Auditor Nicole Galloway has nabbed former labor operative Chris Sloan to lead her gubernatorial campaign.
Sloan announced the news on Twitter and in a campaign fundraising email Monday evening.
“I’m thrilled to join Nicole Galloway’s team and to hit the ground running,” Sloan said in a statement to The Missouri Times. “We are going to build a grassroots campaign that will empower communities across Missouri to take back Jefferson City. Nicole’s candidacy offers the people a new way for Missouri, by putting the needs of working families ahead of connected insiders.”
I’m excited to join the @nicolergalloway team and get to work building a campaign that will lift people up and uniting them to meet our challenges, paving a #NewWay for Missouri #MoGov
— Chris Sloan (@cssloan) October 21, 2019
Sloan most recently served as campaign manager for Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, who won a close race over Republican Adam Laxalt to become the first Democrat to lead the state in two decades.
Prior to joining the Sisolak campaign in the 2018 midterms, Sloan worked at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) for about 10 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was the longtime director of government affairs for IUPAT.
Sloan’s ties to organized labor could come as an asset to Galloway, particularly given Republican Gov. Mike Parson’s support for right-to-work proposals in the past. However, as governor, Parson has strongly backed workforce development and infrastructure initiatives.
Galloway has garnered large donations from the United Auto Workers (UAW) — who have been on strike against General Motors (GM) nationally since September. The UAW gave $50,000 to a political action committee in support of the auditor’s gubernatorial bid in August and another $30,000 in September. It gave $50,000 in 2018 as well.
The Wentzville GM plant employs nearly 4,500 UAW Local 2250 workers who are on strike.
“Nicole Galloway has already proven she is a formidable challenger to the governor, and she is clearly building a team that knows how to win,” Lauren Gepford, the Missouri Democrats’ executive director, told The Missouri Times.
Sloan attended Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana — a connection to the Midwest he pointed out in the fundraising email — and earned a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, his LinkedIn said.
As of the latest filing reports, Galloway had more than $540,000 cash on hand. The Keep Government Accountable PAC had more than $532,000.
Parson, on the other hand, had nearly $1.3 million cash on hand. Uniting Missouri, the PAC backing him, had more than $4.3 million.
Parson named Steele Shippy, his former communications director, his campaign manager in August.
Kaitlyn Schallhorn was the editor in chief of The Missouri Times from 2020-2022. She joined the newspaper in early 2019 after working as a reporter for Fox News in New York City.
Throughout her career, Kaitlyn has covered political campaigns across the U.S., including the 2016 presidential election, and humanitarian aid efforts in Africa and the Middle East.
She is a native of Missouri who studied journalism at Winthrop University in South Carolina. She is also an alumna of the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C.
Contact Kaitlyn at kaitlyn@themissouritimes.com.
