Governor of Missouri
Bond won election for governor by a margin of 55% to 45%, making him, at 33 years of age, the youngest governor in the history of Missouri. Kit Bond was the first Republican in 28 years to serve as governor of Missouri.
Bond's residency qualifications to be governor were challenged but upheld the Missouri Supreme Court in 1972. Missouri law said the governor had to be a resident for 10 years. In the 10 years before his run, he had attended college in Virginia, clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Atlanta, worked for a firm in Washington, D.C., applied to take the bar in Virginia and Georgia, registered a car in Washington, DC and applied for a marriage license in Kentucky. The Court sided with him noting that residence "is largely a matter of intention" and did not require "actual, physical presence." The court ruled that a residence was "that place where a man has his true, fixed and permanent home and principal establishment, and to which whenever he is absent he has the intention of returning."
In 1976, he was on the short list of to be Gerald Ford's vice presidential running mate.
In many ways Bond governed as a moderate during his first term as governor: for example, he drew criticism from conservatives for his support of the Equal Rights Amendment. While governor, on June 25, 1976 he signed an executive order rescinding the Extermination Order against Mormons issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs on October 27, 1838. In 1976, in a surprising upset, Bond was narrowly defeated for re-election by Democrat Joseph P. Teasdale, then Jackson County Prosecutor. Teasdale's tenure was rocky, and in 1980 Bond made a successful comeback, defeating fellow Republican and incumbent Lieutenant Governor Bill Phelps in the primary, and Teasdale in November. Among Bond's most noted accomplishments was taking the Parents As Teachers program statewide.
Bond served as the Chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association in 1983. Bond was succeeded as governor in 1985 by John Ashcroft, also a Republican. Ashcroft later served alongside Bond in the Senate.
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