Ex-Navy SEAL Eric Greitens wins Missouri governor primary

Voters in Missouri have set up the November Governor’s race, choosing Republican Eric Greitens to face Democrat Chris Koster.

Kinder claimed his experience serving in the legislature would have made him an effective governor.

Four self-described conservatives pledging to bring a law-and-order approach to Missouri were competing Tuesday in a Republican gubernatorial race that has been one of the state’s most broadly contested primaries in a generation.

But election day began with rain in some places, including the St. Louis area. The technology appeared to be working well, and the weather was fine in Springfield, but “so far our turn out is fairly light”, Greene County Clerk Shane Shoeller said Tuesday morning.

Voters have started casting their ballots in Missouri’s most competitive Republican gubernatorial primary in two dozen years. Democrats also will select their gubernatorial nominee to replace term-limited Gov. Jay Nixon.

Catherine Hanaway is a former Missouri House Speaker and U.S. Attorney for the eastern district of Missouri. The part-time camp worker says the “fact that he’s not a career politician speaks to a lot of people right now”.

Not since 1992 has there been a Republican governor’s primary as hotly contested with as many candidates. Election officials are also using ipads to sign in voters to reduce wait times. “Greitens” so-called “outsider’ campaign has been funded by shady out-of-state interests and morally-questionable donors – he simply does not have the qualifications, temperament or conviction to be Governor of Missouri”.

“The only office Eric Greitens is qualified for is Hypocrite in Chief”, said Kristin Sosanie, spokeswoman at the Missouri Democratic Party. “I’ve seen it with three-way races before, where three candidates will all get clumped together within four or five points of one another”, he told the Missourinet.

Greitens, 42, of St. Louis, traveled on humanitarian missions around the world – documenting the lives of street children in Bolivia and refugees from genocidal wars in Bosnia, Rwanda and Zaire – before joining the Navy in 2001, just months before the September 11 attacks.

Polls close at 7 p.m.

Greitens defeated Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, former lawmaker and U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway, and businessman John Brunner in a hard-fought Republican primary. Together, their campaigns already had spent more than $22 million as of July 21, the end of the most recent reporting period.

The most closely watched primary is a competitive four-way race between candidates vying to become the Republican nominee for governor.