In his campaign for governor, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe has promised Republican voters he will stop China “from buying up our farmland.”

He’s doing so while traveling the state in a bus owned by Jewell Patek, a former legislator who is the only Missouri lobbyist employed by the Chinese business that owns a significant chunk of agricultural land in the state.

The Republican primary for governor has nine candidates listed on the ballot, with three – Kehoe, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel – running full-scale campaigns. The issue of foreign land ownership, especially by China, has been one of the major issues.

State senator throws first punches of 2024 Missouri governor’s campaign

Eigel made it the subject of his first advertisement of the campaign, and Ashcroft has backed legislation to bar China and other hostile nations from owning farmland and enlisted his father, former Gov. John Ashcroft, to deliver the message.

The cost of using Patek’s bus isn’t listed among the expenses reported in Kehoe’s latest campaign finance report. Instead, his campaign spokeswoman Gabrielle Picard said the bus cost is covered by a June 4 entry showing Kehoe himself made a $25,000 “in-kind” donation.

The bus, she wrote in an email to The Independent, was “personally leased” by Kehoe.

The exterior wrap on the bus, with campaign messages and a larger-than-life photo of the candidate and his wife Claudia, is reported among the campaign’s expenses. It cost $15,591 at Impact Signs Awnings Wraps Inc. in Sedalia.

“The Kehoes personally didn’t want to use the campaign funds for a bus,” Picard said in an interview. “The reason that it was reported as an in-kind donation by Mike Kehoe is for that reason, because we just didn’t want to use money that people have donated for a bus. And he wanted to personally make that contribution himself.”

Charter bus rental can cost $1,200 to $1,700 a day plus mileage, depending on the size and interior amenities. The bus owned by Patek is a 2000 model, according to records in the Moniteau County Collector’s office, and is assessed at the nominal value of $100.

Picard would not say whether the reported amount is how much Kehoe is paying Patek for use of the bus.

“All fuel and associated costs with the bus tour are being covered by the campaign,” she said in a message Saturday. “The lease for the bus was negotiated between Mike Kehoe and the owner. Everything has been reported to the MEC as required.”

Since 2007, Patek has lobbied for Smithfield Foods, which in 2013 was acquired by Shuanghui International, now known as WH Group, China’s largest pork producer. Smithfield operates a facility once known as Premium Standard Farms on more than 40,000 acres near Princeton in northern Missouri.

Patek is Smithfield’s only lobbyist but the pork producer is not Patek’s only client. Patek became a lobbyist in 2003 and his Missouri Ethics Commission filings list 44 other clients, including utility providers Evergy and Spire, the Heavy Constructors Association of Kansas City and Cheyenne International, a discount cigarette manufacturer.

Patek did not return a call seeking comment.

Prior to 2013, Missouri law banned foreign ownership of agricultural land. To accommodate the sale of Smithfield, lawmakers that year made it legal for up to 1% of the state’s farmland to be foreign owned.

Kehoe, a member of the Senate at the time, voted for the bill and to override a veto by then-Gov. Jay Nixon.

In his veto message, Nixon wrote that the allowance for 1% foreign ownership was never debated until it was inserted into the legislation at the last minute “without the benefit of a hearing that would have allowed for public testimony” and over the objections of agricultural groups.

Criticism of the legislation didn’t take long to develop – backers of Josh Hawley’s campaign for attorney general broadcast an ad in 2016 with actors speaking Chinese attacking his Republican primary opponent, then-state Sen. Kurt Schaefer, for backing the legislation.

Schaefer, of Columbia, this year is seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in the 3rd District.  

Despite growing bipartisan support for repeal or revisions to the 2013 legislation – 13 bills altering the 1% allowance were introduced by Republicans and Democrats this year alone – nothing has passed to the governor’s desk.

Eigel won Senate approval this year of an amendment barring foreign ownership of Missouri farmland within 500 miles of a military base, but it was stripped out before the bill was sent to Gov. Mike Parson.

In January, Parson issued an executive order banning land purchases by “foreign adversaries” within 10 miles of “critical military facilities.”

In an interview earlier this month with The Independent, Kehoe said he doesn’t believe “an enemy of our country should own anything here.”

He defended his 2013 vote, saying “you’re talking about very different circumstances in the relationship the U.S. had with other countries than today.”

“That happened 11 years ago,” he said. “Times have changed, and so we would move forward with the position that I have very clearly stated that I do not want any enemy of this country owning anything.”

Using a bus owned by Smithfield’s lobbyist – and obscuring that fact by calling it a donation from Kehoe – drew fire from Eigel and Ashcroft’s campaigns, who have both worked to portray him as too close to interest groups.

“China has owned Kehoe for a long time, and of course they’ll own him as governor, too,” said Sophia Shore, campaign manager for Eigel. “He voted four times to sell Missouri to the Chinese; everything that has followed is completely unsurprising.”

The bus is symbolic of Kehoe’s whole campaign, said Jason Roe, an adviser to Ashcroft.

“Kehoe has hundreds of lobbyists supporting his campaign,” Roe said. “Any lobbyist could subsidize the bus for him, but this one is pretty interesting.”