to deal with transportation down the line. Both said that raising the gas tax shouldn’t be an option until the state’s income tax was cut, so Missouri families wouldn’t be taxed more.
“I want to cut the income tax, then perhaps later we can reemphasize and prioritize spending more on roads and bridges through the gas tax without raising Missourians taxes one red cent,” Hanaway said.
The conversation also focused on the future of higher education, both the future of the state’s flagship university and the likelihood of student debt for most of the members of the audience.
Kinder’s plan to reshape the University of Missouri centered on changing the leadership at the top, especially the background of those on the Board of Curators.
“I would not have a nine member Board of Curators composed of eight lawyers and one businessmen. That is not representative of our state and we can do better,” he said. “We should have eminent leaders from science, from business, an engineer, a leader from agribusiness should be on that board.”
Hanaway offered hope of a future without high costs for higher education.
“The future is we’ve got to get tuition costs under control,” she said in one of the biggest applause lines of the night. “Why are we still using a model for higher education that’s more than 100 years old…. We can do things differently.”
The Boys State audience provided a high energy feel to the debate. The rising high school juniors and seniors are participating in the week-long leadership program and many will go on to populate the halls of Jefferson City. In this debate alone, Kinder was a former Boys Stater and former Gov. Bob Holden sat in the audience.
His attendance drew comments from Kinder and Hanaway, who led the first Republican majorities in decades in the Senate and House while he was a Democratic governor. They used him as an example of reaching across the aisle to achieve results.
Not everyone thought the debate was a success. The Democratic Party said the candidates failed to provide plans to get Missouri back on track.
“Missouri’s Republican gubernatorial candidates have made an art form of using many words to say very little,”said Missouri Democratic Spokesman David Turner. “They stuck to standard talking points which offer no reasonable solutions to move Missouri forward. They all lack a comprehensive strategy to grow the economy and create jobs, while advocating for the same policies that drove Kansas off a cliff. If Missourians want real progress, they should vote for a Democrat in November.”
And the stage was missing the fourth Republican candidate for governor, Eric Greitens. He spoke to Boys State last year, but declined to attend the forum.
