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Five days after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, spurred by false allegations of a stolen election, Missouri Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe made clear the fight over the election was over.
“The time now is for people to accept the results and move forward,” Kehoe told The Star minutes after he took the oath of office in Jefferson City on Jan. 11.
“And whether you like who the president is or not, he is the leader of our free world and we need to get behind that person and make sure that we as a country continue to survive.”
That was then.
Nearly four years later, Kehoe has sharply changed his tone. As the Republican campaigns for governor ahead of the Nov. 5 election, his position on whether President Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election sounds a lot different today than the conciliatory note he struck after the Capitol riot.
Kehoe’s campaign told CNN this summer that Biden has “no business being president.” In a statement, the campaign said Biden “is illegitimate in the eyes of the voters, of his party, and of the world. He should have never stepped foot in the Oval Office, and in November, we are going to right that wrong by overwhelmingly reelecting Donald Trump.”
On Monday, Kehoe’s campaign wouldn’t tell The Star whether he believes Biden won the 2020 election.
The comments by Kehoe’s campaign in July came as he faced a competitive Republican primary against Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring. Ashcroft had met with election conspiracist Mike Lindell and Eigel appeared at a Lindell event.
Kehoe handily won the August primary, receiving 39% of the vote. Now he faces a general election against a Democratic candidate, Missouri House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, that he is favored to win, according to recent polling. A September survey by Emerson College Polling and The Hill found 52% support for Kehoe and 36% support for Quade.
As Election Day approaches, Quade is attacking Kehoe’s comments to CNN, raising democracy as an issue in a race that has been dominated by fights over abortion, taxes, immigration, crime and governmental competence. Quade’s campaign spokesperson, Andrew Storey, said in a statement on Sunday that Kehoe “can’t be trusted.”
“Mike Kehoe continues to show Missourians he’s only interested in pandering to the most extreme fringes of his Party. By aligning himself with other election-denying extremists like Mark Robinson in North Carolina, Mike Kehoe has shown voters who he really is,” Storey said.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is that state’s Republican candidate for governor. He reportedly posted inflammatory comments to an online porn forum and is trailing in the polls.
“There is no evidence whatsoever that the 2020 election was illegitimate and any politician insinuating otherwise is unfit for office,” Storey said.
Kehoe’s campaign on Monday didn’t say whether he believes Biden won the 2020 election. When asked about the Quade campaign’s comments, spokesperson Gabby Picard issued a statement sidestepping the issue.
“As Lt. Gov. Kehoe travels the state, he hears from Missourians who are concerned about crime, immigration, and jobs — and he is working every day to make Missouri safer and more prosperous,” Picard said.
“It’s clear that Kehoe is the only candidate running for governor who is focused on Missouri’s future instead of relitigating the past.”
‘An extreme comment’
The Kehoe campaign’s July statement appears carefully calibrated.
It does not explicitly say that Kehoe believes Biden is an illegitimate president, instead only referring to the views of voters and of Democrats. Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21 under pressure from Democratic leaders following a disastrous debate performance in June.
About a third of Americans believe Biden’s election wasn’t legitimate. In a national December 2023 poll by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland, 36% of respondents said Biden’s election wasn’t legitimate. The number marked an increase from 2021 when 29% said the election wasn’t legitimate.
While the Kehoe campaign statement says Biden “should have never stepped foot in the Oval Office,” it doesn’t make clear why – whether because of his performance as president or because of the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
“The Kehoe statement came from his campaign before the primary,” Peverill Squire, a University of Missouri political science professor, noted in an email. “I am sure that they did not want to give their Republican opponents room to attack them from the right. It is an extreme comment, one that I suspect the campaign would not offer today during the general election.”
Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Action, a non-profit organization that seeks to protect elections and democracy, said election deniers “lost big” in midterm races and that election denial isn’t a winning campaign strategy. Voters don’t like election denial and are ready to move on, Lydgate said.
“Americans believe in our free and fair elections,” Lydgate said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we’re still seeing election denial in races across the country. Or in this instance, endorsement of an election denier by a candidate who has previously said the 2020 election was legitimate.”
Trump, who is again the Republican nominee for president, has made fealty to him a key test for Republicans nationwide. Trump continues to maintain, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen. He is under federal indictment over his efforts to overturn his loss, with Special Counsel Jack Smith alleging Trump tried to interfere with the transfer of power to Biden.
Missouri Republicans have played a key role in aiding Trump’s efforts to undercut his 2020 election loss.
In December 2020 U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, then Missouri’s attorney general, signed on to a brief supporting a Texas lawsuit that tried to overturn Biden’s victory in critical swing states. A court filing by Smith last week alleged Trump called Schmitt on the night of Dec. 8, 2020, immediately after calling Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr to speak about the Texas lawsuit.
Schmitt tweeted at 9:04 p.m. that night that he would “help lead the effort” in support of Texas’ lawsuit; his office filed the brief the next day. Schmitt is not accused of wrongdoing.
U.S. Sen Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, was the first senator to say he would object to certifying Biden’s electoral victory on Jan. 6. Hawley’s decision to sign on to an objection set the stage for roll call votes in both the House and Senate, which were interrupted for several hours by the pro-Trump mob that rushed the Capitol.
More recently, the two leading Republican candidates for Missouri attorney general this year said the 2020 election was stolen or “rigged.” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who said the election was “absolutely stolen,” won the GOP primary.
Kehoe’s campaign statement on Biden appears to have been an effort to appeal to election deniers without saying it himself, said Matthew Harris, a political science professor at Park University in Parkville.
Harris compared Kehoe’s contrasting comments with past remarks by Sens. Lindsey Graham and J.D. Vance, now Trump’s running mate, who criticized or distanced themselves from Trump before coming around.
“There were times when I think Republicans kind of thought they might be done with Donald Trump and that they could say these things and kind of make a break,” Harris said. “Then as time went on it became clear that he was going to run again, he was going to be the nominee.”
Kehoe’s changing tone
Kehoe’s comments on Jan. 11, 2021, when he urged Missourians to accept the election results, came during a brief interview with The Star after inaugural ceremonies outside the Missouri Capitol.
Kehoe had just been sworn into a full, four-year term in office along with Gov. Mike Parson and other statewide officials.
Asked about the U.S. Capitol riot the week before, Kehoe called it a “sad day for our country.”
“Democracy builds, it doesn’t destroy is what I want to say,” Kehoe said, adding that many people were disturbed by the images coming out of the U.S. Capitol.
In response to a follow-up question about whether the questioning of election results had created an atmosphere that resulted in the riot, Kehoe said people on both sides were passionate about the election. At that point, he said it was time to accept the results.
“We’ve been through a lot in this country. We’ll survive this as well,” Kehoe said.
Jean Evans, a former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, said Kehoe’s comments reflected how some Republican voters believe the 2020 election was illegitimate. She argued that Quade’s focus on those comments would not help her campaign, particularly among Republican voters.
“I think Kehoe is just echoing, you know, what voters have said, which is accurate information,” Evans said. “So I don’t know what she hopes to gain out of this.”
Evans added that she didn’t view the statement to CNN from Kehoe’s campaign as a shift in tone from his 2021 comments that asked people to accept the results of the election. In 2021, most Americans were ready to move on, Evans argued.
“It sounds like that’s what Kehoe was saying,” Evans said, referring to his comments in 2021. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t, you know, understand that a lot of voters aren’t happy about that.”
Missouri state Rep. Richard Brown, a Kansas City Democrat who is running for lieutenant governor, said the Kehoe campaign’s recent comments surprised him. Brown said he saw Kehoe as “a very level-headed person.”
“When I look at that election, there were many Republicans who won on that ballot,” Brown said of 2020. “So I don’t believe that the election was stolen. I have trust in our election process.”
