Mike Parson

Michael Lynn Parson (born September 17, 1955) is an American politician and former law enforcement officer who served as the 57th governor of Missouri, from 2018 to 2025. A member of the Republican Party, Parson assumed the governorship upon the resignation of Eric Greitens, under whom he served as lieutenant governor from 2017 to 2018. Parson served the remainder of Greitens's term and was elected governor in his own right in 2020.

Parson served in the Missouri House of Representatives from 2005 to 2011 and the Missouri Senate from 2011 to 2017. He was elected lieutenant governor in 2016. He assumed the governorship on June 1, 2018, upon Greitens's resignation. As governor, Parson signed a bill criminalizing abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy and opposed Medicaid expansion, both of which were overturned by ballot measure. He oversaw the state's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing a temporary stay-at-home order in April 2020 but allowing school districts to decide whether to close.

Parson placed restrictions on mail-in voting during the 2020 U.S. elections, and oversaw Missouri's reaction to the George Floyd protests, which included pardoning a couple who pointed guns at unarmed protesters on their private street. He shortened the sentence of the son of Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid, who seriously injured a child while drunk driving.

In the last full year of his term, Parson faced intense public scrutiny over his refusal to commute the sentence of Marcellus Williams, a Black man who was sentenced to capital punishment in connection to the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle. Despite gaining the prosecutor’s support, Williams was executed via lethal injection on September 24, 2024.