JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – With focus falling on the Republican party’s six-way primary race to decide their gubernatorial nominee, it can be easy to forget that in January 2017, for the first time in 12 years, Missouri will have a new lieutenant governor. Longtime Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder is trying his hand at running for governor, which means that his spot as Missouri’s second-in-command is wide open.
Attorney and former chairwoman of the Missouri Club for Growth Bev Randles hopes to win that position, but she’s not just looking to be a placeholder.
“I have no intention of trying to fill someone else’s shoes, that’s never why I’ve been interested in this office,” Randles says. “I’m me, I’ve always been who I am – an independent person. My conservative views are fairly well known around the state. I’m bringing in the kinds of things that voters have said to me, things that are important to them.“
In 2012, her husband, Bill, ran for governor, and she managed his campaign. Now she has to sell herself instead of her husband.
“There’s a tremendous difference when you’re the candidate,” Randles said. “I was out doing the same kinds of things, speaking on his behalf, answering questions, but there’s a lot more pressure, and it’s a lot more fun, too, I think.”
Randles sees the lieutenant governorship primarily as an opportunity to promote policy – and the more conservative, the better.
“It affords whoever is in that position a tremendous platform to put forth conservative ideas and do it in a huge way,” she says. “I’ve advocated for things such as lower taxes, right to work, cutting the size and scope of the government, those are the same kinds of things, that I will do, and I’ll have a much bigger megaphone in order to accomplish those goals.”
First, she will have to convince Republicans around the state that her active political career, in which she has not yet held public office, can translate into government work. Randles is confident in her ability to do so.
“I think it’s always good to bring in people who haven’t been there forever,” she said. “It’s how our founders envisioned it. I’m stepping out of the private sector because I think I have a perspective that I think people would be excited about, and that I think would be good for the state.”
After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Law, the Sikeston native joined Shook, Hardy and Bacon, the largest law firm in Kansas City, where she represented various Fortune 500 companies and was a prominent member of the firm’s diversity committee. She started getting more involved in Republican politics in 2008, writing and giving speeches about attracting minority voters back to the Republican Party at Missouri Lincoln Days and the National Pachyderm Conference among others.
The Republican Party has certainly struggled with attracting minority voters in the last fifty years, but Randles believes when voters understand the benefits of school choice, Right to Work, and other key issues, those same voters will realize the benefits of voting Republican.
“We have to remember who we are,” Randles says. “We are the party of Lincoln, our party is the party of freedom, equality and opportunity. We need to be willing to talk about that and message in such a way that we are reaching out to them to give everyone an opportunity. If we continue to remember who we are, disenfranchised voters will start looking at the Republican Party, it’s how they vote when they get into that voting booth.”
However, she says that even now she, or any other Republican, may not be able to attract a lot of minority voters, and that changing minds is a slow process.
“You make strides over time,” she says. “You reverse trends one election cycle at a time. We have plans and policies that will help them for generations to come.”
Randles currently only has one contender on the Republican side of the ballot in Sen. Mike Parson. While she has garnered many endorsements from the Missouri House, Parson has a solid bloc of Republican senators endorsing him. Her focus, however, remains on her own campaign, saying she has always “kept her eyes on her own work.”
If you would like to know more about Randles’ run for office, visit bevforlg.com.
