The Kansas City Star’s endorsement in the race for lieutenant governor of Missouri | Opinion
Here is the candidate we endorse for Missouri lieutenant governor for the general election. For more information about the Nov. 5 election, check out our Voter Guide, a collaboration between The Kansas City Star and the KC Media Collective. See all our published endorsements on our Elections Recommendations page.
“I’m just a guy from the neighborhood,” Democrat Richard Brown told The Star’s editorial board in an interview. “I’m a public servant. That’s all I know how to do, is to serve people.”
For these and other reasons, we endorse Brown as Missouri lieutenant governor.
Brown has represented parts of Kansas City’s East Side in the state legislature for eight years; he’s also a retired teacher.
He has a strong understanding of public pension issues, which helps with the lieutenant governor’s task of advocating for the state’s older residents. He has served as the vice chairman of the House Ethics Committee.
Brown has also worked to protect Missourians from the scourge of gun violence. We think he would be a powerful voice for bringing some reasonableness to the gun debate.
“I’m not coming to take your guns,” Brown said. “But what’s wrong with having training? Why is it that you can have a gun at the age of 19, when you have to be 21 to purchase liquor? I’m looking at some commonsense things that may help.”
That’s the essential approach.
One other note: Missouri has never elected a Black person to statewide office, more than two centuries after becoming a state. Richard Brown would break that sorry record.
Brown’s Republican opponent is David Wasinger. He’s the latest entrant into the long parade of right-wing candidates seeking power in Missouri, and should be rejected on that basis alone.
He’s the guy with the “Adios, amigos” TV ad about immigration, which makes explicit his party’s troubling flirtation with bigotry. He wants to “drain the swamp,” blissfully unaware that Republicans have been the swamp in Missouri for decades.
Wasinger is wrong on schools, wrong on abortion, wrong on crime. He’s wrong for this job, because it can lead to higher office.
We endorse Richard Brown. Also on the ballot: Ken Iverson, a Libertarian, and Dani Elliot of the Green Party.