Missouri governor candidate racking up the miles

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri's Republican governor's race now has a candidate with lots of money. And it could soon have a candidate with statewide name recognition.

But neither St. Louis businessman Dave Spence nor Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder has been running for the office as long as another man in the race.

Former Kansas City attorney Bill Randles has been campaigning since January -- often under the radar of mainstream media coverage. Randles said Friday that he has put more than 40,000 miles on his car while attending over 150 events and meeting with local leaders and activists in the Republican Party and tea party movement. He estimates he has met over 20,000 people as part of a strategy to introduce himself to the "opinion leaders" that he hopes will help rally votes in an August primary for the right to challenge Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

But Randles is facing a tall task when it comes to making his name known to potential voters. Four years ago, nearly 400,000 people cast ballots in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

Although he has loaned his campaign about $11,000, Randles had barely $2,800 in his campaign account at the end of September, according to the latest campaign finance reports. Kinder, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy soon, had almost $1.6 million in his account. Spence, who declared his candidacy this week, said he is willing to spend a portion of the fortune he has made in the plastic bottle business on his gubernatorial campaign.

Randles said he has no plans to self-finance his campaign, and he acknowledges it could take about $5 million to run an effective race. He's hoping his early grass-roots campaigning will pay off with financial contributions in the end.

He's also hoping to draw support with an aggressive agenda. Randles backs efforts to repeal the state income tax and replace it with a higher sales tax charged on a wider variety of goods and services -- a proposal that he and other advocates dub as the "fair tax." He wants to eliminate unions in the public sector and prohibit mandatory union fees in the private sector. He wants to abolish Missouri's method of appointing judges to appellate courts and replace it with competitive judicial elections. And Randles wants to relax government regulations on businesses while making it more difficult for plaintiffs to bring weak lawsuits against them.

"For a long time, we Republicans have had a history of allowing party insiders and others to pick our candidates and we've been disappointed in the results," Randles said. "We've got to elect conservatives who not only have the views of the conservative members of the party, but have an actual plan to implement them."

Randles, 48, grew up in Springdale, Ark., where his family ran a fruit stand. He has traveled as Christian preacher and has a wide educational background. Randles said he has bachelor's degrees in communications and psychology from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, a master's degree in communication studies from Baylor University and a law degree from Harvard University. From 1990 to 2008, he worked in private practice as an attorney.

But Randles said both he and his wife decided to leave the legal practice, invest their money in the stock market and live off those earnings. He said that has allowed him to be a full-time political candidate.