Missourians will get to decide in just over a month whether to legalize sports betting. It’s a hot topic not just at the water cooler, but also at campaign events among those hoping to become Missouri’s next governor.

Republican Mike Kehoe said that Missouri needs to be competitive with its neighboring states, most of whom have already legalized the form of gambling.

“I believe it’s a tool that we need for Missourians, additional recreation for those,” Kehoe said. “I do think what the ballot measure provides funding for is appropriate because I’ve been a big fan of making sure our public education gets funded and we would make sure, should I be selected governor, that the legislature would never be able to move that to some other category.”

Democrat Crystal Quade said that sports betting is revenue that Missouri is missing out on.

“We have, currently right now, people in the state of Missouri who are crossing the border in Kansas or St. Louis,” Quade said. “If you drive over there you can actually see them pulled over on the side of the road, placing their bets and then coming home. That is revenue that we’re missing out on.”

Libertarian Bill Slantz supports sports betting but thinks that regulations would benefit large casinos instead of small businesses. Green Party candidate Paul Lehmann opposes legalizing sports betting pointing to churches labeling gambling as a sin when he grew up.

St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III has led a consortium of professional sports in Missouri in favor of legalizing sports betting.

From hoax threats to school shootings, federal, state, and local officials are wrestling with how to make Missouri schools safer. Missouri’s contenders for governor are also chiming in. At a recent Missouri Press Association-hosted candidate forum, Kehoe said that mental health is the number one problem in the U.S. right now.

“All families including my own have had struggles with mental health issues,” he said. “So, making sure we have the appropriate professionals within the schools to identify kids who need help, I think is very important.”

Quade wants to see increased investment in law enforcement to make sure they have the tools they need.

“We need to have conversations around actually making sure there are enough law enforcement officers and juvenile officers and that we’re funding them,” she said. “We’ve had the same folks in charge in Jefferson City for 20 years, but yet we’re still underfunding, and we can’t find enough people to work in these spaces. That’s a real problem. But then we also need to have conversations around mental healthcare.”

Quade and Kehoe agree that mental health care is a big issue. But Kehoe proposes investing in juvenile officers as a possible solution to the problem.

“I believe that we need to work with the courts and with lawmakers to make sure we have different penalties for juveniles that would assess threats, especially threats against schools and other institutions that really create chaos within that institution and then give the juvenile officers the tools they need to deal with those juveniles,” he added.

Slantz said that kids need supervision and discipline at the local level. Lehmann’s solution to addressing the problem is getting rid of technology in schools.

The candidates also talked immigration and what the Show-Me State could do to help address the hot button issue. Kehoe said that illegal immigration is “absolutely out of control.”

“Just in 2023 alone, we talked about the state budget, Missouri spent over $460 million on illegal immigrants,” he said. “That could have been money that went to our teachers, to our veterans, or back to our Missouri taxpayers. Along with the illegal immigration are coming deadly fentanyl drugs.”

Quade said that if elected, she will work with Missouri’s Congressional delegation to get the bipartisan immigration bill passed into law.

“When it comes to what we can be doing right here, I want to talk about what we’re doing to keep our communities safe and going to the conversation that I previously mentioned of our shortage of law enforcement professionals and giving them the tools that they need to be successful,” said Quade.

Slantz welcomes immigrants coming to the U.S. but wants the federal government to do away with taxpayer funded immigration programs for people who are in the U.S. illegally. Lehmann said that the problem at the U.S. southern border is due to a “bottleneck of processing.”

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