Mike Kehoe got the phone call from Missouri’s chief executive asking him to step up to lieutenant governor in a similar fashion to Mike Parson getting a phone call telling him he was about to become governor: on a farm.
“I joke that the state is gonna think we are a couple of rednecks because he was moving cattle and I had just finished bailing hay,” Kehoe tells Scott Faughn on This Week in Missouri Politics.
The former Senate Majority Leader was sworn in as Missouri’s lieutenant governor on June 18. This was less than three weeks after former lieutenant governor Parson stepped into the chief executive position vacated by Eric Greitens.
“It wasn’t a position I thought I would be in right now,” said Kehoe. “I was ready to go into the private sector starting in January [2019].
“When you get that call, though, it is sobering, it is humbling. It is a day and a time you never forget.”
His wife — whom he knew for three weeks before they got engaged — told him “if this happens and the governor calls you, you can’t say no.”
In his new position, Kehoe will preside over the Senate, serve on several boards, and perform other duties. He discusses his new duties and moving forward as the featured guest on This Week in Missouri Politics.
Tune in on Sunday morning — check your local listings for times — to watch Missouri’s number two executive talk what the Senate accomplished this year, the “one-two punch” between the two offices, infrastructure, taxes, and more.
Alisha Shurr was a reporter for The Missouri Times and The Missouri Times Magazine. She joined The Missouri Times in January 2018 after working as a copy editor for her hometown newspaper in Southern Oregon. Alisha is a graduate of Kansas State University.
