A little more than a month ago, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson was running TV ads making the case that a booming economy, record-low unemployment and his accomplishments as governor should earn him four more years in office.

Democrat Nicole Galloway hoped to unseat Parson with a focus on corruption, pointing to her work as Missouri’s auditor and hammering the governor for being “focused on delivering for his insider friends.”

All that has changed.

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Since COVID-19 invaded Missouri in early March, schools and businesses have shuttered. Unemployment has skyrocketed. The state budget has cratered. And Missourians are bracing for the worst. As of Friday, the state reported 2,113 cases and 19 deaths.

While it is still seven months to Election Day, the full force of the pandemic is not expected to hit Missouri until mid-to-late May, according to projections by University of Washington researchers. The despair and dislocation it will leave behind, in the form of unemployment, cuts in state spending and simple human misery, will linger for much longer.

In the end, the gubernatorial race could become a referendum on Parson’s response to the pandemic and its aftershocks.

“Who knows?” said Greg Vonnhame, political science professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “Right now, it’s up to the virus to determine the direction of the entire 2020 campaign.”

From the beginning of the outbreak, Parson has taken heat from critics who say its impact may have been worsened by his tentative response. His defense has been that a measured approach, balancing the needs of Missouri’s diverse population, is the best course.

But questions about Parson’s performance are drawing national attention. On Friday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report announced it was downgrading his chances this fall, moving its ranking of the Missouri governor’s race from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican” because Parson has “lagged behind” other governors in responding to the coronavirus crisis.

Stay at home

Since the state’s first confirmed case was reported on March 7, Galloway’s campaign messaging has focused exclusively on pushing Parson to act more aggressively.

She has pressed him to declare a state of emergency, expand testing, establish a COVID-19 response command center, and clear statutory barriers within the unemployment insurance program.

On Tuesday, she called for Parson to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, joining virtually the entire health care sector: the Missouri State Medical Association, Missouri Nurses Association, the Association of Missouri Nurse Practitioners, the Missouri Association of Nurse Anesthetists, the Missouri Center for Public Health Excellence, and the Missouri chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Three days later, the governor relented and issued a stay-at-home order that will allow businesses deemed non-essential to remain open as long as they adhere to social distancing requirements. Additionally, those businesses can seek a waiver from distance restrictions through the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

As pressure mounted throughout the crisis, Parson maintained that this is not the time to lob criticism.

“Everybody has a different idea of how that is to be done,” he said. “I will say this, at the end of the day, there will be plenty of time to second-guess who done what, and why they done it.”

There isn’t “plenty of time,” countered Galloway’s spokesman, Eric Slusher.

“We don’t have the luxury of time. Experts are telling us that we have a limited and rapidly closing window of opportunity to flatten the curve,” he said. “Saying so is not playing politics and there is nothing partisan about it. The stakes are much higher than the outcome of any election.”

Galloway is the elected auditor of Missouri, Slusher said, and “there is nothing inappropriate about using her position to say what she thinks we should be doing in response to this unprecedented crisis. It’s not partisan or political. It’s leadership.”

When the Democratic Governors Association began criticizing Parson’s response to the outbreak, John Hancock, chairman of the pro-Parson Uniting Missouri PAC, accused the group of being “more focused on gaining power than allowing the governor to do his job and protect the people of our state.”

“Now is a time for unity,” Hancock said, “not politics.”

But Parson has also been called out for playing pandemic politics.

The campaign tweeted a news report about efforts to ensure that personal protection equipment got to those in the state who need it. The tweet included a banner asking people to text PARSON to 4848.

“I am stunned somebody thought it was appropriate to turn this into an opportunity to harvest people’s phone numbers for the campaign,” responded Stuart Murray, communications director for the Missouri Senate’s GOP caucus.

The tweet was later deleted.

Too much or too little?

Democratic outrage peaked on Thursday, when Parson continued to rebuff calls for a stay-at-home order but authorized suspension of late penalties for concealed carry license renewals.

“If the governor had issued his executive order on conceal-carry permits a day earlier, I would have thought it was a bad April Fools’ Day joke,” said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, D-Springfield.

When Parson finally issued his order, it was pilloried by Democrats over the fact that it still allows non-essential businesses to remain open.

“This crisis has been made far worse – and longer – by the inaction and half-measures of too many of our political leaders,” said state Rep. Jon Carpenter, D-Kansas City.

State Rep. Greg Razer, D-Kansas City, called the governor’s order “better than nothing,” but said he appears to be trying to thread the needle to appease the medical community and Democrats without angering his Republican base.

“I’m not sure he accomplished either goal, and in the process may not have done enough to protect the health of Missourians.”

Razer’s prediction appeared to come true as the details of the order came into focus. Democrats decried it while many conservatives who had long expressed concerns about a statewide edict remained unmoved.

“Questions for the history buffs out there,” tweeted Jeremy Cady, state director for Americans for Prosperity-Missouri. “Is this the first time every Missourian have been placed under house arrest without due process?”

State Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, who voiced opposition to a stay at home order in a since deleted Facebook post, said she was grateful Parson hadn’t “jumped on the ‘shut everyone down’ mode.”

In an email to The Star before Parson issued his order, O’Laughlin said the damage to the economy caused by a stay-at-home order “could in the long run be much more destructive than the virus itself.”

But the governor’s order, and overall response, has largely earned him kudos from his party.

State Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, praised Parson’s “calm, measured, fact-based approach to COVID-19.”

Gregg Keller, a veteran GOP consultant tapped by Parson to lead the state GOP’s coordinated campaign, tweeted this week that Democrats are focused on complaining about “everything Trump and Parson are or aren’t doing on COVID.

“I don’t mind them being wrong. They’re always wrong,” he said. “But now they’re just so repetitive, boring and tedious about it. Go get some counseling, bitches.”

Virtual campaign

With the governor hunkered down in Jefferson City, his campaign apparatus appears to be frozen in place.

Hancock announced that Uniting Missouri has paused all political messaging, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

“People are focused on keeping their families safe and not wanting to hear partisan attacks,” he said.

While Parson isn’t focused on his campaign, his Uniting Missouri’s fundraising continues to chug along, fueled by six-figure checks from Missouri’s biggest donors.

This week alone, retired financier Rex Sinquefield donated $250,000 to Uniting Missouri this week, bringing his total donated to the PAC so far to $1.7 million; Kansas attorney Michael Ketchmark’s law firm donated $135,000, for a total of $460,000 so far; and former U.S. Ambassador Sam Fox donated $200,000, upping his overall total to nearly $300,000.

Those three donors alone have donated more than Galloway and the PAC supporting her, Keep Government Accountable, have raised combined.

Slusher said Galloway’s campaign is continuing, “just in a virtual way.”

“We’re doing Zoom meetings in place of traditional social gatherings, meet and greats, town hall meetings with local supporter groups and fundraisers,” he said. “While these were started out of necessity we will be keeping them in our arsenal for when/if we are able to get back up and running.”

On Monday, Galloway hosted a virtual text bank on Zoom with volunteers who were sending text messages encouraging voters to get engaged with the campaign. On Wednesday, she participated in a Zoom meeting with a group of women supporters from St. Joseph.

“We have an upcoming Zoom visit with the Ste Genevieve County Democrats and are visiting the Maryland Heights and Creve Coeur Township Democratic Clubs monthly meeting virtually,” Slusher said.

2020 outlook

Right now the pandemic is the number one issue facing the state, “so voter perceptions of the governor’s handling of the issue could influence their decisions,” said David Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

But a lot can change over the next seven months.

“We really won’t know the full impact on public opinion towards governmental response to this until the reality of this crisis has an effect on more individuals,” said Robynn Kuhlmann, a University of Central Missouri political scientist.

Ken Warren, political science professor at St. Louis University, said the possible impact of the outbreak seems to change daily.

“Ask me again in three weeks,” he said, “and my opinion will probably be very different.”

Parson’s response has been slower than other governors, “but he’s been portraying that as giving local authorities autonomy to respond as necessary,” said Jeremy Walling, a political science professor at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. “This would appeal to any ideological conservatives in his base. It’s really sort of a federalism argument.”

But if this turns into a public health catastrophe, Walling said, it would clearly hurt Parson.

“In the absence of more extreme steps,” he said, “it would be easy for Galloway to point to thousands of deaths and say, ‘This is how he handled this crisis. Do you want to take a chance on another?’”