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My fond farewell (really) to Peter Kinder

by Jeff Mazur
It’s been a running joke for years among my Missouri Democratic political friends that we’d find great sadness when Peter Kinder no longer held office. Kinder is someone we can chuckle at, the gag went, while he keeps a statewide seat from a Republican who might actually parlay the office into a bigger and more dangerous role.
Jeff Mazur, AFSCME
Jeff Mazur
Kinder was a safe adversary. He was the devil we knew, one whose tweets we could ridicule.

Now as Peter Kinder’s time in public office dwindles I am struck by a genuine (if mild) disappointment, but not for the reasons I’d previously offered as a punchline. Kinder’s exit is the symbol of a sad transition from statewide candidates defined by their longevity and familiarity to those most notable for their novelty, ambition, and access to money.
We are worse for the change.
What Peter Kinder had in politics he earned with hard work over a long period of time. Three terms in the State Senate, more than ten years of his time there spent in the minority. Three terms as Lieutenant Governor, only one concurrent with that of a Governor who recognized his existence. A refugee from the pre-term limits era, Kinder served in these inglorious roles for nearly a quarter century.
Whether you found him to be a steadfast crusader or a gadfly ideologue, you knew who Peter Kinder was.
The new era is dominated by the idea that longevity is a cancer. We are sold on the pessimistic, post-merit notion that anyone who has been around long enough to be recognizable based on shared experience is unqualified to serve longer or in a higher role. If Kinder’s great strengths of hard-won familiarity and determined, patient careerism are successfully cast as anathema to democracy, we will build a world in which people come to rule us by swearing off the very virtues we aim to ingrain in our own children. “Fresh faces” are just a well-marketed cover for self-denial.
It is not just that Peter Kinder was around for so long, but also that his were campaigns built on old school politicking rather than the overfunded, death-from-above adfests that are the state of the art in statewide politics. People who know will tell you Peter Kinder has a relationship with everyone who’s anyone in Missouri GOP politics, and has since before he wore glasses. Kinder works the grassroots organizations and knows the issues by heart.
What Kinder never had was steady access to a handful of multi-millionaire megadonors who could fund the media deluge necessary to break through the crowded din of a four-way primary. 
Kinder belonged to every Missouri Republican, and the big-ego political funders of 2016 require membership in a more exclusive ownership group.
On money, contrast Kinder with Josh Hawley, a prototype for the new statewide candidate. In 2016, Kinder could look back on decades of political leadership and success, all of which earned him enough funding to be thoroughly outspent by all three of his primary opponents. Hawley, meanwhile, took his litigation on behalf of a home decor retailer and nascent relationships with national groups like the Federalist Society and Washington-based funders and rode them to literally millions of dollars in support for his successful Attorney General primary.
Maybe Josh Hawley’s story appeals to an irrational entrepreneurial exuberance that tricks us into to believing we, too, could someday be whisked to success on a cloud of someone else’s venture. But as a tale of representational democracy, it sucks the wind from us. The influence of money in politics has on its own a well-known corrosive power. Corrode democracy to the benefit of people who’ve hardly gotten to know us and we can be excused for feeling cheated.
Beyond having little experience and access to lots of campaign cash, the new model statewide candidate has ambition on a scale and with an expected velocity that are unprecedented in Missouri. GOP newcomer Eric Greitens is running for office for the first time, and it’s for Governor. If he’s successful, he’ll begin jockeying almost immediately for the 2020 Republican Presidential nomination. Vast ambition understates Greitens’ posture.
After studying such seemingly inhuman certainty, the thoughtful, look-before-I-leap track record of Peter Kinder is a comfort.
Twice before opting into the 2016 GOP governor race, Kinder stepped to the edge of a gubernatorial run only to walk back to the safety of Lieutenant Governor. I think what kept Peter Kinder from trying quickly to climb the ladder was that he believed he was doing the best thing he could possibly be doing. Not every stone is a stepping stone, some are the place where you build.
Peter Kinder had spent much of his career in service. It was who he was. Lieutenant Governor was a way to let that continue, to let him do the things he thought important to do and help the people he felt it was important to help. Ambition was, when he weighed the odds, more likely a pathway out of doing the best thing he could possibly be doing than it was a pathway to doing something better.
Isn’t that how we should want our elected officials to approach these decisions? Don’t we appreciate when a statewide official sees his office as more important than just a placeholder until he can gamble on a “more important” post?
That’s how Peter Kinder did it until he didn’t do it that way any more. And now he’s on his way out. And I’ll miss him for having done it that way for so long.
To be sure, I won’t miss the things that Peter Kinder stood for in office; his politics and mine are incompatible. But when I see the stylistic alternative — the guy who just dropped in from nowhere with millions pledged, the man people know mostly from the commercials, the one with his eyes four years down the field — I’ll remember Peter Kinder fondly, with warm distaste earned honestly, over the years.