Grain Belt will be constructed by Chicago-based Invenergy and be a 5,000 megawatt line to move wind-derived power from western Kansas to the Indiana border (Getty Images).

Chariton County cannot block construction of the Grain Belt Express electric transmission line by refusing permission to cross county roads, the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

The county can establish rules for how the transmission line crosses its roads, the court ruled as it modified a trial court decision that said the county could make no regulations at all.

“The decision as to whether Grain Belt’s overhead transmission lines for the project would be constructed across Chariton County’s public roads was already made by the (Missouri Public Service Commission) when it issued its Report and Order on Remand granting the (certificate of convenience and necessity) and approving the final proposed route of the project,” Judge Lisa White Hardwick wrote in the unanimous decision of the three-judge panel.

Grain Belt will be constructed by Chicago-based Invenergy and be a 5,000 megawatt line to move wind-derived power from western Kansas to the Indiana border. Half the power it carries will be delivered to Missouri utilities.

At first welcomed by many of the counties it will cross in north Missouri, the line has become controversial with complaints about aesthetics, whether high-voltage lines cause health issues and the power of the Public Service Commission to grant eminent domain power to obtain land for construction.

Republican legislators and agricultural groups tried repeatedly to strip Grain Belt’s right of eminent domain, which would have killed the project. But in 2022, lawmakers passed compromise legislation requiring, in the event of future large transmission lines, greater compensation for landowners and setting a seven-year time limit for companies to build transmission lines after obtaining their easements. 

Grain Belt’s disagreements with Chariton County began in 2014, Hardwick wrote in the decision, two years after it had initially received consent from the Chariton County Commission to cross its county-owned roads. Chariton County withdrew its consent and made it contingent upon the PSC approving the project.

When it received initial approval from the PSC, Grain Belt’s owners tried to negotiate with Chariton County. When it refused again to give its consent, the lawsuit followed.

Associate Circuit Judge Daren Adkins, assigned to the case from Daviess County, ruled that a state law barring counties from adopting ordinances “governing” utilities within their boundaries meant that an older law, requiring utilities to obtain consent from utilities to go “through, on, under or across” its roads could not be enforced.

The decision Tuesday modified that ruling. The law prohibiting an ordinance governing a utility is designed to protect against local rules that are in conflict with state rules, the court said.

But it doesn’t mean the law requiring consent to cross a road doesn’t have any effect, Hardwick wrote. The county can set standards but it cannot withhold its consent, she wrote.

“A fair interpretation is that (law) requires a county commission’s agreement regarding how a utility’s infrastructure will be constructed across the county’s public roads,” she wrote “not whether such utility’s infrastructure will be constructed across the county’s public roads in the first place.”

Overall utility policy is set at the state level, not the county level, she wrote.

“Doing so usurps the authority granted the MPSC in Chapter 386,” she wrote, “and exercises a power granted to the county in a manner contrary to the public policy of this state.”

The Isle of Capri casino in Boonville, owned by Caesars Entertainment, has contributed $4.7 million to the campaign to defeat Amendment 2, which would legalize sports wagering in Missouri (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

It’s time to bet the over-under on how much will be spent this year on gambling ballot measures in Missouri.

A good mark might be $60 million. Online bookies poured $32 million so far into the Amendment 2 campaign to legalize sports betting, and a casino company grumpy about the deal countered with $14 million to defeat it.

The campaign for Amendment 5, to authorize a new casino at the Lake of the Ozarks, adds $9.4 million — bringing the total to more than $55 million. 

Winning for Missouri Education, the Amendment 2 campaign funded by DraftKings and FanDuel, has already set a record for the most money donated to a ballot measure campaign. The previous record was $31 million raised by supporters of a 2006 proposal to protect stem cell research. 

The initiative campaign began with vocal support from major professional sports teams but none have contributed any cash for the effort.

“It is a large state, with a lot of TV markets, so it certainly takes resources to get your message out,” said Jack Cardetti, spokesman for the campaign. “But the most important thing is that you have a good message and a good initiative for voters.”

Caesars Entertainment is the casino company that dislikes the proposal enough to spend big against it. Caesars employs 2,000 people in Missouri and has a branded online sports betting platform that competes with FanDuel and DraftKings. 

The proposal will mainly benefit the online platforms that have no significant presence in the state, said Brooke Foster, spokeswoman for Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment.

“Obviously they’re not opposed to sports betting,” she said of Caesars’ opposition to Amendment 2. “If it were written in a way that would actually benefit Missouri and Missourians in a more substantial way, it would be different.”

The Amendment 5 campaign cost is being split between Bally’s Corp., which hopes to get the new license, and developer RIS Inc., which holds the land to build it.

“For us, without any organized opposition that we’re aware of, it’s simply a matter of educating the voters about what our amendment does,” said Ed Rhode, a consultant working with the YesOn5 committee. “And what we’re seeing is the more educated they become about this issue, the more likely they are to support it.”

Whether the broadcast spending on the gambling measure exceeds spending by statewide candidates would be an interesting side bet. So far, candidates for statewide office have spent $13.1 million on broadcast time, as tracked by The Independent, while the gambling campaigns have spent $13.7 million.

All three major efforts focus their messages on one issue – education funding. 

Winning for Missouri Education promises that sports wagering will net more than $100 million for education programs over the first five years. 

“Legalizing sports betting will generate tens of millions of dollars every year for our classrooms, helping increase teacher pay,” one ad states.

The Caesars-funded opposition challenges the sincerity of that promise, arguing write-offs and other carve-outs mean the result will be insignificant. 

It is “Lottery 2.0,” one ad states.

“Teachers were told the lottery would raise a lot of money for schools, but that didn’t happen,” the ad begins.

The casino at the Lake of the Ozarks is also selling educational benefits and does so by including language directing all the tax money to early childhood literacy programs in public schools.

The $14.3 million estimate for revenue is “53% more funding for childhood literacy across Missouri, without raising taxes,” the campaign’s ad states.

As the election nears, Winning for Missouri Education is adding a new message — sports betting is already occurring and Missouri isn’t getting any benefit. Hundreds of thousands of Missourians already have accounts with online platforms. All it takes to place a legal bet is cross into a state where it is legal — a list that includes every state bordering Missouri except Oklahoma. 

“Let’s fund education is the more effective argument,” said Terry Smith, a political science professor at Columbia College.“The argument that is less explicitly made, but I’ve heard from a lot of people, is that people are going to gamble on sports, and right now Kansas and states that we border are making all the money. Why shouldn’t we get our share?”

Amendment 2

If voters legalize sports betting, the Missouri Gaming Commission could issue up to 14 licenses for online wagers. Six would go to the major sports teams, six would go to the casino operators and two would be reserved for online bookmakers.

Each of the 13 casinos and each of the sports teams could also operate an in-person, retail sports betting operation on their properties.

The push to legalize sports wagering in Missouri began after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law against wagering on sporting events in 2018. More than 35 states have legalized some form of the gambling since the court decision.

In the bill that was the closest lawmakers ever got to a resolution of the issue, there were no licenses for independent online bookmakers like DraftKings or FanDuel. Instead, the online platforms would have had to provide products branded to a sports team or casino.

The online platforms generate the cash. An economic study produced for Winning for Missouri Education estimates that $21.8 billion will be wagered during the first five years after legalization and more than 98% of the bets will be placed online.

That same study pegs the net to the state over that period at $134 million. Revenue in the fifth year is estimated at $38.7 million, about $10 million more than the maximum annual revenue projected by the fiscal note for the ballot measure.

Questioning the quality of those revenue estimates is a major thrust of the opposition campaign. The proposal before voters sets the tax at 10% of the net revenue — the money lost on wagers that don’t pay out.

But before the tax is applied, the operators would be able to deduct promotional giveaways — the inducements such as free bets to join a platform — as well as applicable federal taxes. Before any money gets to education programs, the initiative sets aside $5 million annually to support help for problem gamblers.

The figures presented in the economic study result in an effective tax rate of 1.4% of actual losses in the first year and 6.9% in the fifth year. As Missouri nets $134 million, those figures show the gambling operators would keep $86 million in tax savings due to write-offs.

“We want the state to be getting lots of revenue off this,” Cardetti said. “But to get people over from the illicit sports betting market or from going over to other states, those promotional credits in the early days are important, but they end up netting the state more revenue in the long run.”

Kansas, which legalized sports betting in September 2022, has received $19.4 million in tax revenue on $4.4 billion wagered, according to data from the Kansas Lottery.

The promotional credits would be capped at 25% of the amount wagered, Cardetti noted, a limit that is not in place in Kansas.

The ads that emphasize Missouri could receive no net revenue from sports wagering is based on the fiscal note estimate, Foster said. The range listed there is zero to $28.9 million annually.

“It’s basically taxpayers subsidizing their marketing,” she said. “Because that’s a marketing tool for them to give you $1,000 to match what’s in your account. But then they are, on paper, in the red.”

Caesars opposes the amendment in part because it does not allow the company to offer online platforms branded to its Missouri properties — Harrah’s Kansas City, Isle of Capri in Boonville and Horseshoe St. Louis at Lumiere Place.

“If we’re going to expand, it needs to be a little more equitable, as far as what the companies actually get,” she said. “But also, they have a concern that’s secondary, which is that there may be some fall off on the business that they’re able to do.”

The opposition campaign is just one company whining they don’t get a big enough slice, Cardetti said.

“The opponents of Amendment 2 are flawed, hugely flawed messengers,” Cardetti said. “Most Missourians can see right through a ‘No’ campaign when they realize that it’s almost entirely funded by one of the largest casino companies in the world.”

Amendment 5

If Amendment 5 passes, it would authorize the MIssouri Gaming Commission to issue one new casino license at a location on the Osage River between Bagnell Dam and its confluence with the Missouri River.

The original law authorizing casino gambling, passed in 1992, limited it to locations on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. An initiative backed by casino operators passed in 2008 to cap the number of licenses at 13, equal to the casinos then existing or licensed for construction.

There’s no guarantee that Bally’s would receive the license or that the location owned by RIS will be awarded the license. But with local backing and everything ready for an application once the measure passes, it has a big head start.

The investment won’t just be a casino, Rhode said. It will be a destination facility at a normally seasonal tourism location, bringing people at otherwise slack times.

“Having a multifaceted tourism attraction at the lake, which includes a casino, a spa, hotel, convention center and other benefits, is going to be a year round economic boon to that region,” he said. “We’re talking $400 million in investment and 500 permanent jobs.”

One casino is almost certain to be built near the lake. The Osage Nation launched a project in 2021 to have a property in Miller County taken into trust as ancestral lands where it could operate a casino and convention center.

Despite the direct challenge from Amendment 5, the tribal government has not tried to stop it.

The fiscal note for Amendment 5 estimates that it would add about $14.3 million to the state treasury each year. Each casino’s net winnings are taxed at 21% and there are no deductions for promotions such as free bets.

The Mark Twain casino in Hannibal has the smallest annual revenue and paid $7 million in fiscal 2024. The Ameristar casino in St. Charles had the largest revenue and paid $58 million.

“This is not us making up a number,” Rhode said. “This is the state auditor assigning this number so that number is what it is. We feel confident in sharing that number.”

The lottery problem

Forty years ago, Missouri also had two gambling proposals on the November ballot.

One established a state lottery, the other authorized parimutuel wagering on horse races. The lottery was passed by lawmakers to follow a move by 10 other states in the early 1980s to authorize lotteries.

The need for new money in education programs was a major selling point for the lottery, Smith said. The nation was coming out of a major recession that had sapped revenues and there was little appetite for raising taxes.

But the bill creating the lottery didn’t earmark the money. Instead, it went into the general revenue fund, where it was only a small portion of the whole. The general revenue fund pays for public schools, higher education, state prisons, Medicaid and a host of other programs.

“If all of a sudden there was an increase in the amount of revenue that was dumped into the K-12 budget and there was no change in the rest of the budget, that’s one thing,” Smith said. “But that history tells us that’s not how it’s going to work.”

The foundation formula is the name of the main state aid program for local schools. When the lottery sold its first ticket, in fiscal 1986, the foundation formula appropriation was $823 million. The following fiscal year, when the lottery contributed $80 million to general revenue, the general revenue transfer to the school fund increased by $73 million.

Throughout the late 1980s, as national figures showed Missouri near the bottom in per-pupil spending and teacher pay, complaints grew that the lottery had not produced the promised results for education.

That led to a 1992 ballot measure earmarking all lottery revenue for education programs. In the first fiscal year that was in effect, the earmarked funds were used for programs supporting minimum teacher salaries and the Career Ladder stipends.

The following year, in fiscal 1995, the foundation formula received its first appropriation of earmarked lottery funds, $33 million. That was about 25% of all lottery revenue that year. The foundation formula appropriation total was $1.4 billion.  

Today all net revenue from bingo, the lottery and casinos is earmarked for education. In the current year’s budget, the lottery is providing $329 million and casino taxes are tapped for $457 million for the $4 billion foundation formula.

Any revenue from Amendment 2 will be an insignificant addition and have no impact on teacher pay, Foster said.

“If you want sports gambling, say that, but don’t put out television ads that have teachers saying teachers are going to get raises,” she said. “We did the math, and even if it was that top $28.9 million, there’s around 900,000 public school kids in Missouri, so that’s 30 bucks a kid.”

Under existing provisions of the constitution, any new revenue from either gambling measure must be used for education programs. The sports wagering amendment does not define which programs the money will support while the Osage River casino proposal adds the earmarking to literacy programs.

The new revenue from sports wagering will make a difference, Cardetti said.

“Not a penny of benefit is going to Missouri, despite the fact that we know thousands of Missourians are already making bets,” he said. “This is the way that we can bring these revenues back to the state of Missouri and regulate something that Missourians are already doing today.”

Election prospects

The good news from history for the promoters of Amendment 2 and Amendment 5 is that Missourians have rarely met a gambling proposal they didn’t like. 

Since 1980, 10 gambling questions have appeared on the ballot and only two — to allow betting on simulcast horse races and authorize a casino at Rockaway Beach on Lake Taneycomo — have been defeated.

In the August St. Louis University/YouGov poll, 50% of voters surveyed said they supported sports wagering after reading the Amendment 2 ballot language while 30% were opposed. The poll did not ask about Amendment 5.

None of the past gambling campaigns had the kind of well-funded opposition that Amendment 2 has drawn. The ads from both sides are filling broadcast airwaves, streaming services and platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

“We’re using very similar messages that we do on TV and on radio, but now people’s viewing habits are so different and diverse that you’ve got to go meet people where they are,” Cardetti said.

The anti campaign is having an impact, Foster said. 

“It’s definitely tightened,” she said. “It’s margin of error type close, so we’re really pleased to see that.”

The opposition ads clearly state the target is Amendment 2 but the message of skepticism about gambling revenue going to education is having a spillover effect on Amendment 5.

“I bet that they don’t like us or our messaging,” she said.

The opposition to Amendment 2 is making backers of Amendment 5 work harder, Rhode said.

“We’re definitely seeing a little bit of confusion among the voters,” he said. “But the more that we are out there educating voters, you know, sort of what this amendment does, we find the support coming our way.”

The message that the six major professional sports teams back Amendment 2, and that it will keep revenue at home, is just being rolled out to supplement the education message. 

“It makes absolutely zero sense that we have a public policy in the state of Missouri that actively pushes people to go spend money in other states,” Cardetti said.

The opposition campaign would have a tougher sell if that was the message to promote sports wagering from the beginning, Foster said.

“That would be much stronger,” she said. “But the argument ‘let’s make gambling more accessible” is going to hit a lot more roadblocks than ‘let’s give this free money to kids.’”

There are downsides to sports wagering that have not been part of the debate. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported on threats and abuse targeting college athletes who don’t achieve the individual statistics that are fodder for wagers.

And Smith said he’s not entirely comfortable with the bet-from-anywhere nature of sports wagering.

“I’ve observed a lot of young people who are addicted to their phones,” Smith said. “And you know, this is one more piece of candy for them that they might not be able to resist.”

A handful of people opposed to Amendment 3 protested outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, following a ruling to keep the abortion amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

The family business that owns the Kansas City Chiefs is one of the biggest funders of a political action committee opposing a proposed amendment to overturn Missouri’s abortion ban. 

Unity Hunt, the business that controls the assets of the late Lamar Hunt, including the Chiefs, in late September donated $300,000 to the Leadership for America PAC. It is currently running ads on several conservative radio stations across the state opposing the abortion-rights amendment, which will appear on the November ballot as Amendment 3. 

Leadership for America is an independent spending PAC created in January. Prior to receiving the donation from Unity Hunt, the PAC had $31,159 on hand.

Along with paying directly for radio ads, Leadership for America has donated $100,000 to Vote “No” on 3, the main opposition group in the Amendment 3 campaign. And on Oct. 3, the PAC donated $100,000 to a PAC called Missouri Leadership Fund, which gave $100,000 to Vote “No” on 3 six days later.

A spokesperson for the team said Friday that the donation came directly from Lamar Hunt Jr., and not from the Chiefs team.

Unity Hunt did not respond to requests for comment.

No one from Leadership for America could be reached for comment. The telephone number given to the Missouri Ethics Commission for treasurer John Royal has been disconnected.

The ads, which began airing across the state on Monday, call Amendment 3 “cleverly-worded to convince you that it only allows abortions until fetal viability.” 

“But it has loopholes that allow for abortions through all nine months of pregnancy,” the ad continues. “Abortion proponents used to say ‘safe, legal and rare.’ But now they want abortion as common as the morning after pill.”

Supporters of the amendment say claims of abortions in the third trimester are misleading, since the legal freedoms around abortion would only apply until fetal viability, which is generally considered to be around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The amendment text would allow the Missouri legislature to regulate abortion after fetal viability with exceptions only to “protect the life, or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”

Abortion is illegal from the moment of conception in Missouri, with limited exceptions for medical emergencies. There are no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. 

Failed GOP attempt to keep abortion off Missouri ballot could foreshadow fight to come

Leadership for America has spent a little more than $32,000 on the radio ads, which are set to run through Nov. 4. There are no other broadcast ads opposing the amendment.  

Organized efforts against Amendment 3 have been hugely outspent by Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the committee backing the amendment. The campaign reported spending $7.3 million through June 30 and has purchased more than $8.7 million in television ads since the start of September.

Vote “No” on 3 has not filed a full disclosure report but has amassed $870,000 in donations greater than $5,000 since Aug. 30.

While the content of the Leadership for America ad aligns with most other opposition talking points, the original source of the money behind the ad drew some attention. 

“It is incredibly disappointing to see Unity Hunt spend resources on this campaign to spread lies and continue the fear-mongering surrounding Amendment 3,” said state Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Democrat from Kansas City. 

Nurrenbern, who is running for the 17th Senate District in Clay County, said she was particularly alarmed by the size of the donation from a family she said “has done so much good for Kansas City and the Kansas City area.” 

State Rep. Ashley Aune, also a Democrat from Kansas City, said she wasn’t surprised to see the Hunt family backing an effort to stop abortion.

“But also, it’s disappointing because when you have such a big platform,” Aune said. “Using that platform to sow misinformation is a really irresponsible way to use it.”

In 2020, Lamar Hunt Jr. served as the master of ceremonies at the Kansans for Life annual Valentine’s Day banquet. 

Hunt, an owner of the Chiefs, told the crowd: “I do not think it is a cliché to say we are in a life and death battle for the truth and authentic dignity of the human person.” 

Hunt six years earlier published a blog post to his website contemplating what he observed as cultural shifts away from the “pro-choice” movement, comparing the momentum in the “pro-life” community to the San Francisco 49ers comeback and near-win in the final seconds of the 2013 Super Bowl.

This story was updated at 3:20 p.m. Friday to include a comment from a Kansas City Chiefs spokesperson.

The Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System’s $30,000 contribution to a campaign backing a court fee for sheriffs’ pensions is raising questions about the misuse of public funds. (Getty Images)

The Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System last month made a $30,000 investment, hoping for a big return if voters approve a ballot measure imposing a $3 fee on court cases to fund the system’s pensions.

The $30,000 contribution to the Committee to Ensure a Future for Sheriffs & Prosecutors, the committee promoting Amendment 6 on the Nov. 5 ballot, was approved at the system’s Board of Directors meeting in September, executive director Melissa Lorts said Tuesday.

The donation is drawing concern from critics of the proposed amendment — and even lawmakers in support — who question whether the pension board is using taxpayer dollars to support a political campaign.

The fee on court cases could generate about $2 million annually, according to a fiscal note for the legislation putting the measure before voters.

Prosecutors, who would also benefit from Amendment 6, have contributed $50,000 from Missouri Prosecutors Association funds. Sheriffs are the biggest contributors, with $100,000 coming from the Missouri Sheriff’s Association in addition to the donation from the retirement fund.

Amendment would use court fees to fund retirement for Missouri sheriffs, prosecutors

Along with providing the third-largest single contribution to the campaign, the retirement system website is actively promoting passage of the proposal with a box urging a “yes” vote on Amendment 6 and a link to the campaign website.

Lorts is the treasurer of the campaign committee in addition to her duties, which she said are part-time, as fund executive director.

No law is being violated by making the donation, Lorts said.

“I have a legal opinion and these are not public dollars,” Lorts said. “I’m not a political subdivision and they’re not public dollars.”

The legal opinion was not provided in writing, Lorts said. She also said she called the Missouri Ethics Commission and was assured the contribution was legal.

That assurance was not formalized in writing, either, Lorts said.

“My attorney, and I’ve also called Missouri Ethics, says nowhere am I not allowed to do that,” Lorts said. 

Stacy Heislen, acting executive director of the ethics commission, declined to comment on any specific conversations.

“Our practice is to provide an overview of what the statute allows,” Heislen said.

Questions from lawmakers

Leading members of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Employee Retirement weren’t as certain as Lorts that the contributions were unquestionably legal.

State Rep. Barry Hovis, a Cape Girardeau Republican and chairman of the committee, said he would have to know more about the precise source of funds. He said he would ask committee staff to research the question.

“If we think that it’s a Missouri ethics complaint, obviously that report should be made to Missouri ethics to see if they did spend money that’s not viable for a campaign or election,” Hovis said. “I don’t know, I’m just not good enough on the rules to say yes or no on those.”

Hovis, a retired police officer who sponsored the legislation in the Missouri House, said he thinks the fee is reasonable. Sheriffs are vital to the functioning of the courts by serving paperwork, providing security and operating jails, he said.

Another committee member, Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, said he was also uncertain about the legality of the donation and wanted to know more.

“This doesn’t look good, and that’s where I’m at right now,” Beck said. “I would have to talk to some other folks that are a little bit more knowledgeable about this. I personally don’t like the way it looks.”

The fee in question was added to criminal cases in 1983 and expanded to include municipal court cases in 2013. In 2021, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that it was an unconstitutional bar to the courts, which are to be open to all and where “justice shall be administered without sale, denial or delay.”

Amendment 6 would overturn that decision by stating that “costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for” sheriffs, former sheriffs, prosecutors and former prosecutors is part of ensuring “that all Missourians have access to the courts of justice…”

Before the Supreme Court decision, the fiscal note for the legislation states, the fee brought about $2 million annually to the pension fund.

The fund in 2023 paid $3.8 million in benefits to 147 retired former sheriffs, one disabled former sheriff, and 52 spouses. The administrative costs of $244,454.

There are 17 retired sheriffs eligible for a pension but not receiving it and 115 currently in office.

“My board voted to contribute because it is important to the 200 members that are currently receiving a benefit that will lose their benefit if we do not receive our $3 fee back,” Lorts said.

Public money to shore up pension fund

During calendar year 2023, without the fees, the fund received $89,502 in contributions, had $38.4 million in assets and had lost $15 million in value over the previous two years. A large portion of the loss in value was due to refunding the unconstitutional fee and other costs from litigation.

To shore up its finances, lawmakers this year appropriated $5 million in general revenue to the fund, $2.5 million in the supplemental spending bill for the year ending June 30 and another $2.5 million in the current year.

Since Jan. 1, sheriffs have been contributing 5% of their salaries toward the pension fund.

By making the contribution after receiving state tax dollars, the fund could have violated rules governing the use of state appropriations, said Sharon Jones, an attorney from Jefferson City who was a member of the legal team that forced changes in the ballot language for Amendment 6.

“I’m not surprised by it even a little bit,” Jones said of the contribution.

The legal question is a murky one, she said. 

“Our campaign finance laws are pretty Wild West,” she said. “Certainly, there have been attempts over the last couple of years specifically aimed at school boards and county people trying to pass levies to say you can’t campaign for it.”

A state law dating to 1988, and strengthened in 2021, prohibits political subdivisions from using public funds to support or oppose any ballot measure or candidate. No one interviewed for this story could point to a specific state law applying that prohibition to state departments or entities created by state statute.

Federal law does prohibit the conversion of public funds to campaign purposes.

“If the sheriff’s pension goes under, the state of Missouri is on the hook for those dollars,” Jones said.

Regardless of the law, she said, it is an improper diversion of money away from its official purpose.

“It’s still public money, and it’s still money that is supposed to be used on the administration of the pension fund and to make sure that there is enough to pay out what’s owed when the time comes,” Jones said.

Frank Vatterott, an attorney, former municipal judge in St. Louis County and a critic of the fee, said the $3 fee has nothing to do with keeping the courts open. 

Vatterott refused to collect the fee while he was a judge. The roots of the constitutional prohibition on the fee, he said, date back to the Magna Carta, the 1215 document that put protections for individual rights into a legally binding document for the first time in England.

“The administration of justice just means the cost to keep the court going, to pay the court clerk and pay the judge and do the paperwork,” Vatterott said. “This is not the administration of justice. These are retirement funds.”

Vatterott said he has no doubt that the system’s money is public funds. And he’s not in doubt about the law.

“You can’t use public money for advocacy, period,” he said. “I would imagine they’re not that dumb.”

The Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, as pictured September 26, 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri House testimony presented under several aliases should be investigated and prosecuted under laws making it a felony to file false documents with a government agency, state Rep. Del Taylor said Friday.

Taylor, a St. Louis Democrat, said that The Independent’s report that a Columbia restaurant owner is the source of testimony under at least three fake names demands further investigation.

“Let’s take a closer look at who are these people that testified and submitted written testimony, and put some degree of scrutiny to them,” Taylor said in an interview with The Independent.

Written testimony submitted to the Missouri House Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crimes included several statements that accused restaurant owners in cities around the state of conspiring to obtain liquor licenses for undocumented immigrants.

Three of the names and email addresses matched emails sent to The Independent beginning in May. Those emails included many of the same accusations sent to the committee, all tied back to officials and restaurants in Dunklin County in southeast Missouri.

False names used in testimony to Missouri House committee studying immigrant crime

Associate Dunklin County Commissioner Ron Huber, named as one of the alleged conspirators in the testimony and emails to The Independent, said he recognized them as among the aliases adopted by Crystal Umfress of Columbia as she targeted businesses he serves as an accountant.

Umfress was charged Sept. 18 in Dunklin County with filing false documents and forgery for impersonating Huber in emails seeking to withdraw liquor license applications for businesses he served. Umfress, owner of Casa Maria’s Mexican Cantina in Columbia, was already facing trial in February on charges of hiring a man to set fire to a Kennett restaurant when the forgery charges were filed.

The committee, formed by the House Republican leadership to document crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, actually found very little evidence that newly arrived people are more likely to commit offenses, Taylor said.

Taylor, a member of the committee, attended all six hearings in cities around the state, he said.

“The fact we had these hearings in the first place was unwarranted and now we have evidence to show that the testimony given that attempted to fuel the Republican anti-immigration rhetoric was falsified,” he said in a statement.

Taylor said the law making it a felony to file a false document with a government agency is one possible avenue for prosecution. Another is the punishment allowed in the Missouri Constitution for “disrespect to the House by any disorderly or contemptuous behavior in its presence during its sessions.”

“I don’t know if it would be the prosecutor from each county where a hearing took place, or the prosecutor here in Jefferson City since it was a House hearing,” Taylor said. “We are looking at a violation of Missouri statute. And I don’t know the jurisdiction, but yes, I would think the prosecutors should go ahead.”

The committee has concluded its public hearings and will prepare a report with recommendations for legislative action. The most pressing need shown by the testimony, Taylor said, is for laws protecting immigrants.

“Our immigrants and visitors are the victims of horrible human trafficking, hate crimes and wage theft,” Taylor said. “We heard that at all six of the hearings, and there were a number of recommendations that were made to offer better protections for our immigrant community.”

Jared Young, left, the Better Party candidate for U.S. Senate, with former Republican U.S. Sen. Jack Danforth on Thursday morning during a statewide election tour (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

A U.S. Senate candidate seeking to create a new party to bridge political divisions on Thursday enlisted the state’s senior former officeholder to help put a spotlight on his campaign.

Jared Young, a Joplin businessman who petitioned to form the Better Party, toured the state with former U.S. Sen. Jack Danforth, a Republican who was also Missouri attorney general and ambassador to the United Nations.

Young is running against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, who has the same seat Danforth held from 1977 to 1995, Democratic nominee Lucas Kunce as well as Green Party candidate Nathan Kllne and Libertarian Party nominee W.C. Young.

Young is trying to draw disaffected Republicans, independents and moderate Democrats to his banner of the Better Party.

Polling he did in 2023 convinced him an independent candidate had a fighting chance, Young said.

“Hawley is shockingly unpopular for an incumbent Republican in a red state,” Young said.

Danforth, one of Hawley’s earliest boosters, broke with his Republican protégé after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, calling that early support the “worst mistake of my life” and saying on a podcast that it is “what Dr. Frankenstein must have felt.”

Jack Danforth blames Josh Hawley for Missourians losing out on radiation compensation

During a joint interview with the candidate Thursday, Danforth said Young represents a reasonable, results-oriented approach to politics.

The Republican Party once adhered to the principles of controlling the national debt and backing a strong national defense in protection of powers threatened by force, Danforth said. 

“The political system is broken, and my party, both parties, have gravitated toward the fringes,” Danforth said. “But my party, especially the MAGA version, has thrown overboard every principle that the Republican Party stood for, for decades, generations.”

The national debt is $35 trillion and during the Trump administration, Danforth said, it increased 40%.

“Under a Republican president,” Danforth said. “Nobody cares.”

Hawley, Danforth said, disqualified himself as a serious legislator on Jan. 6, 2021.

“He went on national television and he said, ‘this is going to be decided on January 6.’ He knew that that was not true, knew it, and he said it anyway,” Danforth said. “And then he went out front, convened, and he exhorted a mob, knowing that he couldn’t accomplish anything other than convene the mob and exhort the mob.”

The nation deserved an apology from Hawley after the riots, Young said.

“He just sat back and he waited to see which way the political winds were blowing, and as soon as he decided that actually this is politically advantageous to lean into this, he was all in on it and now he sells mugs with his fist raised to the mob,” Young said.

Hawley’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Young and Danforth’s criticisms.

Young is one of the best-funded independent candidate in Missouri in recent political history, using $765,000 of his own money and $164,000 raised from donors to finance his campaign. But he’s not registered in any of the polls conducted in the race.

He’s helping Young but not to the extent he did in 2022 when Danforth created a PAC with $5 million to run ads backing independent candidate John Wood. That effort fizzled when Wood withdrew from the race after now-Sen. Eric Schmitt won the Republican primary.

Young had about $465,000 on hand on July 17, while Hawley had $5.8 million and Kunce had $4.2 million. Since then, Hawley has spent $3.3 million on television advertising and Kunce has spent $5.3 million, according to tracking of FCC reports by The Independent. 

A PAC called Show Me Strong has spent another $1.6 million on television ads backing Hawley, but it is the only significant non-candidate spending in the race.

Danforth has opened a network for fundraising, Young said, and he’s working to bring “similarly big names that are disenchanted Republicans that don’t like Josh Hawley to come and join us in the state.”

He knows that it is a longshot race.

“The challenge is just making sure every voter knows who Jared Young is and what I stand for, and I’m comfortable with losing the election if everyone knows about me and they just decide, no, this is not what we want,” he said.

Young, 38, was educated at Brigham Young University, graduating in 2010, and Harvard Law, graduating in 2014. He worked for a year at a Washington, D.C. law firm.

He realized he didn’t want to practice law, Young said, and accepted a job in Joplin at Employer Advantage, a benefits administrator for businesses, where he became CEO. He led the company through an acquisition in 2022 and has been working on the campaign since mid-2023. 

The main message he’s hearing, Young said, is that people want a government that isn’t caught up in endless gridlock.

“We’re so exhausted, so frustrated, so disgusted with the direction and the tone of our national politics,” Young said. “But every election, it seems to be getting worse instead of better, and nobody’s stepping up to say, look, we need something completely different.”

Kunce is using the same playbook as Hawley in his campaign, Young said.

“Now you play anger, you insult, you focus on making them hate Hawley,” Young said. “And so what was his very first thing when he started his campaign? Josh Hawley is a fraud and a coward. Josh Hawley is a fraud and a coward. Josh Hawley’s a fraud and a coward. Now it’s more of Josh Hawley is a creepy weirdo.

“It’s not substance, and people are just so exhausted by it,” Young said.

Kunce’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Young said he would back Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford’s bipartisan bill to bolster border security, worked out in prolonged negotiations but scuttled by the opposition of former President Donald Trump. 

He said he opposes any attempt to make abortion policy at the national level. He also opposes Amendment 3, the Missouri ballot measure that would guarantee the right to an abortion in the state constitution.

“I’m a moderate pro-lifer,” Young said. “I believe that every abortion is a tragedy, but that we do ourselves a disservice as the pro-life cause when we take an uncompromising all or nothing approach.”

The annual deficit in government spending can only be closed with a combination of tax increases and cuts, Young said. 

“You can’t do a level of cuts that would make a difference, that would be palatable to the people,” Young said.

During the only debate of the campaign, held at the Missouri Press Association convention last month, Hawley called for the U.S. to cut off aid to Ukraine, which has been on the defensive in a war with Russia since February 2022. Young was on stage that day, as were Kunce and Kline. 

He disagreed with Hawley that day and said Thursday it is essential the aid continue.

“It is in our strategic interest, and it’s our moral duty to be supporting Ukraine,” Young said.

Danforth’s sense that Hawley failed in his duty and his role in promoting Hawley to power makes his opposition to the incumbent a personal matter. 

Hawley is a graduate of Yale Law School and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, Danforth noted. He taught constitutional law at the University of Missouri before winning office.

Hawley is smarter than the politician he plays on TV, Danforth said.

“Members of the Senate are more performers than institutionalists, and they’re performers to get themselves on TV, on MSNBC or Fox News,” Danforth said. “And the way to do that is to be the most outrageous person you can be.”

If he doesn’t win, Young could establish the Better Party for future elections by winning more than 2% of the vote. For the next two election cycles, candidates could run for any partisan office on the party’s ticket, a right that would be extended if it continues meeting the 2% threshold.

“One of the biggest hurdles for independents is they have to expend so many resources just to get on the ballot,” he said, “and they already are resource-poor candidates. It puts them way behind the ball right from the start.”

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley speaks to reporters after joining challenger Lucas Kunce in the middle of the floor of the governor's ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia on Aug. 15 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s failure as a legislator is most glaringly obvious in the demise of a bill providing coverage to Missourians exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons development, former U.S Sen. Jack Danforth said Thursday.

Danforth gave his grade on Hawley’s legislative career during a Thursday tour of the state with Joplin businessman Jared Young, who created a new political party for his bid for the seat Danforth held from 1977 to 1994. Young is trying to draw disaffected Republicans, independents and moderate Democrats to his banner of the Better Party.

Danforth is a Republican who was once considered Hawley’s political mentor, having encouraged him to run for the Senate after less than a year as Missouri’s attorney general.

He later denounced Hawley for his role in objecting to the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, saying he regretted his support of Hawley and that he understands “what Dr. Frankenstein must have felt.” 

On Thursday, Danforth said Hawley’s political style as an antagonistic, camera-seeking populist is the reason the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act renewal bill failed to get to a vote before Congress recessed for the election.

That cost not only Missourians but residents of New Mexico and every other state already covered by the law, Danforth said. Advocates from Missouri and New Mexico, along with other areas where federal weapons work contaminated the land, worked for more than a year to expand the program as it neared a renewal vote.

“He became so obnoxious in his public attacks of the Republican Speaker of the House, the Republican Leader of the Senate, the Republican congressperson from that district, he came away with nothing and ended up killing the whole bill for the rest of the country,” Danforth said.

The law expired Sept. 30. Originally passed in 1990, while Danforth was in office, it provided one-time cash payments to uranium miners who worked in 11 states between 1947 and 1971 and people in parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah exposed to fallout from nuclear bomb tests.

To obtain compensation, claimants must prove a diagnosis of particular cancers or other illnesses.

The exposure of Missourians to radioactive waste came from uranium processing in St. Louis for the World War II Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. 

While the presence of radioactive contamination in suburban St. Louis was known for years, an investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed in 2023 that the federal government and companies handling the waste were aware of the threat to the public long before informing residents.

Two weeks after The Independent published its findings, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment from Hawley renewing the law and adding Missouri and New Mexico to the list of states where residents are eligible for compensation due to bomb waste and exposure.

The Missouri House established a new committee Thursday that will study the impact of nuclear weapons programs in the state. Its job is to hold hearings and report on any state legislation needed to assist victims.

Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, which has advocated for expanding the law known as RECA, defended Hawley’s work and called Danforth’s comments “petty.”

“What I’d like is for people like Jack Danforth to shut up so that they don’t create another barrier that I have to jump over,” Chapman said.

Chapman said Hawley brought the coalition trying to expand RECA closer than it has gotten before and comments like Danforth’s undermine advocates pushing for the program’s expansion.

As the Congressional session closed in late September, Chapman was in Washington lobbying for the bill and appeared at a news conference with Hawley. At that time, she blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson for refusing to allow a vote on the bill.

She said Johnson was the “only reason these people are suffering right now in this room.”  

Chapman also questioned why Danforth didn’t expand the program to Missouri while in office or lend a hand to advocates since then.

“You’re making poisoned people work twice as hard, Mr. Danforth,” Chapman said, “because you want to take a cheap swing at somebody and play Monday morning quarterback without lifting a finger in the decade-plus I’ve been doing this.”

The Hawley campaign blamed Danforth for not obtaining relief for Missourians when he was a senator.

“Jack Danforth betrayed hardworking Missourians who were poisoned by nuclear radiation when he left them out of the original RECA law,” said Abigail Jackson, spokesperson for Hawley’s campaign. “Josh worked across the aisle to pass his RECA expansion twice in the Senate with huge bipartisan support. Josh’s proposal is currently being negotiated with House leaders. And Missouri hasn’t forgotten how Danforth failed.” 

Danforth said Hawley’s political persona isn’t likely to help get any legislation passed.

“Politics now in the U.S. Senate is largely performative,” Danforth said. “It’s not serious. Hawley is not a serious legislator. He goes to committee hearings and belittles and badgers witnesses. That gets him on the air, and then he gets on Fox News, but he does not legislate.”

People may disagree with Hawley on other matters, Chapman said, but “he’s right” on the RECA bill.

“We have a right to be emotional that our kids are sick,” she said. “And I expect my Senator and electeds to echo that emotion and passion.”

This article has been updated to clarify comments from Dawn Chapman.

State Rep. Lane Roberts, a Republican from Joplin, is chairman of the House Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crime. He is shown during a Jan. 18 public hearing on a bill he introduced (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A Columbia woman charged with using multiple aliases to accuse restaurant competitors of criminal activity also used fake names for testimony to a Missouri House committee alleging a conspiracy to obtain liquor licenses for undocumented immigrants 

Crystal Umfress of Columbia, owner of Casa Maria’s Mexican Cantina, was already facing trial in a Dunklin County arson-for-hire scheme when she was charged Sept. 18 with five new felonies. The new charges, of forgery and filing a false document, also originate in Dunklin County.

The prosecution alleges she impersonated multiple public officials and others to claim that Mexican-born restaurant owners were bribing local public officials to cover-up their immigration status and obtain liquor licenses.

“I can’t speculate on what it is that set the lady off,” said Ron Huber, an associate commissioner of Dunklin County who was a target of the accusations cited in the forgery case. “I’ve never met her before in my life. I don’t know who she is or why she’s out to try to discredit me or anything.”

Huber is also named several times in testimony submitted to the Missouri House Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crimes. The committee was established in July to study whether undocumented immigrants are a source of crime and held public meetings in Springfield, Joplin, Kansas City, St. Joseph, St. Louis, and Cape Girardeau.

The written testimony tied to Umfress was submitted to the committee using multiple names and email addresses. The emails allege Huber is at the center of a widespread conspiracy to obtain liquor licenses for Mexican restaurants that in turn serve as fronts for drug dealing and other crimes.

The conspiracy allegedly extends to Columbia, Warrenton, Springfield and other cities. The email testimony claims that undocumented immigrants who cannot legally obtain a liquor license are hiring people to front for their license applications, with officials turning a blind eye.

The submissions also often include a list of links to news stories involving people with Hispanic names, sometimes as victims of a crime, others as the alleged perpetrator of an offense like drunk driving.

Huber said he’s heard Umfress submitted testimony to the committee with false names.

“I’d like to know where that money went if I am supposed to have gotten it,” he said of the bribery allegation.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol, which investigated the forgery case, cannot comment on its work or confirm any connection between Umfress and the accounts which contacted the legislative committee, Sgt. Brad Germann said. The Dunklin County prosecuting attorney could not be reached for comment.

Russell Oliver, Umfress’ attorney, also declined to comment.

Starting in May, The Independent received a series of emails with similar accusations and many of the same links. Three of the email names and addresses for the witness statements are the same as those received by The Independent.

Huber said he recognized several of the names used in the emails as among those that had worked to spread conspiracy theories about him.

One email to The Independent, using the name Marissa Jenkins, identified the sender as a student reporter seeking help, with the signature line “Investigate Report University of Missouri Journalism.” 

A student named Marissa Jenkins was enrolled on a part-time basis during the summer term at MU, university spokesman Christopher Ave stated in an email. She is not currently enrolled.

The legislative testimony emails signed “Marissa Jenkins” do not identify her as a student or as a reporter.

The committee chairman, Republican state Rep. Lane Roberts of Joplin, said he was not aware that any of the testimony submitted by email was from aliases. 

“I do know that we received a number — two, three or maybe four emails — with regard to something in Dunklin County,” Roberts said.

The committee was not set up to investigate specific charges of criminal activity, Roberts said. 

“Our focus is in trying to quantify what kind of crime and how much crime is associated with undocumented workers,” Roberts said. “It’s been very difficult to come up with any kind of way to quantify that.”

Roberts, a former Joplin police chief and former director of the Department of Public Safety, said his response to specific allegations made in testimony is to ask the person reporting the criminal activity to contact law enforcement.

“When somebody alleges some kind of an activity, there’s always a healthy degree of skepticism, because often it’s personal, it’s emotional, and we have to be very careful about taking it at face value,” Roberts said.

Umfress first made news headlines last year when she was charged with paying $1,485 to someone to set fire to Lupita’s Mexican Restaurant in Kennett. She is set to go to trial in February in Butler County, where the case was moved on a change of venue.

Testimony submitted to the legislative committee under the name Maria Garcia in advance of its July 30 hearing blamed the owner of the building and Huber for the fire.

The owner, the testimony states, paid the intermediary who found the person willing to set the fire “$10,000 to start a kitchen fire to Lupitas Mexican and implement (sic) an American owner of a Mexican restaurant in Columbia, Missouri as she was trying to rat the commissioner out for a twenty year operation aiding illegal immigrants with IDs, liquor licenses, and drugs.”

Umfress has had numerous legal and personal issues coming at her at a rapid rate for more than a year. 

On July 1, 2023, she obtained a marriage license to wed her partner at Casa Maria’s, Jesus Celestino Mendoza-Chavez, nine days before the fire hit the Kennett restaurant, which was owned by Mendoza’s brother, KOMU-TV in Columbia reported. 

She was charged in the arson on Sept. 22, 2023. Mendoza-Chavez died Oct. 1, 2023, after sustaining severe injuries in a Sept. 26, 2023, head-on collision in Columbia. She cited the death of her husband in an unsuccessful bid to have her $65,000 bond reduced.

On May 9, the state Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control suspended the liquor license at Casa Maria’s for 52 days after finding a forgery on the application for renewal, KMIZ TV in Columbia reported. Umfress is ineligible for a liquor license in her own name because she has a felony theft conviction on her record.

The Independent on May 16 received the first email, from someone who called themselves Melissa White, making allegations involving Huber and the liquor license conspiracy.

The committee received submissions from “Melissa White,” using the same email address, in advance of two hearings. In the first, for the July 11 hearing, she brought a Columbia competitor into her conspiracy allegations. The second, for the July 30 hearing, said her fiance had been assaulted while at a Columbia restaurant and died the next day.

Umfress’ emails began causing Huber problems about six months ago, he said. He was contacted by the state alcohol regulators about emails purporting to withdraw license applications, Huber said, and more recently from accounting clients.

He asked the prosecutor to be aggressive, Huber said.

“I kind of put some pressure on the prosecutor,” He said. “I said, ‘before you know, nobody really knew what she was doing or whatever, but I’ve started to get phone calls from my clients and I’ll start losing clients.’ That’s going to be a big deal.”

(Getty Images).

A rural Missouri fire district near Kansas City committed so many violations of the Missouri Sunshine Law that listing them separately wasn’t the best way to present them, attorney Jim Layton told Western District Court of Appeals during oral arguments.

Under questioning from Presiding Judge Thomas Chapman, Layton said he counted 46 violations committed in 11 meetings of the Western Cass Fire Protection board. The appeal brief gives a narrative of events, seeking to show a multiplicity of violations at any particular meeting, rather than individually enumerated violations for each meeting.

“We have to look at it and weigh the evidence in each one of these instances, and it just seems like it kind of was a shotgun approach on these,” Chapman said.

The nature of the appeal led to the format he chose, Layton said. Cass County Circuit Judge R. Michael Wagner entered a judgment against his client, Citizens for Transparency and Accountability, when he concluded his portion of the case during a June 2023 trial.

Wagner didn’t give any reasons for his decision in his judgment. The appeal is of that single act, so a narrative is the correct format, Layton said.

“I will confess that I struggled with how to draft points relied on in this case as much as I ever have on an appeal because of the nature of how this was decided below,” Layton said.

Wednesday’s hearing at the appeals court is just the latest round in battles, in and out of court, involving the fire district, based in Cleveland, that serves about 2,600 homes. The battling factions of the board have made numerous headlines, and the appeal drew the attention of three important voices for open government.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, the Missouri Press Association and the Freedom Center of Missouri all wrote briefs urging the court to overturn the trial court. The issues involved are some of the most fundamental aspects of what constitutes proper notice of a meeting, how much can be added to an agenda after it is posted, and what information must be presented about an item to be considered.

“If you can obscure the matters that are actually going to be discussed and decided at a public meeting, then you can kind of slip under the public’s radar and address matters that otherwise members of the public would very much like to have input,” said Dave Roland, litigation director of the Freedom Center of Missouri.

An example from the Western Cass case is the Aug. 3, 2022, meeting, where the notice included an item called “special considerations,” with no more detail. What board members Kerri VanMeveren and Darvin Schildknecht didn’t know, and found out only when the agenda item was reached that evening, was that “special considerations” meant booting them off the board.

“I asked at the start of the meeting, before we adopted the agenda, ‘can you please explain what special considerations mean?’” VanMeveren said in an interview with The Independent. Board president “John Webb would not answer the question. And I kept saying, ‘I think the public has a right to know,’ and he just would not answer it.”

Defending the judgment on Wednesday, attorney Aaron Racine told the court that any violations that may have occurred were inadvertent, due to inexperience of new members.

Judge Alok Ahuja was skeptical of that as he looked at the Aug. 3, 2022, meeting agenda.

“What does special considerations mean?” he asked. “Special considerations of weather? Special considerations of finances? Special considerations of personnel?”

Even the phrasing of particular agenda items can be traced to inexperience, Racine said.

“I think those are the mitigating or exigent circumstances, and that you had an inexperienced board trying to comply with the law,” he said.

Origins of the dispute

VanMeveren won election to the district Board of Directors in 2020, running for the position after a brush fire spread onto her property in 2018 and she felt the tactics employed showed poor training.

“It was just kind of a clown show,” VanMeveren said.

When she became district treasurer, she said, she found that tax rates for a bond issue had been improperly calculated, bringing in excessive revenue.

A state auditor’s report in 2021, prepared in response to a residents’ petition, found problems with bidding procedures, budget information and Sunshine Law compliance. VanMeveren recruited new board members, including John Webb, a conservative Republican who unsuccessfully challenged then-U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler several times in the 4th Congressional District GOP primary. 

But she and Webb were soon battling over issues that included payroll expenses for contractors and a contract for lawn care at the firehouse, the Kansas City Star reported. In the late summer and early fall of 2022, three departments in Belton, Dolan-West Dolan and West Peculiar canceled their mutual aid agreements.

VanMeveren resigned as treasurer in May 2022 but remained on the board. A lawsuit was filed by the board to oust her and Schildknecht. It was dismissed when a recall effort began that succeeded in removing VanMeveren and Schildknecht in August 2023.

VanMeveren and Schildknecht formed Citizens for Transparency and Accountability and filed a countersuit, the case now in the hands of the Western District Court of Appeals.

They testified in the spring in favor of a bill that gives the State Auditor new power to investigate wrongdoing in local government. Instead of a time-consuming petition process, the auditor can now open a full audit if investigation of a complaint shows problems that require more attention. 

And the cost of the audit would be borne by the auditor’s office instead of taxpayers in the political subdivision being examined.

The new power is an important tool to help taxpayers, Schildknecht testified in a Missouri House hearing. 

“Over the years some people who come on the board who do want to try and do the right things, but I have also seen others who realize there is no outside agencies monitoring fire districts and take advantage of this, knowing there is nobody watching that they follow the laws,” he said.

The meaning of “tentative”

Widespread issues the case will address brought amicus, or friend of the court, briefs from the attorney general’s office, the press association and the Freedom Center of Missouri.

“Several issues raised in this appeal are brought to this office’s attention with increasing frequency in complaints filed by citizens against local public governmental bodies, in question-and-answer sessions during training programs, and phone call inquiries from the public and public governmental bodies,” Assistant Attorney General Jason Lewis wrote. “Unfortunately, many of these issues have not yet been conclusively addressed by Missouri’s appellate courts.”

Those questions include what an agenda must have when a meeting notice is posted and what can be added later.

“All public governmental bodies shall give notice of the time, date, and place of each meeting, and its tentative agenda, in a manner reasonably calculated to advise the public of the matters to be considered,” the law states. 

The fire district board used the word tentative in the broadest sense. At one meeting in November 2022, Layton’s appeal brief states, the board approved “a contract for a medical director; creating and sending a newsletter throughout the district; adopting a program that would allow firefighters to reside at the fire station; changing the bid solicitation for one of the fire stations; an insurance rider for proof of loss; barring one director from taking photographs at the fire station; having and paying for a party; and purchasing a generator battery.”

None of those items were on the agenda.

No violation occurred when items were added, Racine told the judges.

“Tentative means what tentative means, and absent some statutory or court guidance as to what tentative means, we have to look to its plain meaning, which is subject to change going forward,” Racine said.

All three of the amicus briefs argued that tentative means subject to change for unforeseen reasons, such as a storm that prevents the meeting from being held or the absence of someone essential that prevents an item from being considered.

It cannot mean that new items can be added at will because the public, and their watchdogs, deserve full notice of the items to be considered, attorney Jean Maneke wrote for the press association.

“Reporters recognize that they cannot be everywhere at once and the agenda gives them the information they need to make the best use of their time,” Maneke wrote. “Like the public, the reporters rely on the agenda to inform them regarding which activities/issues will be addressed at each public meeting.”

Other meeting notice issues the appeal addresses are the amount of information that must be provided. Fire district notices often gave the least possible information, appellants argue, such as a resolution number and no other details under the heading “Banking” on the July 20, 2022, meeting.

During the same meeting, while on the agenda item with the heading “reports,” the board adopted changes to the duties of some personnel without any indication that was the intent.

“It’s crucial that public governmental bodies not be able to shoehorn in agenda items at the last minute, and that’s why they need to provide an acceptable level of specificity when it comes to what they’re going to be considering and voting on,” Roland said.

The attorney general’s brief also argues that notices must provide details that show the intent of the action. 

“That means that a public governmental body cannot hide an elephant in a mouse hole by using vague or excessively broad terms to hide what the body intends to do,” Lewis wrote. “The tentative agenda must be specific enough for the public to be able to make an informed decision about whether to attend the meeting.”

The court could create a test that would help agencies in the preparation of meeting notices and agendas, Lewis wrote.

“The Attorney General’s Office is eager for resolution of these issues at the appellate level,” Lewis wrote, “which will provide both this office and the public with significant guidance in resolving citizens’ Sunshine Law complaints, providing education to local public governmental bodies, and seeking enforcement when appropriate.”

Marcellus Williams, photographed in prison (photo submitted).

Just a few hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal, Missouri officials executed Marcellus Williams Tuesday at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.

Williams, who was backed in his appeals for clemency by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, left only a single sentence — “All praise to Allah in every situation” — in his last statement, KMOV TV reported.

Williams was sentenced to death for the 1998 slaying of Felicia Gayle, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who was stabbed more than 40 times.

None of the physical evidence at the crime scene, including fingerprints, bloodied shoe prints and hairs, could be tied to Williams. He was arrested based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, who said Williams confessed the murder. 

During testimony at his murder trial, Williams’ then-girlfriend also said he confessed to the killing. Williams picked her up the day of Gayle’s slaying wearing a jacket over a bloody shirt and with scratches on his neck. She saw a laptop in his car – later shown to have been stolen from Gayle’s apartment – and a purse in the trunk, with Gayle’s identification card.

In the final effort to free Williams or reduce his sentence, Bell filed a case under a 2021 state law allowing prosecutors to bring new evidence to the courts. It was the first time the law has been used in a death penalty case. 

Bell filed the case in January, arguing there was “clear and convincing evidence” that potential jurors had been excluded based on race and questioning whether DNA evidence on the knife that killed Gayle had been contaminated by careless handling.

The Missouri Supreme Court heard a final appeal of the ruling in that case on Monday, and found the evidence was not convincing.

Bell “failed to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence Williams’ actual innocence or constitutional error at the original criminal trial that undermines the confidence in the judgment of the original criminal trial,” Judge Zel Fischer wrote in the opinion.

The Department of Corrections declared Williams dead at 6:10 p.m. after a lethal injection, the Kansas City Star reported. 

Bell issued a statement that he remained convinced Williams should have been spared.

“Marcellus Williams should be alive today,” Bell said. “There were multiple points in the timeline when decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”

State Rep. Crystal Quade, the Democratic candidate for governor, issued a statement over social media saying that she disagreed with allowing the execution to proceed.

“I’ve always stood firm in my stance that the state should not execute potentially innocent people. Marcellus Williams is no different,” Quade said.

There was no statement from Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, the Republican candidate.

Gov. Mike Parson, in a statement on Monday stating he would not stop the execution, said he was not convinced by any appeals.

“No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims,” Parson said. “At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of capital punishment were upheld. Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence, as such, Mr. Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”

Williams is the 100th person executed by Missouri since 1989, when executions resumed after a two-decade lapse.

The Missouri Supreme Court building in Jefferson City on April 4, 2024 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

The execution of Marcellus Williams will proceed Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in a decision rejecting efforts to show  a potential juror in his murder trial was excluded based on race.

After hearing arguments Monday morning in an expedited appeal, the court unanimously ruled that St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell had not proven Williams’ innocence or that there was a violation of his constitutional right to a fair trial.

Williams is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle in St. Louis County. On Sept. 12, Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton rejected claims that DNA evidence had been destroyed and the exclusion of Black jurors raised doubts about the integrity of his 2001 conviction.

The decision written by Judge Zel Fischer noted that Bell was no longer claiming innocence for Williams based on the DNA evidence. His arguments that Black people were stricken from the jury pool for racial reasons have been argued in past appeals, Fischer wrote, and the case argued Monday presents nothing new except mischaracterizations of statements made during the Aug. 28 hearing conducted by Hilton.

Bell “failed to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence Williams’ actual innocence or constitutional error at the original criminal trial that undermines the confidence in the judgment of the original criminal trial,” Fischer wrote.

With its decision, the court rejected the effort by Williams’ attorneys to obtain a stay of execution. Gov. Mike Parson issued a statement that he would not intervene in the case.

“Capital punishment cases are some of the hardest issues we have to address in the Governor’s Office, but when it comes down to it, I follow the law and trust the integrity of our judicial system, Parson said. “Mr. Williams has exhausted due process and every judicial avenue, including over 15 hearings attempting to argue his innocence and overturn his conviction. No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims.”

Bell promised to continue efforts to prevent Tuesday’s execution.

“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” Bell said. “As the St. Louis County prosecutor, our office has questions about Mr. Williams guilt, but also about the integrity of his conviction. For those reasons we will continue to do everything in our power to save his life.”

If Williams is put to death Tuesday, he will be the 100th person executed in Missouri since 1989.

During the hearing Monday morning, attorney Jonathan Potts asked the judges to find that testimony from the trial prosecutor, Keith Larner, proved that race played a role in removing potential jurors. 

“He said the quiet part out loud,” Potts said. “He admitted there was a racial component and that is unconstitutional.”

The court should uphold Hilton’s decision and allow Williams’ execution to proceed, Michael Spillane, an assistant attorney general, argued Monday. Larner’s statement about his reason for excluding a juror — that he looked like he could be a brother of Williams — was not a sufficient reason because he also testified that race played no role in his decisions.

“He did not admit he struck a Black juror simply because he was Black,” Spillane said.

In the opinion, Fischer wrote that the statement wasn’t the clear-cut admission of a constitutional error, as Potts portrayed it.

Instead, Fischer wrote, the argument “cherry-picks the record, ignores the circuit court’s factual findings, and offers no persuasive justifications for reversing this Court’s previous merits determination of this claim.”

Spillane also asked the court to reject the appeal because it lacks jurisdiction. The Sept. 12 decision won’t be appealable for 30 days under procedural rules, he noted.

“This is a judgment that is not yet final,” he said.

Gayle, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed more than 40 times. Police investigators found an abundance of physical evidence at the crime scene including fingerprints, bloodied shoe prints and hairs. 

None of it, however, was tied to Williams by investigators. He was arrested based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, who said Williams confessed the murder. 

During testimony at his murder trial, Williams’ then-girlfriend also said he confessed to the killing. Williams picked her up the day of Gayle’s slaying wearing a jacket over a bloody shirt and with scratches on his neck. She saw a laptop in his car – later shown to have been stolen from Gayle’s apartment – and a purse in the trunk, with Gayle’s identification card.

The execution set for Tuesday is the third time the Missouri Supreme Court has set a date for Williams to die.

In 2015, the Court stayed Williams’s execution and appointed a special master to review DNA testing of potentially exculpatory evidence. Two years later, without conducting a hearing, the court rescheduled Williams’ execution. 

Later that year, however, former Gov. Eric Greitens issued the second stay and appointed a board of inquiry to look into the case. Parson lifted the stay and dissolved the board in June 2023, and the state Supreme Court issued the execution warrant last month, setting a Sept. 24 execution date.

The current appeal is the first time a 2021 state law allowing prosecutors to bring new evidence to the courts has been used in a death penalty case. Bell filed the case in January, arguing there was “clear and convincing evidence” that potential jurors had been excluded based on race.

The 2021 law has been used to free Lamar Johnnson, who was in prison for almost 30 years on a murder conviction before he was freed in February 2023, and Christpher Dunn, who was held for 34 years for a murder before he was released in August.

One argument raised by Bell in the January filing was that new DNA analysis of the murder weapon excluded Williams. But Hilton ruled that at the Aug. 28 hearing, testimony showed the DNA found on the knife — of Larner and a detective who handled the knife without gloves after initial tests were done — did not support the conclusion they deliberately destroyed evidence. 

During arguments Monday, Spillane said Larner’s testimony showed he wasn’t aware of the potential risk of contamination before the 2001 trial and didn’t learn that skin cells that remain on a surface could be tested until 2015.

“He wasn’t trying to contaminate anything,” Spillane said.

Under questioning from the judges, Potts said Hilton’s decision should be overturned or the case should be sent back to his court for more fact-finding.

The last-minute nature of the case should not be an impediment to finding the truth, Potts said. The questions raised about racial exclusion of jurors during the Aug. 28 hearing needs to be fully examined, he said.

“Just because we are hearing about it a month before an execution date doesn’t mean it is too late,” he said.

Fischer, in the introduction to the opinion, notes that there has been nearly 25 years of court battles over Williams’ guilt.

“Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in both state and federal courts,” Fischer wrote, “there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or any showing of a constitutional error undermining confidence in the original judgment.”

The four candidates for governor met Friday for the first, and perhaps only, debate of the campaign. Appearing are, from left, state Rep. Crystal Quade, the Democratic nominee; Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, the Republican candidate; Bill Slantz of the Libertarian Party; and Paul Lehmann of the Green Party (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

SPRINGFIELD — Twenty years of Republican control of the legislature has failed Missouri, giving it the most extreme abortion restrictions in the country and a child care system in crisis, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Crystal Quade said in a debate Friday.

Quade said she backs Amendment 3, which would restore abortion rights, and Proposition A, to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2026, as measures that will help Missouri women control their reproductive decisions and earn enough to support their families.

“Right now we have women bleeding out on their bathroom floors because our doctors can not do their jobs,” Quade said

Quade is running an uphill race against Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, the Republican nominee, who polls show has a double-digit lead. Kehoe said he opposes Amendment 3 and Proposition A.

“This law goes way too far,” Kehoe said of the abortion-rights amendment. “It is very extreme.”

The minimum wage proposition is bad for business and workers, Kehoe said.

“I don’t think the government should be setting wages for people,” he said.

Quade and Kehoe met in a debate sponsored by the Missouri Press Association as part of its annual convention. They were joined on stage by Libertarian Bill Slantz, a St. Louis-are business owner, and Green Party candidate Paul Lehmann, a retired farmer and minister who lives in Fayette.

Kehoe has been lieutenant governor since 2018, appointed to the post by Gov. Mike Parson after almost eight years in the Missouri Senate. He was a Jefferson City car dealer before he got into politics.

Quade is a four-term state representative from Springfield who has been Democratic leader in the Missouri House for six years. She worked for then-U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill before seeking office.

Quade and Kehoe both won primaries but the GOP contest, which Kehoe won with 40% of the vote, was far more expensive than Quade’s victory over Springfield businessman Mike Hamra. Neither major party candidate has begun their fall television campaign.

The debate Friday could be the only time the two major party candidates are on the same stage. Kehoe has not accepted any invitations for televised debates.

The two found rare agreement on Amendment 2, which would legalize sports betting in Missouri. Kehoe said that because it is legal in adjoining states, it should be legal in Missouri to keep tax money at home.

Quade said she has supported legislation to legalize sports betting but it has been blocked by Republican factions.

“This is another example of where the status quo in Jefferson City is not listening to people,” Quade said.

Missouri is months behind in payments for subsidized child care and that is making a difficult situation a crisis, Quade said.

“The state of Missouri now is not even paying child care providers bills on time,” she said. “We have lost 53 child care providers in the last year because the state of Missouri is not meeting its basic promises.”
Kehoe, who is running with strong backing from Parson, said he agrees the system is in crisis but did not criticize the current issues with payments. Instead, the solution he offered was incentives for businesses to provide child care

“We have $1.4 billion, with a B, of labor sitting at home annually in the state of Missouri because those working folks want to go to work and can’t get child care,” Kehoe said.

There was sharp disagreement between Kehoe and Quade over what can be done to quell gun violence. When asked if he would support allowing local governments to enact restrictions, Kehoe said he did not.

“Every time we put more restrictions on a citizen’s Second Amendment rights, we actually hurt the citizens who are trying to do this law abiding and legally,” Kehoe said.

Quade said local governments are in the best position to decide what their residents need to stay safe.

“What’s going on in Webster County, where I grew up, is different than what’s going on in inner city St Louis,” Quade said. “And I do support the conversation around letting communities decide what is best for themselves.”

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, right, speaks during the Missouri Press Association debate Friday in Springfield. Hawley was joined on stage by, from left, Nathan Kline of the Green Party; Lucas Kunce, Democratic nominee; and Jared Young, who petitioned for a spot on the ballot. David Lieb of the Associated Press, far left, moderated (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

SPRINGFIELD —The United States should abandon its support for Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said Friday during his first debate with challenger Lucas Kunce and two third party candidates.

“I do not support continued funding to Ukraine,” Hawley said, adding that he would not support any more aid until Congress agrees to compensate Missourians who have suffered diseases from exposure to radioactive waste left over from World War II.

Kunce, a Marine veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the alternative to military and economic aid to the beleaguered republic is sending U.S. troops. Hawley’s position will embolden other world adversaries, Kunce said, including China and Iran.

“Our aid to Ukraine, at $200 billion, is infinitely cheaper than the $6 trillion we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, supposedly nation building there once we put boots on the ground,” Kunce said.

Hawley, the Republican incumbent seeking his second term in the Senate, and Kunce, a Democrat making his second run for the Senate, appeared at a debate sponsored by the Missouri Press Association. They were joined on stage by Nathan Kline, nominee of the Green Party, and Jared Young, who petitioned to form the Better Party as the label for his effort.

Kline said U.S. involvement in Ukraine is an example of corporate interests pushing the nation to war and failed policies of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

“The disastrous war in Ukraine is a perfect example of the blue team and the red team skipping hand in hand to Armageddon,” Kline said.

Continued aid to bolster Ukraine is essential for U.S. national security, Young said.

“Russia and China and Iran represent a serious threat to our country,” he said. “They are actively working to undermine the world order that served us so well for the last 60 or 70 years. And in order to push back, we need to have a strong stance.”

The debate was not televised but it was streamed online. Hawley and Kunce have agreed to a televised debate without the other two candidates on Oct. 31.

Throughout the debate, Hawley pushed Kunce to say which candidate he supports for president — Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, or former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Kunce did not respond.

Kunce sought to damage Hawley by tying him to anti-abortion positions that include opposition to protections for in vitro fertilization and support for Missouri’s near-total ban on abortions.

“It’s Josh Hawley’s abortion ban,” Kunce said. “He wants to bans all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.”

Kunce said he supports Amendment 3, which would restore abortion rights in Missouri. Hawley said he opposes it and claimed that one reason Kunce backs it is to reverse a Missouri law banning gender-affirming medical treatments for children.
“Lucas Kunce and his allies talk about reproductive health, but what it really does is it allows transgender surgeries without parental consent,” Hawley said.

That characterization, both of his position and the amendment, is wrong, Kunce said.

“He sees mandated sex change surgeries around every single corner because he thinks he can rile people up that way and actually win the election,” Kunce said.

Kunce is the best-funded Democrat running statewide this year, but he is bucking a trend that has seen every statewide Democratic candidate go down to defeat since 2018. Kunce has spent $4.3 million on television ads — more than he had on hand on June 30 — that have been running since late July.

His pace of ad spending in recent weeks has slowed and the coming week will only be half of this week’s buy and one-third of that two weeks ago, according to tracking by The Independent.

In an interview, Kunce said he will be building up his effort again as the election approaches after a first phase of introducing himself to the state.

Hawley’s campaign has spent about $2.8 million on television and an independent PAC supporting his re-election, Show Me Strong, has spent about $1.5 million.

The SLU/YouGov poll in August showed Hawley with a double-digit lead, a margin that has not changed despite the television blitz.

Young is the best-funded independent candidate in the state in many years, but the $900,000 he has raised has not been used for any television advertising. Instead, Young said in an interview after the debate, he’s focused on digital platforms and other ways of making his money stretch.

“We knew all along that nobody was really going to be paying attention until these last two months, and so we’re seeing the momentum pick up,” Young said.

Kline, of Kansas City, works for the city’s Planning and Development Department.

The candidates also addressed immigration, with Hawley accusing Kunce of supporting “putting immigrants on Social Security and Medicare.”

Kunce said Hawley was lying about his views. He backs a bill that was defeated in the U.S. Senate that would increase border patrols and limit the number of people entering every day.

“The sad thing here is that Josh Hawley has voted against keeping us safe,” Kunce said, “because he wants to keep it as a campaign issue rather than address the train wreck we have going on.”

Tammy Reed, center, is suing the Missouri Department of Corrections for wrongful death of her son, Brandon Pace, at Tipton Correctional Center. In January, she was joined by Tina Burger, left, and her daughter, Bethany Pace, at a memorial service for the 382 Missourians who died in department custody in 2021, 2022 and 2023 (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Missouri corrections officers drenched an inmate with pepper spray and ignored his pleas for help for four hours, responding only when his screaming stopped as he died in the Tipton Correctional Center, a federal lawsuit filed this month alleges.

The events that led to Brandon Pace’s death on April 7, 2023, began when correctional officers intervened in an altercation between Pace and another inmate, according to the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. 

Both men were taken into administrative segregation in restraints.

When Pace refused to give up what corrections officers believed to be methamphetamine, the lawsuit states, they put him in a holding cell and ordered him to strip for a search. When he refused, the officers called the Correctional Emergency Response Team, a unit used in cases where use of force may be required to deal with an inmate who will not comply with officer instructions.

An officer from the team used a fire extinguisher-sized can of pepper spray, a type usually used for riot situations, to subdue Pace.

The officers “took the MK-46 canister of OC and sprayed Mr. Pace with an excessive dose of the chemical agent at close range while Mr. Pace was in a confined space and, based upon information and belief, Mr. Pace’s hands were restrained behind his back and his legs shackled,” the lawsuit filed on behalf of Pace’s mother, Tammy Reed, states. “Mr. Pace began screaming in pain, gasping for air, and saying ‘I can’t breathe.’ He kept saying, ‘Help me, I can’t breathe,’ over and over.”

The lawsuit names former department Director Anne Precythe, current acting director Trevor Foley, three deputy directors, the department’s general counsel, former Tipton warden Brock Van Loo, medical care contractor Centurion Health, 12 corrections officers and a nurse as defendants.

The 11 counts in the lawsuit seek damages for wrongful death, civil rights violations and Missouri Sunshine Law violations for refusing to turn over any of the records, including video recordings, of the events prior to Pace’s death.

The lawsuit relies on statements from other men, held in nearby cells, for many of the allegations.

“The Department of Corrections is duty-bound to protect those individuals like Brandon Pace, who are in state custody,” said Lynn Ellenberger, one of Reed’s attorneys . “They’re obligated to provide for his well being and for his care, and in this case, that was not done.”

The department does not comment on pending litigation, Foley said last week.

Other death cases

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of cases filed this year related to inmate deaths. Despite a one-third reduction in the number of men and women being held by the department over the past decade, inmate deaths are at record levels.

In June, four former correctional officers were charged with assault and murder and a fifth was charged with involuntary manslaughter for the December death of Othel Moore while he was incarcerated at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

Moore, 38, was pepper-sprayed in the face multiple times, had his face improperly covered by a hood that blocked his nose and mouth and was left unattended in a cell for more than 30 minutes, according to documents filed in the criminal case.

The charges against one of the corrections officers have been dropped and the remaining defendants were charged with assault and second-degree murder in September by the Cole County Grand Jury. An arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 16.

Missouri corrections officers charged with murder in death of inmate in restraints

The criminal charges came after four officers were fired in March and the warden at the Jefferson City prison was fired in June.

“We take seriously our responsibility for creating the safest environment possible and will not tolerate behaviors or conditions that endanger the wellbeing of Missourians working or living in our facilities,” the corrections department said in a statement issued after the charges were filed. “The department has begun implementing body-worn cameras in restrictive-housing units at maximum-security facilities, starting with Jefferson City Correctional Center, to bolster both security and accountability.”

The family of Othel Moore began publicly agitating for release of records, including video showing the actions of the officers, in the weeks following his Dec. 8 death. The case was investigated by the Cole County Sheriff’s office.

No outside agency has investigated Pace’s death, said Tom Porto, an attorney working with Pace’s family. 

“That’s not going to be done until the facts are brought to light,” Porto said. “There’s not going to be an investigation from the police, from the prosecutor’s office, from the Attorney General’s Office, until you smack them with the facts right in their face.”

Tony Wheatley, Moniteau County sheriff, said in an interview Wednesday that he has not received a complaint from the family about Pace’s death and he has not been asked to investigate by the department. His office has the necessary resources and no conflicts that would prevent him from investigating.

“What really upsets me is, and this happens all the time, is everybody wants to blame the local sheriff’s office because they didn’t do anything,” Wheatley said.

The only way he can act is if he gets a call, Wheatley said.

“I have not once heard from the family, I have not once heard from the state, I have not heard from anybody on this,” Wheatley said.

If Reed or her attorneys send him the complaint, Wheatley said, he will read it and evaluate whether it warrants further action.

The mother of another man who died in custody, Willa Hynes, won a $60,000 judgment against the department for withholding records in the death of her son Jahi, who died April 4, 2021, at the Southeast Missouri Correctional Center in Charleston.

Jahi Hynes, who was 27, was serving a 13-year sentence for first degree robbery when he hanged himself with a bedsheet while in solitary confinement.

On April 1, Willa Hynes filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing the department, Centurion Health and 11 corrections employees of negligence in allowing her son to possess the bedsheet and failing to conduct required checks on inmates in administrative segregation.

A hearing is set for Monday in Charleston on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

‘The car that hit him’

Pace’s death was one of 134 among people being held by the Department of Corrections in 2023. This year, with 96 deaths through Aug. 31, could exceed the record 136 deaths in 2022.

Only eight of the inmate deaths over the three years were executions of men sentenced for capital crimes. 

“My main concern being an organizer and an advocate is to make sure this information is publicized,” said Michelle Smith, director of the Missouri Justice Coalition, who compiles data on inmate deaths.

Smith, who in January led a memorial service for the deceased inmates at the Missouri Capitol Building, said most elected officials have yet to take the problem seriously.

Memorial service seeks answers on rapid increase in Missouri inmate deaths

“They think that I and other people are just being hyperbolic and exaggerating the issues at the Department of Corrections,” she said. “We need legislation, we need transparency, we need accountability at DOC.”

In his opinion in the Hynes case alleging Sunshine Law violations, Western District Court of Appeals Judge Edward Ardini wrote that the department deliberately withheld public records, including video recordings and a death investigation report, to hinder her wrongful death lawsuit.

The department argued unsuccessfully that the material was inmate medical records protected from disclosure even to the family of an inmate. 

The same violations are occurring in the case of Pace, his mother’s lawsuit alleges. Reed, who is a former corrections officer, asked for all the video from that day that shows officers with her son. The video recordings being withheld include one recorded by a member of the emergency response team of the pepper spray being used on Pace.

Pace was autopsied two weeks after his death by the Boone/Callaway Medical Examiner’s Office and the toxicology tests showed methamphetamine and Narcan, used by officers as they tried to revive him. The report says Van Loo told the medical examiner’s office he investigated Pace’s death personally and that video showed Pace swallowing the methamphetamine.

“Plaintiff has been denied all video evidence of the events that occurred that day – including the video defendant Van Loo says exists – despite lawful requests for such evidence,” the lawsuit states.

The autopsy report lists the cause of death as accidental due to methamphetamine intoxication, the court filing states.

The lawsuit accuses Van Loo of lying to the medical examiner’s office by stating Pace was taken to a medical unit after he was seen ingesting the unknown substance, and that there was an emergency response in an attempt to revive him when he stopped breathing while in the unit.

Based on statements of other inmates in nearby cells, the lawsuit alleges “other inmates at Tipton were charged with spurious infractions because they said things such as ‘Rest in Pace’ or otherwise referred to Mr. Pace’s death,” the lawsuit states. “The correctional officer defendants did this to instill fear in the inmates to stop them from speaking about the brutality and callousness that led to Mr. Pace’s death.”

In the recitation of events after Pace was doused with pepper spray, the lawsuit alleges the corrections officers joked about his agony. When corrections officer Billie Webb told another officer, Randy Witt, that Pace was “saying he can’t breathe,” Witt allegedly responded, “I don’t give a f**k.”

A nurse “talked and laughed” with another corrections officer stationed outside the cell where Pace was held but never entered the cell to check on Pace. She only did so at the urging of inmates after Pace had stopped crying out for help.

“Defendant (Terry) Payne said to other correctional officers present words to the effect of, ‘make sure you get the restraints off of him before the ambulance arrives,’ in an attempt to cover-up that Mr. Pace was restrained when he suffered and died,” the lawsuit states.

The degrading comments about Pace by corrections officers did not stop when he died, the lawsuit alleges.

“An inmate in administrative segregation said to Defendant (Earl) Roach, ‘they killed that guy,” referring to Brandon Pace,” the filing states. “Defendant Roach responded, ‘we didn’t kill him. He was kinda like a dog that ran out on the street, and we were just the car that hit him.”

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, R-Carthage, summarizes his budget proposal to reporters in March. State revenues fell in the first portion of the fiscal year, raising concerns about future tax receipts. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri’s general revenue has lagged behind inflation for two years in a row. And with that gap widening, the next few months could determine whether state revenue will see a year-over-year decline for the first time in more than a decade. 

“September is a good sort of bellwether one for us, because that’s where we get quarterly payments from both individuals and corporations,” Dan Haug, Gov. Mike Parson’s budget director, said in an interview with The Independent last week. “There’s not a lot of significant due dates in July and August, so we try not to even really look at what trends are until we get through the end of September.”

Through Friday, general revenue receipts are down more than 3% compared to the same period in fiscal 2024.

Revenue grew 2.74% in fiscal 2023, while inflation was calculated at 3% by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fiscal 2024, which ended June 30, revenue grew 1.47%, while inflation was again pegged at 3%.

Missouri isn’t the only state suffering from sluggish revenue growth, according to a recent report from Pew Charitable Trusts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many states — including Missouri — enjoyed a surge of revenue that drove new spending and tax cuts.

Missouri enjoyed double-digit revenue growth for two years, a trend that ended in early 2023. Nationally since the start of fiscal 2023, the report states, state government revenues have fallen below inflation rates and below the growth trend seen before the pandemic. That is the first time in 40 years that has happened outside of an economic recession.

“There’s less fiscal flexibility, but it’s unclear whether states will be really under strain or not, but it’s going to be more difficult than before,” said Alexandre Fall, a senior associate with Pew who was the main author of the report.

As they wrote this year’s budget in the spring, the Republican-led legislature tried to limit ongoing general revenue spending to the anticipated revenue of $13.2 billion. But even after Gov. Mike Parson vetoed $1 billion, the budget anticipates spending $15.1 billion in general revenue, dipping into surpluses accumulated during the surge in 2021 and 2022.

House Budget Committee Vice Chairman Dirk Deaton, a Republican from Noel, said lawmakers must continue to limit ongoing spending to new revenue.

“If revenue is lower in the future we will have to look carefully at core spending items to make sure the state budget is on a sustainable path and Missouri is well positioned to balance the budget year after year,” Deaton said.

State revenue was down in the early part of fiscal 2024 but ended up with modest growth, Deaton noted.

State Rep. Peter Merideth of St. Louis, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, said future legislatures should commit to meeting state needs instead of hanging on to surpluses. Merideth is not returning to the House due to term limits.

Any spending cuts tied to the flow of revenue, rather than to the state’s total available resources, will fall heavily on education programs, Merideth predicted.

“We will cut education further,” he said. “Maybe it’s on the transportation line, or maybe it’s somewhere else, and we will cut higher education because those are about the only two slightly discretionary places that the legislature has to cut with large sums of money.”

Sitting on a surplus

On June 30, the general revenue fund held $4.8 billion, down $960 million from the balance a year earlier. That is still the third-highest year-end balance in state history.

Some of that money is committed to multi-year building projects, such as a $300 million mental health hospital in Kansas City, but most of it is unencumbered.

Other surplus money was stashed elsewhere. The state is holding $2.4 billion transferred from general revenue for major projects including rebuilding Interstate 70 and expanding the state Capitol Building. 

Another $1.8 billion was held in accounts that can be spent like general revenue.

The question for lawmakers and state officials is how to spend from surplus funds without exhausting them, said Liz Farmer, a fiscal policy writer at Pew.

“States are spending down balance dollars at a rapid rate,” Farmer said. 

The budget presented by Parson in January anticipated an unencumbered general revenue balance of $1.9 billion on June 30, 2025. 

Along with major projects, in the past two years lawmakers have used the surplus to fund smaller items in their districts. Parson has vetoed many of those items as he cut $550 million from the budget in 2023 and $1 billion approved this year. 

Future lawmakers need to resist the urge to earmark funds for their district, Merideth said. Stagnant or declining state revenue should mean extra funds are reserved for filling shortfalls in important programs.

“We have a surplus to work with in the short term but we haven’t hit an economic crash, which at some point will happen in the future,” Merideth said. “That’s when we’re going to be in real trouble.”

During the recession that began in 2008, revenues fell from about $8 billion annual to $6.7 billion a few years later. Haug, who has worked for both the legislature and the executive branch, said the state is in good shape in case of a recession.

“We’ve got a very healthy fund balance to help us get through a minor downturn, if there is one, although I’m not sure that there even will be one,” Haug said. “We’re in a lot better spot to weather this kind of stuff than we’ve been probably in any of the time I’ve been here.”

There are structural changes in the cost of state government that are permanent, thanks to the surge of revenue. 

The pay of every state worker hired before the beginning of 2022 has increased at least 20.7% under pay raise plans proposed by Parson. Some workers have received much larger percentage boosts, from a longevity pay plan approved this year, increases in night pay for workers in prisons, mental health hospitals and other custodial institutions and approval of a minimum salary of $15 an hour for all state jobs.

With state agency staff vacancy rates averaging more than 10%, the cost of running the state will go up as workers are added.

“Increased state employee pay and salaries, as well as permanent tax cuts, were two very popular policy choices that were made across states and were made in Missouri,” Fall said. “But now that we’re seeing all this excess revenue kind of pull back, and states are seeing decreased flexibility, it’s unclear what comes next.”

Missouri has passed two large permanent tax cuts, with income tax rate cuts enacted in a special session in 2022, and a bill exempting Social Security benefits from state income tax in 2023.

Together, that legislation will reduce state revenue by $1 billion or more annually. The next step in the phased-in tax cut passed in 2022 will take effect on Jan. 1, cutting the top income tax rate to 4.7%.

Those cuts will generate economic activity that will sustain revenues, Deaton said.

“Missouri has made very clear through our tax policy we are more interested in growing the bank accounts of the people as opposed to growing the amount of monies coming to Jefferson City,” he said.

With a new governor coming into office in January and new legislative leadership, tapping the surplus could be a temptation.

“Whoever is sitting in that governor’s mansion and whoever is sitting in the budget committee chair will make a significant difference and it’s hard to predict,” Merideth said.

Revenue picture

In the last full fiscal year before the pandemic, the Missouri general revenue fund took in $9.6 billion. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the total was $13.4 billion, 1.47% more than in the previous year.

Two of the main sources of state revenue — personal and corporate income taxes — saw a decline in collections in fiscal 2024. So far this year, the decline in revenue received so far has extended to sales tax collections.

The surge in revenue coincided with the highest inflation rates in 40 years and sales tax growth led the way, thanks to consumers spending federal pandemic relief aid along with higher wages and prices.

There is no evidence in the Missouri economy that would show the current decline in sales tax collections is anything but temporary, Haug said.

“People may be pulling back a little bit temporarily to pay off debt and things like that, but eventually the fundamentals are what’s going to drive it,” Haug said. 

Missouri added 62,400 jobs from July 2023 to July 2024 and personal income grew at an annual rate of 6.7% in the first quarter of the year. State GDP is up 1.6% on an annual basis and inflation, while slowing, continues, with prices nationally about 2.5% higher than a year ago.

“Long term, that’s what’s going to drive our revenues, and I think that’s still what’s going to drive our revenues,” Haug said.

With the end of pandemic restrictions, consumers are spending more on non-taxed services and travel, Farmer said, as well as substituting cheaper goods when they make purchases.

Missouri estimates its revenue each December for the remainder of the fiscal year and the coming year. A longer horizon for budget outlooks would make the state better prepared for possible trouble, she said.

“That is one of our key benchmarks for state fiscal health, and something that could be really helpful for assessing what these impacts on personal income tax and those cuts look like for the state down the line for revenue,” she said.

A longer-term outlook may be helpful, Deaton said, but experience shows that the short-term estimates aren’t particularly accurate.

“There have been times they were very close and other years when estimates missed badly,” Deaton said. “The further you extend out, the greater the margin of error.”

Initiative campaigns are pouring money into television advertising now that all court challenges are over. The Independent’s ad sale tracking shows $9.1 million has been spent so far, with millions more likely as the election approaches (Getty Images).

Missouri’s November ballot is now set, and initiative campaigns are ramping up spending to convince voters to pass the proposals.

The first to go on the air last week was Winning for Missouri Education, the committee funded by online sports gambling companies for Amendment 2, which would legalize betting on college and professional games.

The committee spent $1.2 million for ads in every media market except north-central and northeast Missouri and another $4.7 million reserving air time through the Nov. 5 election.

Two other initiative campaigns — Amendment 3, which would restore abortion rights, and for Proposition A, to boost the minimum wage and require businesses to provide paid sick and family leave —  are making major ad buys for October. Ads to promote passage Amendment 3 will also begin this week in several markets.

Opposition groups are forming to counter those campaigns, but only a group opposing sports wagering, Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment, has bought air time. The group, which formed on Tuesday, on Friday reported $4.1 million in contributions from Missouri casinos to the Missouri Ethics Commission. The group spent $546,805 last week for ads that will run this month in Springfield, St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City.

Missouri abortion-rights campaign doubles its fundraising total since qualifying for ballot

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the committee campaigning for Amendment 3, has spent $3.9 million to purchase ads that will run continuously statewide starting with the week of Oct. 8. The ads that begin this week will run in the St. Louis and Springfield markets.

Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, the committee backing Proposition A, has spent $1.3 million for ads that will begin the week of Oct. 15.

The Independent tracks ad spending by reviewing documents broadcasters must file daily with the Federal Communications Commission. Those totals do not include spending for streaming platforms. 

In the six statewide races, only U.S. Senate candidates Lucas Kunce, the Democratic candidate, and Josh Hawley, the Republican incumbent, have begun television campaigns.

Hawley, Kunce and a PAC supporting Hawley have spent $7.8 million on television since the start of August. Ballot measure spending so far totals $11.6 million.

The outlays to reserve time late in the election are standard strategies, Republican political consultant John Hancock said Thursday.

“You reserve from the back forward,” Hancock said. “You want to make sure you’re up as people are making decisions. It’s entirely possible that those campaigns will buy additional weeks as budgets permit.”

Hancock is working for the Osage River Gaming and Convention Committee, which is backing Amendment 5 on the ballot. The measure, which would authorize a new casino near the popular Lake of the Ozarks tourist area, is the only initiative campaign that has not followed up certification for the ballot with TV ad purchases. Hancock declined to discuss the timeline for doing so.

But after spending $4.3 million so far — all provided by Bally’s, which currently operates a casino in Kansas City, and RIS Inc., a major regional developer near the Lake of the Ozarks — a large outlay for advertising to support Amendment 5 is certain, said Jonathan Ratliff, a Republican consultant who is not currently working on any ballot measure campaigns.

“My rule always when you’re putting these together is if you’re not willing to spend the last million, you shouldn’t pay for the first million,” Ratliff said.

The sports wagering amendment, which survived a court challenge questioning whether it received enough signatures, is using the promise of more money for education in its first ad. Ads from the opposition group, Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment, argue that promise won’t be kept.

The ad now running for the sports wagering initiative features a former teacher and promises it “will raise tens of millions of dollars every year for our classrooms, helping increase teacher pay.”

The fiscal note summary voters will see on the ballot estimates it will bring in $11.75 million in licensing fees, money that would cover the cost of administering the licensing process. Any extra in that fund goes to support veterans programs, including veterans nursing homes.

The net winnings from wagers would be taxed at 10%, which the fiscal summary estimates to be in a range of no new money up to $28.9 million annually. The tax would be applied after gambling companies deduct promotional costs like free wagers for new accounts.

A similar tax structure in Kansas has generated $18.2 million in revenue on $4.1 billion wagered since sports betting became legal in that state in September 2022.

“In reality, Amendment 2 contains no guarantees that a single penny will go to our schools,” Brooke Foster, spokeswoman for the anti-sports wagering committee, said in a news release.

Under the Missouri Constitution, all taxes on casino gambling and the state’s share of lottery ticket sales must be spent on education programs. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the 21% tax on money won by casinos brought in $357.6 million and the lottery produced $388.8 million.

Lawmakers appropriated $8.7 billion from all funds for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and $1.4 billion for the Department of Higher Education.

There is nothing in the amendment that prevents lawmakers from reducing current spending by the amount of new revenue produced by sports wagering.

The sports wagering amendment will keep its promise to bring in tens of millions each year, spokesman Jack Cardetti said. There is little likelihood lawmakers will reduce current spending on education, he contends.

The new revenue could be a significant part of the $100 million needed as supplemental spending for public schools in the current fiscal year, Cardetti said.

Winning for Missouri Education spent $6 million for the signature campaign to get on the ballot, all from the two major online sports betting platforms, DraftKings and FanDuel and their parent companies. 

The $3.52 million contribution from DK Crown Holdings on Aug. 15 is the largest political donation in Missouri this year. BetFair Interactive, owner of FanDuel, added $1.5 million on Thursday.

The ads will run in every market in the state, Cardetti said.

“We’re going to be making sure that Missourians in every corner of the state know how important it is that Missouri doesn’t have sports betting,” he said. “As we sit here today, seven of our eight neighboring states have legalized sports betting, and those dollars are making improvements in those states. Missourians are missing out.

Changes to voting laws are pushing campaigns to spend money earlier, Hancock said. No-excuse absentee voting begins Oct. 22.

“I no longer think it makes practical sense to buy the last two weeks only,” he said. “You’ve got to have at least three.”

Ballot measure campaigns have two goals with their spending plans, Ratliff said. The first is to give an impression of invincibility with heavy rotations for their ads. The idea is to scare off  opposition campaigns.

Ballot measures are easier to defeat than to pass, Ratliff said.

“If any of these groups have any opposition, it makes it a lot harder for them to be successful, especially something like the casino and sports betting stuff,” Ratliff said. “If they don’t have opposition, they have a much, much better chance of passing. Even the slimmest amount of opposition could really knock those back and keep them from passing.”

The key for the ad campaigns, of course, is to get the message seen. And the success of the Kansas City Chiefs is making their game broadcasts some of the most costly any campaign can buy.

Hawley spent $75,000 to run one 30-second spot on KSHB in Kansas City during the Chiefs’ opening game. Missourians for Constitutional Freedom spent $50,000 to reserve two ads during the Oct. 27 game against the Las Vegas Raiders on KMOV in St. Louis.

And it cost Winning for Missouri Education $30,000 for two ads on KJFX in Joplin during the Oct. 20 game against the San Francisco 49ers, the team the Chiefs defeated in this year’s Super Bowl.

Streaming services, cable channels and digital recording mean many viewers are choosing their own schedule for television viewing. But audiences still tune in to live sporting events, Ratliff said.

“They’re gonna watch that live, so they’re worth a lot more,” he said. “Those ads are crazy expensive, and you’re going to see those ads are more valuable because you’re gonna have eyes on it.”

This article has been updated to include spending reported by television stations on Sept. 15.

Rebecca Varney stands on the porch of her home in Edgar Springs in this 2020 photo. A judge has ordered the city to pay her and her attorney almost $80,000 for banning her from City Hall. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

A small Missouri city must deplete its bank accounts — except for enough money to keep the police force intact — to pay a judgment that found it violated a resident’s First Amendment rights and the Missouri Sunshine Law, a court ruled last week.

Phelps County Circuit Judge John Beger directed Edgar Springs to pay $47,886 immediately, put a tax increase on the November ballot and dedicate all general revenue of more than $2,500 a month to satisfying the $79,716 judgment entered in December 2023.

“Where, as here, a court of record has issued a judgment against a municipality, the municipality has both a legal and moral obligation to pay its debts and as long as there is no limitation on the municipality’s ability to pay those debts, the performance of this duty is not discretionary,” Beger wrote in the order issued Sept. 4.

In his 2023 order, Beger found that Edgar Springs — a town of 200 in southern Phelps County — had attempted to “intimidate and silence” Rebecca Varney by banning her from city hall for four years, and for holding several closed meetings with business that should have been conducted in public.

Varney, a longtime resident of the community, began looking into city finances after receiving a traffic ticket in 2018. She was concerned that the town’s police force was using traffic offenses as a means of generating revenue and began visiting city hall frequently to review documents.

Varney also circulated a petition for a state audit of the city, which found numerous problems, including Sunshine Law violations and financial management issues.

Beger ordered the city to pay Varney a nominal fine of $150 but also ordered the city to pay her costs in bringing the lawsuit.

The city filed an appeal, but dropped it in March.

Phelps County town drops appeal of $80,000 Missouri Sunshine Law judgment

In his order last week, Beger found that state law allows him to order the city to pay Varney all unrestricted funds, except the money necessary to pay the salaries of “the mayor, council, assessor, marshal, constable, attorney and a reasonable police force…”

State law also directs that the courts “shall make all necessary orders to secure the prompt and speedy payment of such debt.”

The city doesn’t pay the mayor or council a salary and has no marshal or constable, Beger noted. The city pays its attorney $1,000 a month and the two-person police force was paid $1,477 in the month of June.

Beger directed that all general fund money held by the city in excess of $10,000, and all new revenue in excess of $2,500 a month, should be dedicated to repaying Varney. He exempted accounts for the sewer utility, street maintenance and federal grants, which all have limits on how they can be used. 

“The court is sensitive to the fact that the city is small and has limited resources,” Beger wrote. “It is also sensitive to the fact that it was the city’s own choices that led to the final judgment debt it now owes to the plaintiff.”

As of Monday afternoon, the town had not made a payment, said Dave Roland, director of litigation for the Freedom Center of Missouri and Varney’s attorney. Roland uses money received for court costs in cases he wins for the center to finance new litigation to enforce the Sunshine Law.

“They have sent a proposal that said, well, we might be willing to pay you part of this, but it’s going to be subject to approval by the auditor’s office,” Roland said in an interview with The Independent. “And I responded, you’re under court order, and the auditor’s office is neither a party to the case, nor are they part of the judiciary, so they don’t have anything to say about that.”

Greg Dohrman, attorney for the city, did not return a call seeking comment.

The city has complied with Beger’s directive to place a tax increase of 30 cents per $100 assessed value on the Nov. 5 ballot. If approved, it would generate about $5,500 a year and last for four years.

The court cannot order the tax to be imposed, only that it be placed on the ballot, Beger noted in his ruling.

Interest on the judgment is accruing at 9% per year and the amount the city now owes is about $85,000, Roland said. If the city refuses to pay, he said, he will have to take them back to court.

“I told them in no uncertain terms, if you defy a court order, then we’re going to pursue the remedies provided that allows the city officials responsible to be charged with contempt,” Roland said.

Overall, Republicans in statewide contests spent almost $65 million during the primaries, compared to just $4.8 million in the Democratic Party (Getty Images).

The top three finishers combined to spend $27.5 million in the Republican primary for governor, with the winner, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, accounting for almost two-thirds of the total, newly filed campaign disclosure reports show.

Overall, Republicans in statewide contests spent almost $65 million, compared to just $4.8 million in the Democratic Party, where the only significant primary spending was in the race for governor, won by state Rep. Crystal Quade of Springfield.

The new reports, which cover the period from July 27 to Aug. 31, were due Thursday at the Missouri Ethics Commission. Federal candidates do not file post-primary reports.

The next reports are due Oct. 15.

Campaign finance tracking by The Independent shows that having the most money didn’t equal success in either party. It did for Kehoe and State Treasurer Vivek Malek, who spent $5.8 million from his campaign fund and joint fundraising PAC.

But David Wasinger of St. Louis, who won the primary for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Denny Hoskins, the nominee for secretary of state, and Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who fended off a challenge from Will Scharf, all won while being outspent.

In the Democratic Party, Quade defeated Springfield businessman Mike Hamra despite being outspent almost 3-1. Hamra gave his own campaign more than $2.1 million and spent $3.3 million overall, while Quade raised and spent $1.2 million through her campaign and joint fundraising PAC.

No other contested Democratic primary featured a candidate who spent more than $50,000 to win the nomination. And while some Democrats ended August with bank accounts comparable to their Republican counterparts, polls showing double-digit leads for the GOP in statewide races and the fundraising prowess shown by Republicans show the difficulties any Democrat must surmount to win in November.

The best-funded Democrats who file reports with the Missouri Ethics Commission are state Senate candidates. In five of the six districts being watched closely, Democratic candidates had more in the bank on Aug. 31 than their Republican opponents and more than any statewide candidate from either party except Kehoe.

Almost every candidate running a full-scale campaign for statewide office or the Missouri Senate has both an official campaign committee and a joint fundraising PAC. Official campaign committees are subject to contribution limits – statewide candidates can accept donations up to $2,825 – while the joint fundraising PACs can accept donations of any size.

Campaigns must observe other restrictions on donations as well. Corporations and labor unions are prohibited from contributing directly to candidate and political party committees, but may set up PACs for voluntary contributions from employees or members to do so.

Corporations and labor unions may also contribute to joint fundraising PACs and independent PACs that are allowed to contribute to candidate committees.

The $17.1 million spent by Kehoe and his joint fundraising committee, American Dream PAC, was equal to $64 for each of the 275,139 votes he received in the primary for governor. His two main rivals, state Sen. Bill Eigel and secretary of state Jay Ashcroft, spent $5.8 million and $4.6 million, respectively, which equals $25.46 per vote for Eigel and $28.15 per vote for Ashcroft.

In other races:

• Wasinger spent $2.7 million — $2.6 million of it personal funds – to defeat five other candidates. Hough spent $3.6 million. Wasinger spent just under $13 for each vote he received, while Hough’s spending equalled $18.14 per vote.
• Hoskins spent $241,768 from his campaign fund and benefited from $247,262 spent by Old Drum Conservative PAC. The best-funded candidate in the eight-way race was Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, who spent $640,000 in campaign funds and $934,000 from his joint fundraising committee, Missouri United PAC. Hoskins spent $3.11 per vote for his primary win, while Plocher spent $18.16 per vote and came in fourth.
• Malek’s $5.8 million in spending included $1.35 million in personal funds and equaled $21.17 per vote. His best-funded opponent in the six-way primary was House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, who spent $737,266 from his campaign committee and $563,121 via the Ozark Gateway Leadership Fund. Smith spent the equivalent of $10.27  per vote and finished fourth.
• The attorney general’s race was second to the gubernatorial primary in total spending. Bailey spent $1.3 million through his campaign and his PAC, Liberty and Justice, spent $5.3 million. Scharf’s campaign spent $1.7 million, and his joint fundraising PAC, Defend Missouri, spent $7.6 million. Another PAC Scharf used for joint fundraising, Club for Growth Action, spent $1.6 million on his behalf. Bailey’s total equals $16 per vote, while Scharf’s costs equal  $45 per vote.

Legislative Democrats have set a goal of breaking the GOP supermajorities that have two-thirds of the seats in the Missouri House and state Senate in Republican hands. That would require at least 55 seats in the House– three more than they have now – and 12 in the Senate – two more than their current strength.

In state Senate races for the competitive seats, Democrats avoided primaries while the GOP winners in three seats drained their campaign treasuries to win the nomination.

In five districts — the 1st and 15th in the St. Louis metropolitan area, the 11th and 17th in the Kansas City region and the 19th in Boone County — Democrats have campaign funds ranging from $550,000 to almost $1 million. No Republican in those districts ended August with more than $70,000 on hand.

In the sixth district considered competitive, the 23rd District in St. Charles County, the candidates entered September with similar amounts on hand. State Rep. Adam Schnelting of St. Charles, who won a four-way primary, had $42,762 in his campaign account and $30,962 in the account of his joint fundraising committee, Protect Our Kids PAC.

Democratic candidate Matt Williams had $40,266 on hand. Williams does not have a joint fundraising PAC.

Harry S Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

In September 1992, as I performed one of the perfunctory duties of my job as assistant city editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune — watching the nightly local news to keep up with our competitors — a startling story came on KMIZ.

Stephen Gaither, a spokesman for Harry S Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital, described to the reporter the hospital’s response to an unexpected increase in patient deaths in one ward.

I immediately called Gaither and asked him about the statement. He gave me essentially the same information.

How many deaths were involved, he didn’t say. What he did say was that a review had been completed and the hospital had nothing to hide.

Except it did.

Over 14 days starting on Sept. 26, 1992, the Tribune published 15 stories under my byline that followed the case from Gaither’s initial statement to an FBI criminal investigation of as many as 50 patients possibly murdered by a nurse.

When that figure was revealed to me in a meeting with hospital sources worried about an ongoing coverup, held in the law office of then-state Rep. Ken Jacob, I promised I would follow the case until the truth became known.

“The information I have is not legally conclusive,” Jacob said at the time. “But personally, after looking at it, it is horrifying even to think about the possibilities.”

In those first 15 stories, I was the first to name the nurse, Richard Williams, who had been removed from patient care while the internal review was underway. Williams was charged with 10 counts of homicide in 2002, but the case was dropped in 2004 when his attorney was able to show that a chemical cited as the basis of the charge can be found naturally in decomposing bodies.

The only time any of the families received even a modest amount of justice was in August 1998, when U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey awarded the family of Elzie Havrum of Fulton $450,000 compensation in a civil trial and excoriated Truman Memorial administrators for the cover up.

“I believe nurse Williams killed Elzie Havrum,” Laughrey said at the conclusion of the trial. 

She also said she was “convinced the VA staff was alerted to the relationship between Richard Williams and deaths prior to Elzie Havrum’s final admission.”

Now another journalist with a personal connection to the story is taking a new look at the case. In a seven-episode podcast called “Witnessed: Night Shift,” Columbia native Jake Adelstein and his co-host Shoko Plambeck narrate the story through interviews and archival reports. The podcast is published by Sony Music and Campside Media.

Adelstein, author of “Tokyo Vice,” is the son of Eddie Adelstein, a pathologist who initiated the internal hospital inquiry into the deaths in the summer of 1992.

Eddie Adelstein, as well as Gordon Christensen, the epidemiologist he asked to review the deaths for a common cause, and Earl Dick, the hospital chief of staff at the time, suffered years of harassment, retaliation and intimidation — first for internally, and later publicly, agitating for a true accounting for the deaths and the effort to cover them up.

The personal connection is just one reason for the podcast, Adelstein told me. If Williams is responsible for the deaths, he said, it means one of the largest cases of serial killing in U.S. history has gone unpunished.

“The case is not closed; there is no statute of limitations on homicide,” Adelstein said. “And what it gives the public is a question that they should demand answers to: what really happened on the night shift at the Truman VA and why did those who covered it up get rewarded and those who told the truth get punished?”

I enter the podcast in the third episode, after Adelstein presents a detailed look at how the string of deaths first were noticed, then reviewed, then denied, by the hospital administration. In one of the kinder things ever said about me, he describes me as the “custodian of the story.”

It occurs to me as I write this that it is the first time I have published something about the VA hospital deaths since the death of Christensen in 2020. But it also reminds me that since I am still writing about it, the case is not resolved.

I have vivid memories of events that mark important developments in the case.

One is my first encounter with Williams, at his home to confirm his identity as the nurse removed from patient care. 

Another is a cold February day and a night in a Fulton cemetery after I found that the FBI had exhumed Havrum’s remains for an autopsy. I wanted to get a photo of his remains being reinterred. When exhaustion overtook me, I left without getting the picture.

And there were a few moments of real personal anguish that maybe Williams, who continues to live in Missouri, was just the unluckiest person who ever lived and I had wronged him in print.

I remember when Christensen called me when he wanted to speak publicly for the first time. 

Christensen’s role in the story is central to the conclusion that nothing but Williams connected the deaths. He analyzed all hospital deaths over a three-year period, both the circumstances and the underlying medical conditions of each.

He concluded that the deaths associated with Williams, who worked nights, were of patients who were not expected to die soon — many actually were ready for discharge the next morning. And there was an infinitesimally small chance that the deaths were due to any natural occurrence.

Christensen called — after rebuffing all my previous attempts — when an inspector general’s report that reviewed his findings and investigated allegations of a cover up was released. It confirmed his analysis by saying he overstated the chance that something other than Williams had been responsible for the deaths.

But investigators said they found mismanagement, not a cover up.

I followed Christensen, Adelstein and Dick to Washington three times for congressional hearings concerning the deaths.

At the first, in October 1995, Christensen was brutal in his assessment of the inspector general’s report.

“The report is wrong because it is an incomplete, dishonest, biased, flawed and distorted presentation of the events that took place in Columbia,” Christensen said at the time. “The report is dangerous because acceptance of this report promotes the cover-up of this mess and endorses the VA’s policy of intimidation of whistleblowers.”

At the last hearing I attended, in March 1999, U.S. Rep. Terry Everett, an Alabama Republican, chaired a subcommittee of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and he said little had changed since the first in 1995.

“My concerns about the VA culture of tolerating favoritism, cronyism, harassment, and retaliation are a matter of record,” Everett said that day.

Throughout the 1990s, I tried to keep my focus as much as possible on the families involved in the case. In early 1993, when the FBI began exhuming 13 of the veterans who died under Williams’ care, I used a list of everyone who had died in the previous year at Truman Memorial to identify nine of them.

Calling their next-of-kin, I had to ask a very strange question: “Have you been contacted by the FBI about the death of your husband/wife/uncle/aunt/father/mother?”

For those who hadn’t been contacted, the question needed explaining. For those who had, I was usually the one who ended up answering a lot of questions because the investigators didn’t want to talk much. 

They just wanted permission to perform an autopsy. 

As part of my work, I found that veterans from Rolla, Cuba, Fulton, Columbia and many other places had died during Williams’ shifts. Two years later, I called the families again. No, they said, they hadn’t heard anything more from the FBI. 

To the FBI, they were the forgotten families, I wrote.

I visited Bea Forster in Cuba in Crawford County, who had had trouble sleeping since the death of her husband Charles, who served in the U.S. Army in the South Pacific in World War II. 

Agnes Leedom of Glenwood in Schuyler County recalled her husband Gerald, who played saxophone for a band called the Missouri Hot Shots when they married in 1936. His electric piano was still in her living room when we met in 1995.

I listened to Cindy Owens and Doris Bojack, daughters of Agnes Conover — a seaman in World War II — describe their anguish at not knowing how her mother died.

Bojack’s words describe how I still feel about the case.

“It just keeps nagging at you,” she said. “We need some closure, and we need to find out what really did happen.”

This article has been updated to correct Earl Dick’s name.

The Osage River casino is being pushed by a committee that wants to build a casino to compete with a planned Osage Nation casino in the same area (William Thomas Cain/Getty Images).

A proposal to allow a new casino to be licensed on the Osage River near the Lake of the Ozarks will be on the November ballot, a Cole County judge ruled Friday.

The initiative, which was initially found to be 2,031 signatures short in the 2nd Congressional District, actually did have enough valid signatures, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office conceded when a planned trial over the petition opened before Judge Daniel Green.

The proposed constitutional amendment initially failed to qualify for the ballot because of signatures disallowed by local election officials. An additional 2,230 valid signatures were found by the proponents, Osage River Gaming and Convention, by reviewing the rejections.

Signature verification is “a massive, messy process that does not always produce perfect results,” Chuck Hatfield, the attorney representing the campaign, told Green.

The proposal will be Amendment 5 on the Nov. 5 ballot and joins three other initiative proposals — protecting reproductive rights, listed as Amendment 3; increasing the minimum wage, listed as Proposition A; and legalizing sports betting, listed as Amendment 2.

There are pending court challenges to the reproductive rights and sports wagering proposals that could strike them from the ballot.

The Osage River casino is being pushed by a committee that wants to build a casino to compete with a planned Osage Nation casino in the same area.

“Today is a victory for the initiative petition process and for voters who will benefit from our proposed development at the Lake of the Ozarks,” the committee said in a statement issued after Green ruled. 

The proposal would amend the Missouri Constitution to allow a casino along the Osage River between Bagnell Dam and the confluence with the Missouri River. The constitution currently authorizes casinos only along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

The proposal would also override a state law limiting the state to 13 licensed casinos, passed in 2008 as a result of an initiative sponsored by casino operators.

The Lake of the Ozarks is one of Missouri’s busiest tourism destinations. The casino proposal is being bankrolled by Bally’s, which currently operates a casino in Kansas City, and RIS Inc., a major regional developer. 

Each has contributed about half of the $4.3 million raised for the petition drive.

The casino will support more than 700 new jobs in the lake area. The project, if approved, would generate admission and other fee revenue of $2.1 million annually, according to the language appearing on the ballot, and annual gaming tax revenue of $14.3 million.

There are also two constitutional amendments proposed by the General Assembly on the ballot.  Amendment 6 would give the courts power to enforce payment of fees that support retirement benefits for sheriffs and prosecutors. Amendment 7 would ban the use of ranked-choice voting in Missouri elections and restate the current ban on voting by people who are not U.S. citizens.

A polling location in Jefferson City the morning of Aug. 6 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missourians seem poised to legalize abortion and increase the minimum wage in November but are unlikely to embrace the Democratic statewide candidates who are among the ballot measures’ most ardent supporters, a new poll shows.

The proposal to enshrine the right to abortion up until the point of fetal viability in the Missouri Constitution drew support from 52% of people surveyed between Aug. 8 and 16 for the St. Louis University/YouGov poll. The minimum wage increase, to $15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2026, had even stronger backing, with 57% of those surveyed saying they support it.

The poll also found majorities supporting every Republican running statewide, who each held at least a 10-percentage point lead over Democratic opponents. Former President Donald Trump was selected by 54% of respondents, with 41% backing Vice President Kamala Harris. The poll gives Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe a 51% to 41% advantage over House Minority Leader Crystal Quade in the governor’s race.

The best-funded Democratic statewide candidate, Lucas Kunce, was 11 percentage points behind incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, with the poll showing Hawley with a 53% to 42% edge.

“I’d be very surprised if any Democrat won a statewide race this year,” poll director Steven Rogers said. “It’s not breaking news that Democrats struggle in statewide races in Missouri.”

The poll surveyed 900 voters and has a 3.8% margin of error. It included 69 questions, seeking views on major issues facing the state in addition to tracking approval ratings for politicians and testing election contests.

The results showed:

• The economy is the biggest concern for voters, listed as the No. 1 issue by 47%. The survey also showed 69% view the national economy as fair or poor and 71% give that rating to the state economy. Health care, at 18%, and education, 16%, are the second and third issues listed as top concerns.
• A plurality of voters, 42%, oppose four-day school weeks, but those aged 18 to 29 support it by a 44% to 35% margin. Voters 65 years old or older had the strongest opposition. A new law requiring a public vote to adopt a four-day week in districts in charter counties and cities larger than 30,000 people had overwhelming support at 77%, which was consistent across all demographic, income and partisan groups.
• Laws to require a background check for gun sales and banning minors from carrying guns on public property without adult supervision also had overwhelming support, 79% and 85% respectively. But voters oppose other measures to control firearms, including allowing local ordinances that are stronger than state law.

Polling by SLU/YouGov began in 2020, making this the second presidential election year for the project. Its last poll before the 2020 election pointed correctly to the outcome, but Republican candidates generally did better than the poll indicated.

Gov. Mike Parson was shown with a 50% to 44% lead over Democratic State Auditor Nicole Galloway and ended up winning by a 57-41 margin. That poll showed then-President Donald Trump with a 52% to 43% advantage over Joe Biden, with the final result a Trump win, also by a 57-41 margin.

Democrats are banking heavily on voter support for ballot measures, especially the abortion rights proposal, to help overcome some of the other disadvantages they face. No Democrat has won a statewide race since 2018.

Historically, however, ballot measures have only a marginal impact on candidate races, said Rogers, an associate professor of political science at St. Louis University.

“A presidential election year is probably the least effective time to have something else to boost turnout,” he said.

Ballot measures can drive turnout. Three of the most high-profile Missouri ballot measures this century — same-sex marriage in 2004, right to work in 2018 and Medicaid expansion in 2020 — were placed on the August primary ballot by governors worried about the impact of ballot-measure voters on November campaigns.

In 2004, the issue coincided with a titanic battle for the Democratic nomination for governor and 847,000 Democrats voted. In 2018, with no significant primary, 607,577 votes were tallied in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and in 2020, where there again was no hotly contested primary, 537,000 Democrats voted in the gubernatorial race.

In years with no high-profile ballot measures, Democrats since 2000 have averaged about 350,000 voters in statewide primaries for governor and U.S. Senate.

Republicans also showed an increase in primary voters in the years with ballot measures, but not by the same degree. In years without controversial ballot measures, the GOP has averaged about 530,000 voters in statewide contests for governor and U.S. Senate. The average for 2004, 2018 and 2020 was about 640,000 votes.

That data shows that ballot measures can impact low-turnout elections, Rogers said. Presidential election years traditionally have the highest turnout.

“Those voters may already be turning out, and so the difference that you’re making is probably going to be marginal,” Rogers said.

The poll found very few voters are undecided, so the target for Democrats will have to be voters who support the ballot measures but intend to vote for Republican candidates. The poll shows that about one-third of voters who said they will vote for Trump, Kehoe and Hawley will also support the abortion rights amendment and minimum wage propositions.

Democrats will have a tough time switching voters, Rogers said.

“There isn’t much evidence of what we would call reverse coattails for ballot measures,” he said. 

The only Democrat already airing television ads in advance of the November election is Kunce, who has spent $2.7 million through Tuesday, according to FCC records reviewed by The Independent. Hawley has spent $1.2 million on television ads in defense of the seat he won in 2018.

Hawley is in the best position he has been in any of the previous SLU/YouGov polls. His approval rating is 53%, which is 14 percentage points higher than his negative rating. That is the best overall number recorded, Rogers said.

He also had a 14-point net positive rating in July 2021 in the first SLU/YouGov poll after the Jan. 6 attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Hawley’s lowest net positive was two points in an August 2022 poll taken just after video of him running away from the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 riot was included in hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. In that survey, Hawley had a 46% favorable rating and a 44% unfavorable rating.

The only Republican statewide candidate who equals Hawley’s support is state Sen. Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg, shown with a 54-36 lead in the secretary of state race over state Rep. Barbara Phifer, the Democratic nominee.

Hoskins ran in the primary as a team with state Sen. Bill Eigel, who finished second in the primary for governor. Eigel’s combative style found an enthusiastic audience in some areas and that is likely helping Hoskins, Rogers said.

Hawley also has a reputation for being combative and that may explain why he is doing so well, Rogers said.

“Hawley is not Eigel, but he sometimes acts Eigel-like,” he said.

The poll found support for the abortion rights initiative, which is slated to appear on the November ballot as Amendment 3, is increasing. It is eight percentage points higher than found in a February poll, Rogers said. 

Amendment 3 has a plurality or majority of voters in most demographic, income and education subgroups, with only Republicans, as a group, and voters in rural areas of northeast and southern Missouri showing more opposition than support.

The abortion measure would overturn a Missouri law that took effect in June 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that provided federal constitutional protection for abortion. Under current Missouri law, abortions are only allowed to save the life of the mother or when “a delay will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”

Exactly how many initiative proposals will be on the Nov. 5 ballot remains uncertain. 

The abortion rights measure and the proposal to legalize sports wagering must survive court challenges, and backers of a proposal to allow a new casino near the Lake of the Ozarks are trying to overturn the decision that they fell short of the required signatures in one congressional district.

No hearing had been set as of Wednesday afternoon for the challenge to the abortion rights amendment. Attorneys will be in court Sept. 5 for arguments over the sports wagering proposal, which would be Amendment 2 on the ballot, and on Friday for the casino proposal.

With no legal challenge, the campaign committee for increasing the minimum wage, known as Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, has already begun reserving television ad time for the final three weeks of the campaign. Through Tuesday, the committee had spent $904,000, according to FCC records.

The minimum wage proposal, which also includes a requirement for businesses to provide paid time off to employees, is supported across all regional, demographic, income, and education subgroups. Only Republicans, as a group, showed more opposition than support. On another question, pollsters surveyed what voters thought the minimum wage should be in Missouri and the median was $15, the level targeted in the initiative.

Support for sports wagering, seen in 50% of those polled, was also widespread. Only one subgroup, voters in southeast Missouri, showed more opposition to sports wagering than support.

Each of the initiative campaigns is poised to spend millions to hold and expand the support shown in the polls. Rogers said he’s confident that effort will pay dividends.

“My anticipation,” he said, “is that as the campaigns become more active, and based off our previous polling, that support will only go up.”

Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick will have new powers to initiate audits of local governments under a law taking effect Wednesday (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

On July 23, State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick released an audit detailing how a former mayor of Excelsior Estates improperly paid himself more than $37,000 and funneled more than $200,000 to a business he owned.

During the course of their work, auditors found that the records for the village of 209 people on the border of Ray and Clay counties were in “total disarray with missing financial records (and) other vital city records stored in a makeshift camper trailer made from the bed of a pickup truck…”

The audit was conducted at the invitation of the village Board of Aldermen after an investigation of a whistleblower complaint showed possible wrongdoing. Without the board’s consent, the auditor wouldn’t have had the authority to conduct the probe.

But not every local governing body is so cooperative. And as of Wednesday, when a new law took effect, Fitzpatrick’s office will have the power to initiate audits of local agencies when an initial investigation shows “improper government activity” — including fraud, waste of resources or violations of law — or when a county prosecutor or law enforcement agency requests it.

Missouri lawmakers gave the auditor’s office power to investigate reports of improper actions by local government officials in 2013 but withheld the authority to force those officials to open their accounts for a full-scale audit. The only way for the auditor to follow up on the investigation was to convince the governing body of the political subdivision to request an audit, like in Excelsior Estates, or for a resident to gather enough signatures on a petition to force an audit.

The new law eliminates those restrictions. 

“This is not designed to give us unfettered access to auditing any political subdivision for any reason,” Fitzpatrick said. “It was to make things easier for taxpayers. If they’ve made a credible whistleblower complaint to us that there’s a problem somewhere that we investigate, that we could then initiate the audit instead of forcing somebody to have to go gather a bunch of signatures.”

The bill, passed unanimously in the second year it was introduced, originated with concerns about cost overruns at the new Francis Howell School District high school in St. Charles County, said the sponsor, Republican state Rep. Phil Christofanelli of St. Peters.

A school district was the only local government entity that the state auditor had discretion to audit, he said. The auditor’s office is legally obligated to audit every county without a county auditor.

If the cost overruns had been at a municipal construction project, Christofanelli said, only the willingness of the governing board or the determination of citizens to complete a petition drive could bring the auditor in.

For a small community like Excelsior Estates, the petition would have to include signatures from 25% of the city’s registered voters. For a city the size of St. Peters, the requirement would be 10% of the votes cast for governor in the most recent election, with a minimum of 750 signatures.

“The idea of doing something like this in a city like St Peters, for instance, is completely impractical, and you’d have to have a remarkable campaign put together to do it properly,” Christofanelli said.

During work on the bill, he said, he was told that up to 90% of petition audit attempts are unsuccessful.

The state auditor’s office will be taking on the new powers at a time when Fitzpatrick is trying to rebuild his staff, which had shrunk to 89 full-time employees – out of 167 authorized in the budget – when he took office. 

Fitzpatrick was elected auditor in 2022 after four years as state treasurer and six years in the Missouri House, where he was chairman of the House Budget Committee. 

In recent years, the audit output of the office, especially detailed audits of state agencies and programs, has declined significantly. 

During the first eight months of 2004, the office issued 27 audits and reviews of state agencies and programs ranging from elected official offices to tax credit programs and agency operations in determining Medicaid eligibility and the acquisition of highway right-of-way. In the same period of 2014, the number of state agency audits and reviews was 10.

This year, through Wednesday, the total was three – the operations of the attorney general and secretary of state’s offices and how the Missouri State Highway Patrol uses highway fund money.

The two factors limiting the number of individual agency and program audits are time devoted to the annual audits of the state financial report and the federal funding awards. Work that once took 18,000 to 20,000 staff hours in a year is now approaching 50,000, Fitzpatrick said.

That workload, combined with the staffing shortages, has reduced the number of individual agency and program audits. There are 10 agency or program audits in process, including the Department of Conservation, pandemic food programs and the cannabis programs within the Department of Health and Senior Services.

“It’s a huge report,” Fitzpatrick said of the cannabis program audit. “It’s going to be, in terms of the number of staff hours, what will probably be the largest performance audit that’s been done in the auditor’s office in recent history.”

The cannabis program audit should be released early next year, he said.

The routine work of the auditor’s office includes checking tens of thousands of local property tax rates against the legal maximums, receiving and publishing reports of spending by local taxing agencies and auditing counties that do not have an elected auditor. 

To help rebuild staff, lawmakers have added $4.2 million to the auditor’s budget over the past two years, increasing it to $13.5 million. That increase, he said, recognizes that the pay raises given by his predecessor, Democrat Nicole Gallaway, to retain staff is the salary level needed to attract new talent as well.

“They were adjusting the salaries to try to be more competitive, which needed to happen,” he said.

The new authority should not interfere with the statutory responsibilities of the office, Christofanelli said.

“Just because we give the auditor the power to initiate new investigations does not necessarily mean that if there are other matters that are not discretionary, that he would have to pursue those audits,” he said. “It just provides him the authority to do it, should the need arise.”

Missouri is being sued over a new law requiring drugmakers to deliver prescriptions discounted under the 340B program to any pharmacy contracting with a qualified provider. (Mint Images/Getty Images)

Three major pharmaceutical companies and their national lobbying organization are suing Missouri to block enforcement of a new state law requiring them to give medical providers unlimited access to discounted drugs for their pharmacies.

In four federal lawsuits filed over the past month, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Abbvie and PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, argue that Missouri lawmakers unconstitutionally intruded into interstate commerce with the bill passed this year.

Under the bill, drugmakers must accept orders to deliver medications to providers eligible for discounts under the 340B program, named for the section of law where it is authorized. The bill allows eligible providers to have an unlimited number of contracts with pharmacies to dispense their prescriptions of drugs purchased under the program.

“Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, Missouri has no authority to define who has access to 340B-priced drugs,” states the lawsuit filed last week by PhRMA in the Western District of Missouri.

The law takes effect on Wednesday. The plaintiffs in each case have asked for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement, but no hearings on the requests have been scheduled and only one case, filed Aug. 2 by Novartis, has had enough activity for the judge to schedule any proceedings.

Abbvie went first, filing its lawsuit July 22 in the Eastern District  — 10 days after Gov. Mike Parson declined to sign the bill and instead allowed it to become law despite his misgivings. The other three cases are filed with the Western District, which includes Jefferson City.

The lawsuits name Attorney General Andrew Bailey and members of the state Board of Pharmacy, which is responsible for enforcing the law. The board is given authority to investigate violations of the law and the attorney general has enforcement powers through the state Merchandising Practices Act.

“It is difficult to convincingly argue that doing what a federal program requires is an irreparable harm,” Maria Lanahan, deputy solicitor general in the attorney general’s office, wrote in a filing arguing against a preliminary injunction in the Novartis lawsuit. “To the contrary, when Novartis complies with S.B. 751, it is helping covered entities that serve vulnerable populations.”

Bailey’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment on the cases.

The board is relying on Bailey to respond to the lawsuit. The law is self-enforcing and while the board could write rules about how it is to be followed, Executive Director Kimberly Grinston said.

“The board does not have a timeline to promulgate rules and has not made a decision on whether rules would be promulgated,” she said.

The Missouri Hospital Association and the Missouri Primary Care Association have asked to intervene in the Novartis lawsuit and will likely seek to join the other three, hospital association spokesman Dave Dillon said Monday.

“We are evaluating each case and intend to reinforce the work done by the General Assembly on behalf of Missouri’s hospitals, other providers and the communities they serve,” Dillon said.

The 340B program was created in 1992. It had two components — drug manufacturers had to deliver their products at a discount to eligible providers and eligible providers could only use the program to provide prescriptions to patients they treated directly.

Eligible providers included children’s hospitals, as well as hospitals that were sole providers in their community or designated “critical access hospitals” by providing care that would otherwise be absent, and those serving large numbers of indigent patients known as “disproportionate share hospitals.”

Other qualifying providers include federally qualified health care centers — clinics that receive grants to support operations so they can base charges on ability to pay — as well as clinics that serve AIDS patients, black lung victims and other debilitating diseases.

The use of contract pharmacies started in 1996, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began allowing one contractor per provider as recognition that many providers did not have in-house pharmacies. But a change to allow unlimited contracting increased the number of contract pharmacies from 2,321 in 2010 to 205,340 in 2024, according to data from PhRMA provided to The Independent in June.

Nationally, pharmaceutical manufacturers sold nearly $100 billion in discounted drugs in 2021 and 2022. Discounts averaged 60% from regular wholesale prices, the lobbying organization stated.

The pharmaceutical companies focus their criticism on the disproportionate share hospitals, who often contract with for-profit pharmacies to dispense the drugs. Those hospitals account for about 80% of all drugs purchased through the 340B program, $41.8 billion in 2022 and $34.3 billion the year before.

Pharmaceutical companies complain that the discounts are rarely passed on to patients. Instead, insurance companies and consumers pay retail prices and the extra profit is often split between the pharmacy and the provider.

“Make no mistake, the boom in contract pharmacies has been fueled by the prospect of outsized profit margins on 340B-discounted drugs,” AstraZeneca’s lawyers wrote in the complaint filed last week. “In short, the widespread proliferation of contract pharmacy arrangements since 2010 has transformed the 340B program from one intended to assist vulnerable patients into a multi-billion-dollar arbitrage scheme.”

The drugmakers have fought the expansion of contract pharmacies in a variety of ways. When Novartis sought in 2020 to limit the contracts to pharmacies within 40 miles of an eligible provider, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a notice that it considered the limit a violation of the program’s rules.

An advisory opinion on contracting, later withdrawn, said the 340B program required delivery to a pharmacy on “the lunar surface, low-earth orbit, or a neighborhood…”

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania ruled in January 2023 in a case against the federal agency that pharmaceutical companies could impose limits on the number of pharmacies they would allow to purchase the discounted drugs.

After the 2023 ruling, Novartis tightened its rules to allow only one contracted pharmacy per covered provider, but only if the provider did not have an in-house pharmacy. Other manufacturers have imposed variations on the Novartis policies.

State efforts to counter the limits have ramped up in the past two years. Missouri is one of eight states to pass laws requiring drugmakers to deliver discounted medications to contract pharmacies.

Arkansas was one of the first. In March, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the Arkansas law requiring drugmakers to allow covered providers to have an unlimited number of contract pharmacies.

In the motion to dismiss the Novartis lawsuit, the Missouri attorney general’s office relied heavily on that ruling, writing that it shows federal law does not prevent Missouri from passing a similar law.

The four lawsuits use a variety of legal theories to assail Missouri’s new law. Along with allegations of interfering with interstate commerce and regulating in an area reserved for federal action, the Abbvie lawsuit argues that its property rights are being violated.

“These abuses of the federal 340B program raise obvious concerns because the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from forcing the transfer of property at confiscatory prices to private parties for their own private benefit,” the lawsuit states.

In the filing seeking to intervene in the Novartis case, the hospitals and primary care associations argued that the revenue from profits on 340B medications are essential support for their operations.

“Reducing access to those savings,” the filing states, “means hospitals are unable to underwrite critical but under-reimbursed services lines.”

Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Lucas Kunce and Republican incumbent Josh Hawley, converge Aug. 15 in the middle of the governor's ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

In his re-election campaign, Missouri Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley wants to use Democratic nominee Lucas Kunce’s successful fundraising effort as a weapon.

Since the start of 2023, Kunce has collected $11.2 million, all but about 3% from individuals giving in amounts ranging from less than $1 to the maximum contribution of $3,300. Hawley, who has raised a little more than $9 million through his campaign and joint fundraising PAC in the same period, has also collected more than 90% of his funding from individual donations.

That makes Kunce the best-funded Democrat in a statewide contest this year. He opened the fall campaign with nearly $1 million in television advertising that began a week before the primary. Hawley has countered with more than $700,000 in ad buys, as tallied by The Independent from broadcaster reports to the FCC.

A key strategy of Hawley’s campaign so far has been to paint Kunce as out-of-touch with Missouri voters and funded by out-of-state interests.

“It’s no surprise that Lucas Kunce has been outraising my campaign with the help of California millionaires, but I won’t back down,” Hawley said in a recent fundraising email to supporters.

In a face-to-face confrontation with Kunce last week at the Missouri State Fair ham breakfast, Hawley repeated his attacks.

“This guy, over 60% of his contributions come from outside the state,” Hawley said, “He’s taking money from Bain Capital, for heaven’s sake.”

“I have never taken money from Bain Capital,” Kunce responded. “I take money from individuals. Our average donation is $30. We have donations from all 114 counties.”

Asked about the attacks after he and Hawley separated, Kunce said it shows Hawley cannot win on a campaign that compares policy positions.

“He doesn’t want to talk about anything that he’s actually done, and he wants to just make up other stuff to attack me on,” Kunce said. “”We’ve never taken money from a corporate PAC, I can tell you that much. And so if Bain has a corporate PAC I have not taken money from it.”

The Independent analyzed the fundraising reports of each candidate to test Hawley’s attacks The analysis revealed:

• The majority of Kunce’s itemized donations are from outside the state, as are  Hawley’s.
• The list of Kunce’s donors includes some famous Hollywood names, including actors John Goodman and Jon Hamm, both born in Missouri.
• Hawley has promised to refuse donations from corporate PACs, a stance he adopted after dozens of corporate donors halted contributions to lawmakers like Hawley who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
• The statement that Kunce is “taking money from Bain Capital” is based on $5,800 donated to his failed 2022 Democratic primary race from an individual who listed the company as their employer.

Here or there

Each candidate’s report lists hundreds of donations of less than $1 and thousands below $10. The vast majority of that money is raised through small-donor conduits aligned with each party, ActBlue for the Democrats and WinRed for Republicans.

Those platforms have helped the parties nationalize races in individual states, and hundreds of candidates in each party raise money through them.

It is true that a majority of Kunce’s itemized individual donations are from outside Missouri, with about 38% of the listed donations and about 41% of the total. The list of almost 54,000 donations – with 20,529 from Missouri – includes many multiple entries for repeat donors.

Kunce said he’s got no apologies for where his donors live.

“We built a real grassroots movement around here,” he said. “And I think that Josh Hawley just doesn’t want to talk about anything that he’s actually done or proposes to do.”

Hawley’s list of individual donors, both since he joined the Senate in 2019 and during the current two-year election cycle, is weighted even heavier to out-of-state donors. 

Of his almost 55,000 individual donations listed since he took office, 23% are from Missouri, providing about 38% of the total for those donations. Since the start of 2023, only 22.5% of the itemized donations came from Missourians, contributions that equal 31% of the money Hawley reported in itemized receipts.

Asked whether voters should be concerned that most of his donations come from outside the state, Hawley turned back to his criticism of Kunce.

‘He does not represent our state,” he said.

Neither candidate reports the name of every donor. Federal law allows campaigns to omit the names of donors who give $50 or less.

Kunce does not disclose the donors of $6 million he has received and Hawley has not disclosed the donors for $2 million collected since the start of 2023.

California donors

Both candidates have reported hundreds of thousands of dollars from contributors in the Golden State, but it is by no means the main source of funding for either Kunce or Hawley. Along with Hamm, who regularly lends his name to fundraising appeals, and Goodman, who narrated a two-minute video for Kunce, the list includes Mark Hamill, the original Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and Michael Shamberg, producer of “A Fish Called Wanda” and “Erin Brockovich.”

“He just got another Hollywood actor to narrate a video for him,” Hawley said after the confrontation at the state fair, adding: “The guy is totally out of step in Missouri. That is my point.”

The Goodman video will not only show up in various media as an ad for Kunce, he is using it to showcase his message to potential donors.

“John Goodman is a born-and-raised Missourian who knows real family values,” an email appeal stated. “He learned them the same way I did, by growing up in a beautiful community where people took care of each other — through good times and tough times.”

In all, Kunce reported about $589,000 from California donors, while Hawley has $251,424 since the start of 2023 and $334,758 since he took office.

PAC donations

During his first two years in office, the portion of Hawley’s campaign finance report where committee donations are listed looked like many from both parties, with interest group PACs of various stripes chipping in.

The list of $91,000 in donations includes corporate PACs for companies like AT&T, Fedex and Citigroup and farm commodity PACs such as The National Cotton Council, the California Rice Industry Association and the National Sorghum Producers, among others.

But then came Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob broke into the U.S. Capitol Building while Congress was counting the presidential electoral vote. Hawley not only was the first member of the Senate to announce he planned to challenge the votes of several states, he was photographed with a defiant fist-raised encouragement to members of the group that eventually breached the security perimeter.

The reaction from some of Hawley’s biggest backers was intense and immediate.

David Humphreys, president and CEO of Tamko Building Products in Joplin, denounced Hawley as a “political opportunist” who used “irresponsible, inflammatory, and dangerous tactics” to incite the rioting that took over the U.S. Capitol Building. Humphreys and his family provided $4.4 of the $9.2 million Hawley raised in his campaign for Missouri attorney general in 2016.

Along with corporate donors who vowed to stop giving to the Republicans who objected to certifying the electoral vote, some donors, such as Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards Inc., asked for Hawley to return their money.

Since the start of 2021, Hawley has reported only a handful of corporate PAC donors and none since the start of 2023. He has received donations from lobbying interests – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the National Association of Realtors and the American Crystal Sugar PAC among them – and one union, the Teamsters.

Hawley has also taken donations from 21 PACs associated with other members of the Senate or prominent Republicans, including Working for Ohio, the leadership PAC associated with GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, and the Bluegrass Committee, the leadership PAC for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“You can go ask Mitch about our relationship and whether or not I’ve supported him for leader,” Hawley said in an interview at the Missouri State Fair. “I’ve never supported him for leader, and I’m not going to.”

Hawley said he wasn’t even aware McConnell’s PAC had donated this cycle.

“Fantastic,” he said. “If he wants to give me money to criticize him, I’ll take it.”

All of the leadership PACs that have given to Hawley accept corporate PAC donations.

Hawley said he doesn’t check where the leadership PACs get their money before depositing their donations.

“I don’t know what other people get,” Hawley said. “I can control what I get, and I do not accept corporate money.”

Publicly refusing corporate PAC funding while accepting donations from PACs that raise significant cash from corporate contributors is hypocritical, Kunce said.

“He’s laundering the money,” Kunce said. “The guy’s being a fraud about it. I’m proud of the way that we don’t take corporate PAC money, no federal lobbyist money and no big pharma executive money.”

Kunce has accepted 46 donations from PACs since the start of 2023 – 36 from PACs associated with unions and the rest from committees that have a partisan bent toward Democrats. The Democratic PACs all raise money from small donors.

Union PACs are different from corporate PACs, Kunce said.

“Union PACs are created to empower everyday people, to give power to everyday folks…and change who has power in this country,” Kunce said. “Corporate PACs are set up so that corporations can remain in power over the rest of us.”

Bain Capital 

The name of Bain Capital is a dirty word in some Republican circles.

The venture capital firm was founded and led initially by U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah – the GOP’s 2012 nominee for president and one of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal Republican critics.

In 2022, when Kunce sought the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, he accepted $5,800 in donations from contributors who listed their employer as Bain Capital. None of his individual donations in the current cycle are from people employed by Bain.

There was no significant carryover from the 2022 campaign to the present effort. In his October 2022 report, Kunce listed $26,350 in cash on hand and $164,983 in debts.

But for Hawley, those donations from 2022 are enough to justify his attack.

“When you suck money from Bain Capital, you may as well put ‘owned by Wall Street’ right on your chest,” Hawley said at the campaign stop in Boonville.

Kunce, asked about the donations, said every contribution from an individual represents support for his issues, not the corporate interests of the donor’s employer.

“We’ve never taken money from a corporate PAC, I can tell you that much,” Kunce siad. “And so if Bain has a corporate PAC I have not taken money from it.”

What it means

Unlike the 2018 election, when Hawley defeated Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, there has been little evidence super PACs – groups that can accept unlimited donations –  intend to make a major effort in the state.

In 2018, Hawley and McCaskill combined to spend about $50 million, with about $39 million raised and spent by McCaskill. Outside groups spent $76 million more, according to the campaign finance tracking site Open Secrets.

The dynamic could change if polls show Kunce’s early ad effort puts him within striking distance, or if national groups see an opening because abortion rights and minimum wage ballot measures impact other campaigns.

Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, left, confronts his Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, over who is ducking debates during a meeting Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, at the Governor's Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

SEDALIA – A confrontation between U.S. Senate rivals Thursday on the Missouri State Fairgrounds may be the closest thing to a live debate in the 2024 campaign.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican seeking his second term, arrived at the Governor’s Ham Breakfast looking for Lucas Kunce, the Democrat hoping to unseat him. 

He found him, and for about 20 minutes – until the emcee asked them and the mass of reporters clogging the main aisle to move – they jabbed at each other with personal digs, disputes about whether campaign ads are accurate and when, or if, they would meet formally before television cameras.

“It’s great to see you out of your basement, Lucas,” Hawley said at one point. “By the way, are you gonna do any campaign events around the state or just media?”

“Josh, why are you so weird?” Kunce responded. “Man, why are you so creepy?”

Over the two weeks since the primary election, Hawley and Kunce have been arguing about the location and format for debates. In the hours after Kunce won the nomination, Hawley called for a “Lincoln-Douglas style” debate at the fairgrounds.

Kunce, in return, said he would accept all invitations for televised debates, including one from Fox News, but declined to do so at the fair.

The State Fair Commission shot the idea down on Aug. 9 with a statement that it did not allow political events. Commission chairman Kevin Roberts told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the commission knew nothing of Hawley’s challenge when it was issued and never received a request to use the grounds.

The Missouri Farm Bureau, which has endorsed Hawley and donated $5,000 to his campaign, volunteered to host it at a location across the street from the fairgrounds. 

Kunce’s campaign, in a Wednesday letter to the insurance and agriculture advocacy organization, said such a debate would violate campaign finance laws that bar not-for-profit groups organized like the Farm Bureau from hosting debates. The law cited by Kunce says groups that endorse and back candidates financially cannot host debate.

“Lucas does not wish to expose the Farm Bureau or your members to unnecessary risk,” Caleb Cavaretta, Kunce campaign manager wrote.

During their back-and-forth, Hawley accused Kunce of trying to intimidate the Farm Bureau.

“Threatening the Farm Bureau with legal action is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever heard in a farm state,” Hawley said. “It’s unreal.”

“It’s unreal because it’s a lie,” Kunce said. “We didn’t threaten the Farm Bureau.”

The letter states the law could only be enforced by the Federal Election Commission and there is no allowance for a private lawsuit over alleged violations of the campaign finance law.

Kunce is making a second bid for the Senate after losing the 2022 Democratic primary. He is the best-funded Democrat in a statewide race and the only one with television ads airing.

Hawley, who defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018, used Thursday morning’s meeting in a fundraising appeal sent out about an hour after it ended.

“This run-in doesn’t change the fact that Democrat Lucas Kunce is sitting on a jackpot of cash, and so far, his campaign has outraised me 2:1 this year,” Hawley told supporters.

There are two other candidates running – Jared Young, on the ballot after petitioning to form a new political party, the Better Party, and W.C. Young of the Libertarian Party.

The back-and-forth on debates between Hawley and Kunce didn’t resolve anything.

“Let’s debate,” Hawley said.

“Let’s do it,” Kunce replied “We got all five, and I agreed to Fox News.”

“So, right over there,” Hawley said. 

“I’ll see you on Fox News, bro, we offered you a safe space,” Kunce replied.

One of the most substantive exchanges between the two was over union rights and worker protection.

Hawley, who supported the anti-union right to work effort as a candidate for attorney general in 2016, has done a complete turnaround since the overwhelming vote against right to work in the August 2018 primary.

“Missouri, No. 1, we voted not to be a right to work state,” Hawley said Thursday, explaining his position. “No. 2, I don’t think it’s fair to ask union organizers that organize for people who are not putting in union dues. When you get a union contract, it’s for all the workers in the shop, in the organization, that if a bunch of those people don’t pay dues, and yet they get the benefit of the contract, I just think that’s not fair.” 

Hawley has won the support of the national Teamsters Union, which gave his campaign $5,000 in March from its PAC.

Hawley also promoted his proposal to increase the national minimum wage to $15 an hour at companies that have more than $1 billion in annual receipts.

“We ought to be raising the national minimum wage and protecting workers,” Hawley said.

Kunce, who has taken $80,000 in donations from16 different union PACs, said Hawley’s love of unions is an election-year conversion.

When the Senate voted in 2022 on the CHIPS Act, Kunce said, then-U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt supported requiring prevailing wages to be paid on projects initiated under the law while Hawley opposed it.

Prevailing wages are required on major public construction projects to prevent unfair competition between union and non-union contractors.

“He was a right to work candidate,” Kunce said. “He doesn’t believe in labor. In fact, he’s called half of labor hostage takers…He’s tried to remake himself in an election year because he knows that taking away our rights is not something that people want, and he’s scared about it.”

Bill DeWitt III, president of the St. Louis Cardinals, foreground, testifies in favor of sports wagering alongside Todd George, executive vice president of Penn National Gaming, center, and Jeremy Kudon, president of the Sports Betting Alliance, during a legislative hearing in April 2022 (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

An end run around the Missouri General Assembly has the nation’s two largest sports books driving hard to their goal of crossing home plate with a big payday.

A constitutional amendment to legalize sports wagering will be Amendment 2 on the Nov. 5 ballot, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office said Tuesday, after finding that backers had enough signatures in six congressional districts to qualify.

And a proposal for a higher minimum wage will be on the ballot as Proposition A. It is the third time a measure to increase the minimum wage has been before voters. It has been successful both times previously and this time it is paired with a requirement that all employers provide paid time off to their workers at the rate of one hour for every 30 hours worked.

A third initiative, to allow a new casino to be licensed on the Osage River near the Lake of the Ozarks, did not make the ballot. The casino, intended to compete directly with a planned Osage Nation casino, was 2,031 valid signatures short in the 2nd Congressional District.

Organizers of the initiative under the name Osage River Gaming and Convention issued a statement that they are considering their next move. 

“We are confident that after all the signatures are counted and verified we will appear on the November 2024 ballot,” spokesman Ed Rhode said in the statement.

Each initiative needed to hit a minimum number of signatures in six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts to make the ballot. There were 11,732 signatures that were deemed invalid in the submissions for the 2nd District.

A constitutional amendment intended to protect reproductive rights, including the right to an abortion, was also certified. Barring a reversal on the Osage casino, there will be four proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot and one statutory change, the minimum wage petition. Each measure placed on the ballot will require a majority of votes to pass.

The sports wagering initiative was launched late last year after major sports teams and casino companies were frustrated again in passing legislation. The public-facing part of the campaign has been taken by the major pro sports teams, but the money – $6.3 million for the signature campaign – has been provided by the two largest online sports wagering platforms, FanDuel and DraftKings.

“Missouri is now just one step away from joining most other states in legalizing sports betting and being able to provide millions of dollars to Missouri classrooms,” Bill DeWitt III, president of the St. Louis Cardinals, said in a statement issued by the Winning for Missouri Education campaign. “On behalf of all six of Missouri’s professional sports teams, I would like to thank everyone who signed a petition to get this on the ballot.”

Each of those six teams would be able to offer fans a branded wagering platform and receive exclusive advertising rights in and near their stadiums. The online wagering platforms could be licensed to operate independent of the teams and casinos, which would also receive the ability to apply for a license.

The money won by the gaming industry would be taxed at 10% of the net after promotions and other costs. In Kansas, which legalized sports wagering in 2022, a similar taxing structure brought in $9.8 million for $172 million wagered during June.

The ballot language anticipates Missouri revenue would be up to $28.9 million annually that would be spent on education programs.

Sports wagering has been legalized in 38 states and the District of Columbia since the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down federal laws banning sports betting nationally. Large numbers of fans have crossed into Illinois and Kansas to place wagers.

“By keeping sports betting dollars in-state, we can invest in our students and communities and ensure a brighter future for Missouri,” campaign spokesman Jack Cardetti said.

The minimum wage and paid leave proposal builds on successful efforts in 2006 and 2018 to boost the pay of Missouri’s lowest wage workers. 

The 2006 change set the wage at $6.50 an hour at a time when the federal minimum wage was $5.15 an hour. It also included indexing for inflation, which had increased the minimum to $7.80 an hour by 2018.

That year, voters approved a measure boosting the minimum wage to $8.60, with built-in boosts to $12 an hour by the start of 2023. The current rate, $12.30 an hour, is because of a cost-of-living adjustment applied Jan. 1.

If approved, the minimum wage would go to $13.75 an hour on Jan. 1 and go up again to $15 an hour on Jan. 1, 2026. After that, it would again be indexed for inflation.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and it has not been increased since 2009.

In a statement after the certification, backers said the proposal will make families more secure financially and healthier because workers will be able to stay home if they are sick or a loved one needs care.

“Allowing workers to earn paid sick days and increasing the minimum wage is a huge step in the right direction,” Lora Gulley, director of community mobilization and advocacy at Generate Health in St Louis, said in the statement.

It cost backers $855,000 to put Proposition A on the ballot and the campaign fund had $1 million on hand on June 30. More than $1 million of the money raised has been donated by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a Washington D.C.-based liberal dark money organization.

Ballot language for a proposed constitutional amendment banning non-citizen and ranked-choice voting will not be changed, a judge ruled Monday (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

The ballot language written by lawmakers for a proposed constitutional amendment stating “only citizens of the United States” can vote and banning ranked-choice voting is fair and should be on the Nov. 5 ballot without changes, a Cole County judge ruled Monday.

The “fair ballot language” summary written by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft also correctly conveys the central features of the measure, which will be Amendment 7 on the ballot, Circuit Judge Cotton Walker wrote in an 11-page decision.

The summary statement for the proposal, Walker wrote, “is not untrue or partial, and it does not use language that is intentionally argumentative or likely to create prejudice for the measure nor does it incorrectly describe SJR78.”

Two voters, one from St. Louis and one from Webster Groves, sued over the language, arguing that it is imprecise in its references to the current legal status of non-citizen voting and omits the fact that it is currently illegal in Missouri for non-citizens to vote. The lawsuit named legislative leaders and Ashcroft as defendants in their official capacity for the 50-word summary written by lawmakers and the language intended to give a full description written by Ashcroft.

While the attorneys defending the language wouldn’t give a definitive answer on whether non-citizens can currently vote during the July 29 trial, Walker noted, “the court doubts whether the defendants or their counsel actually believe that non-citizens are currently allowed to vote.”

Lawmakers voted to put the measure on the ballot when they were unable to pass a more controversial proposal to change how a majority is calculated on constitutional amendments proposed by initiative petition. 

That measure also included the provisions barring non-citizens from voting.

The ban on ranked-choice voting is a reaction to a failed 2022 initiative to institute the process where voters are allowed to designate candidates as their second and third choices for an office, with votes for candidates who have the fewest votes distributed to their other choices in races where no candidate receives a majority.

The language written by lawmakers asks whether the constitution should be amended to:

• Make the Constitution consistent with state law by only allowing citizens of the United States to vote;
• Prohibit the ranking of candidates by limiting voters to a single vote per candidate or issue; and
• Require the plurality winner of a political party primary to be the single candidate at a general election?

The first bullet point “conveys the feature without bias, prejudice, deception or favoritism,” Walker wrote in his ruling. 

The challengers wanted “state statute” substituted for “state law” in the first point because a statute currently requires anyone registering to vote to state whether they are a citizen.

“The court does not believe a reasonable voter will be misled or deceived into what the measure will do or that the word ‘law’ is unfair and insufficient as it is used as synonym for ‘state statute’,” Walker wrote.

Missouri allowed non-citizens to vote from 1865 to 1924, when an amendment proposed by a state Constitutional Convention passed with 53.5% of the vote.

The language describing provisions on how elections should be run is also fair, Walker said. He rejected arguments that it should include a reference to a carve-out allowing St. Louis to continue using “approval voting” in local elections or that voters might think it allows only one candidate per office in the general election.

“The court does not believe,” Walker wrote, “that any voter will be misled into thinking that when casting future ballots if (the proposal) is adopted, that they can only vote for one specific person on the ballot and no others.”

The decision came a day before Ashcroft is required to certify whether four measures proposed by initiative had enough signatures to make the ballot. Three measures, to secure abortion rights, legalize sports wagering and increase the minimum wage and require employers to provide paid personal leave, were certified to appear on the November ballot. A fourth legalizing a new casino fell short. 

This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. to include information about other issues that will appear on the November ballot. 

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley calls on Democratic opponent Lucas Kunce to debate him at the Missouri State Fair during a Thursday campaign rally near Boonville. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

BOONVILLE – U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said Thursday that he will participate in moderated television debates with Democrat Lucas Kunce, but first he wants Kunce to agree to debate without moderators at the Missouri State Fair.

In response, Kunce said he will take part in the Lincoln-Douglas style debate Hawley wants, but first the incumbent Republican must agree to specific dates and hosts for future televised encounters.

By Friday afternoon, the Missouri State Fair Commission weighed in, releasing a statement saying it was unable to accommodate any requests for political debates during the fair.

Hawley “says there’s a debate at the State Fair — but there isn’t one,” Kunce said in response to the commission’s statement. “Josh Hawley is a fraud and a coward.”

That standoff leaves the likelihood of any meeting between the two – or one that would also include independent candidate Jared Young or Libertarian Party nominee W.C. Young – uncertain.

Hawley was unopposed and Kunce, making his second bid for a Senate seat, easily won in Tuesday’s primary election. Hawley was the first to issue a debate challenge, calling on Kunce to meet him next Thursday for a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate that would occur right after the Governor’s Ham Breakfast in Sedalia.

The Missouri Farm Bureau, which has endorsed Hawley, has offered to provide for the logistical needs, Hawley said to reporters after a campaign rally at the Missouri River Valley Steam Engine Association property near Boonville.

“I cannot believe that this guy Kunce will not just say yes to this debate opportunity with the Missouri Farm Bureau,” Hawley said. “I am doing him a favor.”

Hawley is seeking a second term in the U.S. Senate, defending a seat he won in 2018 from Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill. Kunce lost the 2022 Democratic primary to beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine, who was defeated in November by then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

Kunce has outraised Hawley since entering the race and is the best-funded Democrat running statewide.  Hawley holds a cash advantage built on fundraising prior to the start of 2023.

Both candidates have begun their television ad campaigns, with Kunce airing an ad highlighting his positions on economic issues and Hawley launching an attack on Kunce over energy policy.

During Thursday’s rally, attended by about 100 people, Hawley teased Kunce for refusing his debate proposal.

“He spent the last two days dancing and prancing and saying ‘oh, whoa, I need it to be in a studio. I need to have a moderator. I need it to be 71 degrees. I need to be able to put on my makeup,’” Hawley said.

In an interview with The Independent, Kunce said he will participate in the debate Hawley has proposed if the incumbent will commit, in writing, to join him for five televised debates.

“I will do his event hosted by his endorsers if he agrees to five televised debates in writing,” Kunce said.

The commitment has to be in writing, he said, “because we kind of know his tendency to skitter away.”

The Hawley campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the demand for a written pledge to debate.

On Wednesday, in response to Hawley’s challenge to a debate Thursday morning, television stations KSDK in St. Louis and KSHB in Kansas City offered to moderate and televise a debate from the fairgrounds. The offer shifted the time to 7 p.m.

The candidates have also been offered televised debates by Gray Media, owner of five television stations with a Missouri market, public television stations, the League of Women Voters and Fox News. Kunce said he has accepted all offers but Hawley has not.

“The only thing I’ve heard is that he’s willing to do a non-debate hosted by one of his own endorsers on a Thursday morning when it’s not going to be covered by any television or in prime time,” Kunce said.

Hawley said he is not dodging televised debates with moderators.

“We’ll do a lot of them, I expect,” he said.

Hawley said there is a commitment from a broadcaster with several stations to put the State Fair debate on the air, but he did not name the company. Any other broadcaster who wants to provide live coverage is also welcome, he said.

Under a Lincoln-Douglas debate format, one candidate starts with lengthy remarks, followed by the other. The candidate who goes first is given time for a rebuttal. In 1858, the debates lasted three hours, with each receiving 90 minutes.

Hawley said his proposal is for a shorter time, 60 to 90 minutes total, with time for audience questions.

“Let people ask questions, and then go back and forth,” Hawley said.

The format would give Kunce the opportunity to demand a firm commitment to dates for future debates. It needs to be in writing because Hawley could make a promise but back out, Kunce said.

“That would be fine,” he said, “except that that debate is probably not going to be televised, and no one’s going to see that, or know about that.”

This story was updated at 3:56 p.m. to include comments from the Missouri State Fair Commission.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, left, is sparring with his Democratic challenger Lucas Kunce, right, over the timing and format of debates in their U.S. Senate race. (phots by Drew Angerer/Getty Images and Madeline Carter/Missouri Independent).

The question of when – or whether – Missouri’s U.S. Senate candidates will debate opened up the fall campaign, with incumbent Republican Josh Hawley challenging Democratic nominee Lucas Kunce to an outdoor clash without moderators and Kunce calling for five televised events.

Kunce, who is making his second run for the Senate, easily won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, while Hawley was unopposed for a second term as the Republican nominee. There will be an independent candidate, Jared Young, on the ballot under the Better Party label, as well as Libertarian W.C. Young.

In a social media post right after the Democratic primary was called for Kunce, Hawley called on his Democratic rival  to meet him Aug. 15 after the Governor’s Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair. 

“No fancy studio or moderators,” Hawley wrote. “Just the two of us on a trailer. Lincoln-Douglas style. I’ll bring the trailer. I’ll even let Kunce go first.”

Kunce did not accept the challenge but he did not refute it, either. In a response, Kunce called on Hawley to accept a debate invitation from Fox News and commit to five televised debates in all.

Connor Lounsbury, a senior adviser to Kunce’s campaign, said there is only one condition for Kunce to debate – that it be televised.

“We’re fine being on a trailer,” Lounsbury said. “Let’s just make sure a TV station can capture it.”

On Wednesday, Kunce publicly accepted an invitation from KSDK in St. Louis and KSHB in Kansas City for a moderated debate at 7 p.m. Aug. 15 at the fairgrounds in Sedalia. He also agreed to participate in a debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Missouri in partnership with Gray Media, owner of television stations in Cape Girardeau, Kansas City, Springfield, St. Louis and Quincy, Ill.

Lounsbury said Kunce intends to take part in the debate being staged Sept. 20 by the Missouri Press Association at its annual convention in Springfield.

The press association traditionally invites all candidates who will be on the ballot but whether any of the televised debates will include candidates other than Hawley or Kunce is uncertain. The League of Women Voters news release about the invitation states that it was sent to candidates “who won the August primary and received more than 100,000 votes.”

W.C. Young received only 2,421 votes. Jared Young is on the ballot after petitioning to form a new party and loaning his campaign $765,000 and raising another $164,000.

But his totals are only a fraction of what both Kunce and Hawley have raised. Kunce has raised $11.2 million since launching his campaign early last year, more than Hawley has raised since the start of 2023. Banked funds from earlier years gave Hawley the edge in available cash at the last report, $5.7 million to $4.2 million on hand for Kunce.

Kunce was the first candidate at any level in Missouri to buy air time for the November election. On Tuesday, his campaign spent $100,000 for a week’s worth of ads in the Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield markets. That is in addition to $265,000 in ads during the final week of the primary.

Hawley responded with ad purchases Wednesday in central Missouri, Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield. The total was not available Thursday morning.

The KSDK/KSHB offer had a 7 p.m. Wednesday deadline for acceptance, Alicia Elsner, general manager of KSDK wrote to the Hawley and Kunce campaigns. The stations needed the time to make scheduling changes and promote the debate, she wrote.

Kunce sent his acceptance, Elsner said in response to an email from The Independent. Hawley had not yet sent a response as of 7:45 p.m., she said.

“I remain hopeful both candidates will accept by tomorrow morning,” Elsner said.

At his general election kickoff event in Ozark, Hawley accused Kunce of being afraid to debate outside a television studio without moderators.

The State Fair debate would be with “no fancy studios, no moderators, just you and me, man, mano-a-mano, Lincoln-Douglas style,” Hawley said.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates are among the most consequential events of the years immediately preceding the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, a one-term former congressman representing the new Republican Party, debated U.S. Sen. Stephen Douglas, a Democrat, on seven occasions in 1858 as they contested Douglas’ Illinois Senate seat.

One of the candidates would open with a one-hour speech, followed by 90 minutes for the opponent and concluding with 30 minutes more for the candidate who went first.

Lincoln lost but the election made him a national figure and helped propel him to the presidency two years later.

Hawley, in Ozark, said Kunce’s record is “nutty” and he can’t cope with an in-depth discussion.

“Come defend it in front of the people of Missouri,” Hawley said. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Don’t hide behind the cameras.”

Kunce isn’t afraid, Lounsbury said. He just wants to debate in a format where voters statewide can see it, he said. 

The KSDK/KSHB offer can achieve that and what Hawley wants – a debate before a State Fair audience, Lounsbury said.

“Hawley gets the location he wants and if he wants to do it on a flatbed, have at it,” Lounsbury said.

This article has been updated to correct that Gray Media and the League of Women Voters offered to sponsor one debate.

Patrick McKenna, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, on Wednesday told the Highways and Transportation Commission that he intends to resign after almost nine years on the job. (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Patrick McKenna, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, on Wednesday said he will leave his post after almost nine years on the job.

McKenna announced his decision near the end of a meeting of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission in Poplar Bluff. He did not give a date for his departure and did not return messages seeking comment on his decision.

“I’ve never been more confident in the future of MoDOT… and with the leadership of the commission,” McKenna said. “It’s been a blessing for me to be a part of this, and it’s also a good time to recognize when it’s time to move on, and that’s what I’ll be doing.”

McKenna did not say whether he will be retiring or seeking other work. He said he had contacted the commission members individually on Tuesday to let them know his intentions.

“I have some family obligations to attend to, and I feel that the department is in good hands,” he told the commission.

McKenna was the deputy commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation when he was hired in 2015. He has presided over a massive expansion of the department’s highway construction program, known as the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, or STIP. When McKenna arrived in 2015, commission chairman Dustin Boatwright said during Wednesday’s meeting, the program averaged $325 million annually.

The program approved for the 2025 through 2029 fiscal years averages $4.4 billion annually.

The expansion is partially due to a 2021 increase in the state gas tax, which so far has added 10 cents per gallon to the previous levy of 17.4 cents per gallon. A final step next year will make the tax 29.9 cents per gallon on July 1, 2025.

MODOT has also benefited from increased federal funding under an infrastructure bill approved by Congress in 2021 and appropriations of general revenue, including $100 million a year for low-volume roads and $3.4 billion in one-time allocations for widening Interstate 70 and Interstate 44.

“We have a historic opportunity in front of us with the funding that we have been entrusted with by the General Assembly and the governor, and there’s no doubt in my mind, this team that we have will execute that flawlessly,” Boatwright said.

McKenna has also had friction with the legislature. 

In 2021, the Highways and Transportation commission sued the Office of Administration when Commissioner Ken Zellers refused to allow the commission to implement a pay raise plan that carried a price tag of $60 million. The highways commission wanted to stem turnover at MoDOT and attract new employees.

The raises were not included in the department’s legislatively approved appropriations.

That led six state senators — including state Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin of Shelbina, who has since become Senate Majority Leader and is expected to be Senate President Pro Tem next year, — in a February 2022 letter to the commission, to demand that McKenna either resign or be fired.

The highways commission filed the lawsuit to test constitutional language that is unique to the road fund. The Missouri Constitution states that the money deposited in the fund shall “stand appropriated without legislative action.”

Last year, Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker agreed with the commission that it could use money in the road fund at its discretion. The decision is being appealed but no date has been set for oral arguments.

Commissioner Dan Hegeman, a former senator who signed O’Laughlin’s letter, praised McKenna on Wednesday for his professional demeanor in disputes with the General Assembly.

“He’s got a lot to be proud of as he takes on a new challenge that is going to be great for him and his family,” Hegeman said.

There was no discussion of who will take over as director or whether there would be an interim director during a search. McKenna stated there is a plan but gave no details.

“I know the commission has a plan that there will be no gap in leadership,” McKenna said. “I want the whole team to understand that it’s been an absolute blessing to be here.”

This article has been updated to correct the name of the State Transportation Improvement Plan.

A view of the Missouri Senate chamber from the visitors gallery (photo courtesy of the Missouri Senate).

Every incumbent Missouri senator challenged in Tuesday’s primaries won renomination, but Republican voters rejected sitting House members in five districts.

In the Senate primaries, a big money advantage generally, but not in every case, carried the day. One notable exception was in the 31st District of western Missouri, where incumbent state Sen. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville defeated two challengers with a plurality of the votes.

Brattin took 47% of the vote against state Reps. Mike Haffner of Pleasant Hill and Dan Houx of Warrensburg. Houx spent almost $600,000 from his campaign and joint fundraising PAC, roughly $100,000 more than Brattin and Haffner combined. 

“I am incredibly grateful for the dedication and love that was poured into this campaign from all our supporters,” Brattin said in a news release.

Primaries will test incumbents in year of historic turnover for Missouri Senate

With the primary results, Republicans are assured of having 16 seats of 34 seats in the Senate – 14 incumbents not on the ballot plus two districts where the primary winner is unopposed – while Democrats are assured of four – three incumbents plus state Sen. Angela Mosley of Florissant, who held off the challenge from state Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark in the 13th District in a battle between well-established St. Louis Democratic factions.

Democrats hope to pick up as many as three seats, which would give the Senate a 21-13 Republican majority.

In the House, unopposed Republicans are assured of 28 seats in the 163-member chamber, while Democrats have 18 seats where their nominee is unopposed. There are also two Republican districts and four Democratic districts where the nominee faces only minor party competition in November.

Democrats hope to pick up at least three seats from the current 111-52 GOP majority, which would break the two-thirds supermajority in place for more than a decade.

Along with Brattin and Mosley, Democratic state Sen. Barbara Washington defeated her challenger, former state Rep. Brandon Ellington, in the 9th District, which covers the east side of Kansas City and Raytown. Washington won about 79% of the vote and will face Republican Derron Black in November in a district that generally votes 80% Democratic.

And in southwest Missouri, Republican state Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove easily turned back the challenge from business owner Susan Haralson of Ozark in the 29th District, taking 77% of the vote. Haralson had made an issue of Moon’s focus on social issues and counted on a redrawn district to have a chance.

The winner will face Ron Monnig, a Democrat from Eagle Rock, in a district where former President Donald Trump took 77.5% of the vote in 2020.

The Republican House incumbents who were defeated Tuesday are state Reps. Chris Sander of Lone Jack, a two-term lawmaker who lost the 33rd District to Carolyn Caton; Tony Lovasco of O’Fallon, a three-term lawmaker who lost the 64th District to Deanna Self; Kyle Marquart of Washington, Missouri, a first term lawmaker who lost the 109th District in Franklin County to the man he beat in 2022 to take the seat, John Simmons, also of Washington; Gary Bonacker of House Springs in Jefferson County, a first-term representative who lost the 111th District to Cecelie Williams of Dittmer; and Lisa Thomas, a two-term member from Lake Ozark who lost to Jeff Vernetti of Camdenton.

Caton and Williams will be unopposed in November.

Sander, one of the only openly gay Republicans in the Missouri House, last year became the target of an effort to censure him by some members of the Jackson County Republican Party after he introduced legislation to repeal the portion of the state constitution that says the only valid marriages are “between a man and a woman.”

During the campaign, Caton criticized Sander for voting against bills to ban gender transition medical procedures for transgender minors and prohibit transgender athletes from competing in school sports according to their gender identity.

“I am the one true conservative in this race, unlike my opponent I have never questioned being a republican,” Caton wrote in one social media post.

The two Senate districts where the primary winner faces no opposition are the 27th District in southeast Missouri and the 33rd District in southern Missouri.

In the 27th, an open seat because incumbent state Sen. Holly Rehder ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor, state Rep. Jamie Burger of Benton defeated Jacob Turner of Jackson, who was making his second bid for office, and state Rep. Chris Dinkins of Lesterville, who had won four terms in the House.

In the 33rd District, open because of term limits, state Rep. Brad Hudson of Cape Fair defeated state Rep. Travis Smith of Dora.

Burger’s campaign and PAC spent almost two times the combined spending of his opponents, but Hudson bucked the trend, spending less than Smith but not falling as far behind in the cash chase as the candidates facing Burger.

In other contested primaries, House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson of Bonne Terre defeated state Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway in the 3rd District, open because incumbent Sen. Elaine Gannon declined to run again.

“I want to thank Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway for her service to this community and for running a spirited, positive campaign,” Henderson said in a news release after his victory.

Doug Halbert of Hematite is the Democratic candidate in a district that went about 69% for Trump in 2020.

The other districts where the better-funded candidates lost are the 11th District of Jackson County and the 23rd District in St. Charles County.

In the 11th District, Joe Nicola of Grain Valley, who has run for Congress and Senate in the past, defeated State Rep. Aaron McMullen of Independence and David Martin of Kansas City.

McMullen spent more than $500,000 from his campaign committee and joint fundraising PAC, while Nicola spent about $75,000. 

He’ll face State Rep. Robert Sauls, a Democrat from Independence, who was unopposed in the primary and whose most recent reports showed he had just under $160,000 in his campaign fund and almost $260,000 in his Independence Leadership PAC. 

In the 23rd District – home to defeated gubernatorial candidate state Sen. Bill Eigel – three-term state Rep. Adam Shnelting of St. Charles spent about $240,000 from his campaign committee and joint fundraising PAC to defeat State Rep. Phil Christofanelli of St. Peters, who spent more than $1 million, Dan O’Connell of St. Peters and Rich Chrismer of St. Peters, a former St. Charles County clerk.

The Democratic candidate is Matt Williams of St. Charles, a first-time candidate.

The 23rd District, which is considered competitive based on past voting, is one of the six Democrats must win to meet their goal of 13 seats in the upper chamber.

The 15th District in St. Louis County, open due to term limits, is another district targeted by Democrats. Former state Rep. David Gregory of Chesterfield, who lost a 2022 primary for state auditor, prevailed in a three-way contest against Mark Harder, elected three times to the St. Louis County Council, Jim Bowlin, a two-term mayor of Wildwood. 

Gregory spent about $450,000 on the race, almost double the combined spending by Harder and Bowlin. He will face attorney Joe Pereles, who was unopposed and has amassed a campaign fund of almost $650,000.

The bigger spender won in one of two open seat districts with primaries but the final primary fundraising reports will show who spent more in the other.

In the 21st District of northwest Missouri, two-term state Rep. Kurtis Gregory of Marshall spent almost $700,000 from his campaign committee and joint fundraising PAC to defeat three-term state Rep. Doug Richey of Excelsior Springs, who spent about $375,000. Jim Bates of Liberty is the Democratic candidate in the district that is rated 63% Republican based on voting history.

In the 7th District in Kansas City, state Rep. Patty Lewis scored a 2-1 victory over Pat Contreras, the Democratic nominee for state treasurer in 2016.

The most recent fundraising reports show Lewis had a slight edge in total spending, $292,000 to $267,000.

Joey LaSalle is the Republican candidate in the district, which is heavily Democratic.

This article has been corrected to show five incumbent Republican House members were defeated and that it was Jacob Turner’s second bid for public office.

Mike Kehoe, who voters chose Tuesday in the Republican primary for governor, speaks about beating the odds after walking into his election-night party in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Republicans ratified Gov. Mike Parson’s choice of successor Tuesday by nominating Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, rejecting the scion of a veteran political family and the disruptive tactics of the GOP’s most vocal faction.

Kehoe trailed Ashcroft in most polls until this summer, when the $16 million campaign warchest he amassed in his campaign fund and joint fundraising PAC enabled Kehoe to fill the airwaves, overwhelming opponents and surviving a late onslaught of outside spending.

On Tuesday, he bested his rivals with just under 40% of the vote.

“Fifteen months ago, people said we couldn’t win,” Kehoe told supporters gathered in Jefferson City Tuesday. “Our own polling showed us 35 points at an underdog… But we believed in our cause, and more importantly, you believe in us.”

Mike Kehoe says he’s the only Missouri GOP gubernatorial candidate interested in governing

The job now for Kehoe will be to bring his party together following his victory, especially bringing Eigel’s supporters into the fold. Kehoe endured attacks for his support of higher fuel taxes, votes to allow foreign ownership of farmland and used derisive nicknames like RINO (Republican in name only), “Tax Hike Mike” and “Kung Pao Kehoe.”

Those ads didn’t move Nick Schatzer of Ashland, who voted for Kehoe on Tuesday. 

“Look at our roads,” he said. “They need work.”

Schatzer said Kehoe’s background won him over. 

“I feel like government is essentially a business,” he said. “He’s run several businesses and been successful.”

While no candidate gained a significant advantage when the biggest voice in today’s Republican Party, former President Donald Trump, endorsed all three leading contenders, it did help deflect some of the criticism aimed at Kehoe.

Throughout the primary, Kehoe had his eye on the general election in a way his rivals did not.

“Missourians are a little bit sick of hate politics,” Kehoe said in a July interview with The Independent. 

Ashcroft was the first to concede shortly after 9:30 p.m., asking Missourians to “join me in asking God to bless Mike Kehoe, as he’s the Republican nominee for governor.”

Eigel conceded soon after, congratulating Kehoe and wishing him “success as you take on the responsibilities of leading our state.”

Kehoe is the youngest of six children raised by a single mother in St. Louis. His mom worked three jobs to support the family, he said, and when he was old enough he got a job washing cars at a local auto dealership. 

When he had enough money, he bought a struggling company that built ambulances, doubling it in size over the next five years to what is now one of the largest ambulance manufacturers in the world.

At the age of 30, he bought a Ford dealership in Jefferson City, putting down roots in the community and building the business over the next two decades. He sold the dealership in 2011.

He was elected to the state Senate in 2012 and was the chamber’s majority leader when Parson appointed him lieutenant governor in 2018. Kehoe won a full term as lieutenant governor in 2020. 

The Independent’s Rebecca Rivas and Annelise Hanshaw contributed to this story. 

State Sen. Bill EIgel of Weldon Spring speaks during a campaign stop in Columbia as he seeks the Republican nomination for governor (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

A company registered in Delaware that uses a Jefferson City mailbox and an Oklahoma telephone number this month added nearly half a million dollars to outside spending against state Sen. Bill Eigel in the Missouri Republican governor’s primary.

The Heartland Conservative Coalition LLC spent $438,259 since July 1, including $360,000 on television advertising, according to reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission. Those reports give only the amount of money being used in Missouri but do not include the donors or list any individual as a contact.

There is no Heartland Conservative Coalition LLC registered to do business in Missouri but there is one that registered May 8 in Delaware, a common location for corporate registration.

The group is just one of several from outside Missouri pouring cash into the GOP gubernatorial race and congressional primaries in the 1st and 3rd districts in advance of Tuesday’s election. The biggest outside spender in the governor’s race so far is Stand for US PAC, which The Independent reported Friday morning had purchased more than $2.5 million in the last two weeks in air time to boost Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

Candidates and independent PACs combined to purchase or revise previous broadcast orders worth almost $5 million on Thursday, according to reports filed with the Federal Communications Commission. 

The address for Heartland Conservative Coalition in its reports to the Missouri Ethics Commission is a mailbox at a Jefferson City Staples store. Messages left at the telephone number listed on the spending reports were not returned.

Most of the spending was for television ads in the St. Louis area, which includes Eigel’s home in St. Charles County. Aside from the television ads, Heartland purchased $68,000 of communications and polling services from the Kansas City consulting firm Axiom Strategies and its affiliated companies.

Axiom is one of several consulting firms working with American Dream PAC, the joint fundraising committee set up to aid Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe’s bid for the Republican nomination. The media buyer for the Heartland Conservative Coalition ads is Armada Strategies, which has been connected to Axiom in other races around the country. 

On the standard reporting forms filed with broadcasters who accept the ads, Heartland lists as its contact Wayne Ducote at a Washington, D.C. address that is also a mailbox in a retail mail and shipping store.

Ducote is chairman of the American Exceptionalism Institute, a nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors that distributed more than $11 million in 2022 to support Republicans around the country. Calls to the American Exceptionalism Institute were not returned.

The American Exceptionalism Institute was one of the donors to the Conservative Americans PAC, which in 2022 spent $1.7 million in Missouri primaries for the 4th and 7th congressional districts, according to the campaign watchdog, Open Secrets. The ads targeted state Sens. Rick Brattin in the 4th District and Mike Moon and Eric Burlison in the 7th District. Burlison is the only Missouri candidate the group opposed who won his race.

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, left, and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (official photos).

A national political group is pouring millions into Missouri to boost Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft in the Republican primary for governor, stepping in when his campaign was running out of cash and drawing howls from the backers of his rivals.

The Stand for US PAC began ordering television and radio time in the state in early July, first to broadcast an ad touting Attorney General Andrew Bailey, and then to boost Ashcroft in a fight over a new law signed by the governor that mandates steep discounts on wholesale prescription prices.

On its website, the PAC states its “mission in 2024 is to hold Republicans across the country accountable for capitulating to Joe Biden’s dangerous open border agenda.”

The group is airing two ads attacking Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and backing Ashcroft. The ads do not mention state Sen. Bill Eigel, the other Republican running a full-scale campaign for the nomination.

The Independent has tallied $2.4 million in spending by Stand for US on radio and television reported by on-air broadcasters to the Federal Communications Commission during July. Those reports don’t capture spending on digital platforms and political observers said the total across all media is in excess of $3 million.

Stand for US PAC is registered with the Federal Election Commission and the only donation this year is $1 million from Building America’s Future. It will not report the donors paying for the Missouri ads until mid-August, after the primary is over.

Stand for US has not filed a report with the Missouri Ethics Commission, and a spokeswoman disputed whether it is required under state law. Committees operating outside of Missouri are supposed to make reports to the commission when spending to influence a state election exceeds $1,500.

Its treasurer is Cabell Hobbs, also the treasurer of Save Missouri Values, a PAC that entered the 2022 U.S. Senate primary to spend $8.8 million late in the race on behalf of Republican Eric Schmitt.

“I appreciate the fact that they’re supporting me,” Ashcroft told The Independent in an interview Thursday evening. “I wonder who’s doing it, what’s behind it, but I’m thankful for anyone that wants to actually have a conservative leader for the state of Missouri.”

Kehoe’s campaign is furious.

“What secret promises has Jay made to secure this support and what do they get if he’s elected governor?” said Kehoe spokeswoman Gabby Picard. 

The outside help came at a crucial time for Ashcroft. 

When Ashcroft’s campaign closed the books on July 25 for its final report before Tuesday’s primary, it had $92,466. He had spent $800,000 since June 30. His joint fundraising PAC, Committee for Liberty, had $58,833 after spending $1 million.

Kehoe’s campaign, meanwhile, had $1.2 million left after spending $1.1 million. His PAC, American Dream, had $331,062, and had spent $5 million.

Cash continues to pour in for American Dream PAC. It reported $465,500 in donations of more than $5,000 on Wednesday and Thursday.

Eigel, whose insurgency campaign has made the contest a three-way race, is not mentioned in the Stand for US ads. His campaign spent $333,000 between July 1 and July 25 and had $135,502 on hand. BILL PAC, his joint fundraising committee, had $242,694.

Eigel’s campaign manager Sophia Shore said she is focused on building on earlier work.

“Bill Eigel is the only true conservative in the race for governor,” she said. “His message is resonating, we have all the momentum — our opponents know this and they’re scared to death.”

Kehoe’s campaign is also pushing back by trying to get one of the Stand for US ads removed from the airwaves. Marc Ellinger, a veteran Jefferson City attorney representing Kehoe’s campaign, wrote to stations claiming an ad paid for by Stand for US is libelous.

The ad fuses fear of crime by undocumented immigrants with concern about political corruption, stating that “the Parson-Kehoe Administration is adding fuel to the fire, caving to Jefferson City lobbyists and approving legislation subsidizing health care for illegals.”

“The assertion that there is a ‘Parson-Kehoe administration’ is false,” Ellinger wrote. “There is a Parson administration. All the actions referred to in the ad were solely and exclusively taken by

Governor Parson and not one action was taken by Lt. Gov. Kehoe.”

Unlike the federal system where the president and vice president run as one ticket, Missouri elects all its statewide officers separately.

Stand for US distributed the letter to reporters with a press release exulting in the response. It said the letter shows Kehoe is distancing himself from Parson while enjoying the governor’s endorsement.

“Stand for Us is doing the Lord’s work, showing Missourians what kind of hypocrite Kehoe is,” said Katie Miller, a Washington, D.C.,-based political consultant and chair of Stand for US.

340B Bill

The legislation at the heart of the Stand for US ad campaign, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, pertains to a federally mandated drug discount program. 

Called 340B pricing, it allows qualified medical providers to obtain prescription drugs for their patients at a steep discount. 

There is no requirement that the discount be passed on to the patient and the profits from retail sales often underwrite other operations at the hospital, such as charity care. That is how health care for people lacking immigration documents fits into the picture.

The bill required drug makers to ship medications purchased at a discount to any pharmacy under contract to a qualified provider. The only vocal opponents of the legislation are pharmaceutical manufacturers who have been warring with providers over how many contracts to allow.

Parson allowed the bill, which he called “flawed,” to become law without his signature.

There are two versions of the Stand for US ad, which was quickly recut to note that Ashcroft was endorsed for governor by former President Donald Trump. It does not mention that Trump also endorsed Kehoe and Eigel.

Chinese land ownership

In a news release, the bill’s sponsor and House handler, state Sen. Justin Brown and state Rep. Tara Peters of Rolla, were joined by Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin of Shelbina in denouncing Stand for US. All three support Kehoe.

They accused it of producing ads using talking points from Phrma, the lobbying arm of drug manufacturers in other campaigns, then responding with the Missouri ads when Ashcroft posted support for repeal of the legislation on social media.

“It certainly appears Jay Ashcroft is willing to trade the health of his constituents and health care providers’ ability to care for their patients for millions in campaign cash,” Peters said in the release.

The other ad focuses exclusively on China and foreign ownership of farmland. It accurately states that Kehoe, as a state senator, voted to repeal Missouri’s complete ban on foreign ownership of farmland and that Kehoe campaigns on a bus owned by the only lobbyist for Smithfield Foods, a subsidiary of a Chinese company that would have had to sell its Missouri landholdings without the 2013 legislation.

Then, using silent B-roll posted on Ashcroft’s YouTube channel, it calls him a “Trump-endorsed conservative” who has fought to ban Chinese land ownership “to protect our food supply from being outsourced to Chinese Communists.”

The single donor to Stand for US before July 1 has a tangential connection to Ashcroft’s campaign. Jason Roe, a consultant working for Ashcroft, in 2022 was on the board of Building America’s Future, the PAC that gave Stand for US $1 million.  

Building America’s Future describes itself as “a national, bipartisan coalition dedicated to infrastructure investment and reform” on its social media.

Roe said he has had no involvement with Building America’s Future since leaving the board in September 2022.

The appearance of the ads was as surprising to him as it was to Ashcroft’s opponents, Roe said.

“I don’t know who they are or why they are doing it but I am grateful for their support,” Roe said.

The Ashcroft campaign cannot legally work with outside groups, Roe noted.

“When it comes to coordinating with outside spending,” he said, “not only can you not coordinate on how they do spend their money, you can’t coordinate about how they don’t spend their money.”

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft announcing a lawsuit Thursday against President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order for federal agencies to promote voting (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

With less than a week before Tuesday’s primaries, statewide elected officials are doing what they can to use their jobs to grab last-minute headlines.

On Thursday in Jefferson City, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft went first, holding a news conference to announce he is suing President Joe Biden and 15 federal department heads over a 2021 executive order intended to boost voter registration.

Ashcroft is locked in a bitter fight with Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and state Sen. Bill Eigel for the GOP nomination for governor.

Two hours  later, Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the man who put him into office, Gov. Mike Parson, held a joint news conference announcing a crackdown on unregulated cannabis products legalized by federal agricultural laws governing hemp.

Bailey faces a stiff challenge in the GOP primary from Will Scharf, who has raked in millions of dollars from national conservative groups.

And for State Treasurer Vivek Malek, the opportunity for publicity came on Wednesday in the form of new state money available to subsidize business loans through a linked-deposit program called MoBUCKS.

Malek is trying to keep his job in a Republican primary against five opponents, including three who are running full-scale campaigns.

Mike Parson works to boost his favored candidates in Missouri GOP primaries

Ashcroft, an attorney, is representing himself in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Other plaintiffs are Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston, McDonald County Clerk Kimberly Bell and St. Charles County Director of Elections Kurt Bahr.

In it, they accuse the Biden Administration of overstepping its legal authority in the executive order. The result, the filing states, requires “federal officials and agencies to use federal taxpayer money and resources to fund what is, in all practical effect, a get-out-the-vote and ballot harvesting scheme favoring a select demographic of the electorate that favors President Biden and the Democrat (sic) Party.”

Thor Hearne, a St. Louis attorney, is providing pro-bono help in the lawsuit, Ashcroft said at a news conference.

The order received little attention until this summer, when it became a GOP target for outrage. It directs federal agencies to do what they can to promote voter registration in their interactions with the public.

“It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” the order states.

The lawsuit is being filed now rather than when the executive order was issued, Ashcroft said, because he believes a body of evidence shows the Biden administration doesn’t want to provide information about how the order is being implemented.

Ashcroft was unable to state with certainty whether his office had tried to obtain information from the Biden administration about how the order was being implemented in Missouri or how many times it had tried to obtain that information.

“This is something that I’ve been following for years, and we’ve been trying to get more information about it,” Ashcroft said. “We only filed now because we were finally ready to and because it needed to be done.”

Parson’s event with Bailey also included agency leaders who will be responsible for implementing a new executive order banning the sale of any food product containing hemp-derived cannabinoids as adulterated with unapproved additives.

During the news conference, Parson held up several packages of products labeled like candies but containing THC derived from hemp. Children are eating the THC-laced products and being hospitalized, Parson said, because of the deceptive packaging.

The state Alcohol and Tobacco Control office will help enforce the order by threatening the liquor license of any retailer who keeps the products on their shelves.

The order will take effect on Sept. 1.

Hemp and derived products were legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill and the result has been a rapidly expanding market.

“When the almighty dollar, for the people who sell these products, becomes more important than our children’s lives here in the state of Missouri, it should be a wake up call for everybody,” Parson said.

Bailey said his office has been investigating the sources of the THC additives in the products and the investigation would continue. He’s compiled information about poisoning cases involving children, he said.

“We must end deceptive business practices that pursue profit from illicit substances ahead of children’s sake,” Bailey said. “These products represent an abusive market failure and the various children are suffering.”

Malek didn’t hold a news conference but he did use his social media accounts to promote the renewal of the MoBUCKS program.

The loan program shut down in January when it reached its statutory allowance of $800 million. The program works by linking a deposit of state money to a loan that is discounted because the lender pays below-market interest to the state on its money.

Malek successfully lobbied lawmakers to increase the statutory allowance to $1.2 billion during this year’s legislative session. 

“MOBUCK$ is a relief valve from inflation, and I urge everyone interested in a lower-interest loan to meet with their local lender and discuss what is necessary to submit an application,” Malek said in a news release.

Republicans, from left, Lincoln Hough, Dave Wasinger and Holly Thompson Rehder (campaign photos).

A company that shares an address with lieutenant governor candidate Dave Wasinger’s home last week loaned $300,000 to a recently formed PAC for attacks on his two best-funded Republican primary opponents.

DACA Partners III LP on Thursday loaned the money to Missouri First Conservative PAC with terms stating it is to be repaid in 47 days with 4% annual interest. Depending on how interest is calculated on the loan, it will add about $1,550 to the repayment.

Missouri First Conservative PAC was formed May 29 and had no activity until receiving the loan.

The loan was reported in a Friday filing with the Missouri Ethics Commission. The filing does not state what kind of opposition message was being delivered in the mailing purchased for $139,656, only that the cost was divided to oppose state Sens. Holly Rehder of Scott City and Lincoln Hough of Springfield in equal amounts.

A second report, filed Tuesday, shows another $139,656 being spent on direct mail with a message supporting Wasinger. The PAC had $20,638 remaining.

Online searches found no revenue-producing business operation associated with DACA Partners III LP, created in May 2023 by attorney Jamie Mendez, according to records online at the Secretary of State’s office. 

The mailing address of the general partners on the creation filing is Wasinger’s address as shown on his personal property tax records, online at the St. Louis County Assessor, and his candidate committee filing with the ethics commission.

The assessor’s office lists the owner of the home occupied by Wasinger as an entity called DACAS Properties LLC. There is no such business entity registered with the secretary of state.

Wasinger did not return calls seeking comment on the PAC transaction. Calls to his campaign manager, Kathryn Wagner, and the treasurer of Missouri First Conservative PAC, former St. Louis County Councilman Tim Fitch, were not returned.

The telephone number for Missouri First Conservative PAC is Wagner’s phone.

With Wasinger personally providing 94% of the $2.8 million his campaign has raised, Hough alleged the latest PAC spending is intentionally deceptive and intended to hide the source of the funding and the creator of the message.

“Why not put another 300 grand in and run your negative mail?” Hough said in an interview with The Independent. “Why not? Because you think we’re all too stupid to see that it’s actually your money doing it.”

Rehder did not return a call seeking comment.

The latest full campaign finance reports, which were due Monday, show Wasinger has loaned his own campaign $2.6 million so far, including $1 million since July 1. He has spent all but $265,000 of his campaign fund.

Wasinger was also the primary funder of his failed 2018 campaign for the Republican nomination for state auditor.

Hough, a long-time lawmaker from Springfield, has exceeded Wasinger’s fundraising through his campaign committee and Lincoln PAC, a joint fundraising committee. Hough’s campaign has raised $642,000 since the start of 2023 and the PAC has collected $2.5 million. 

Except for candidates who can self-fund, like Wasinger, major candidates for statewide office have official campaign committees and joint fundraising PACs. Donations to the candidate committees are limited to $2,825, while the PACs can accept any amount.

Candidates can solicit funds for the PAC but are supposed to have no say in how it is used.

Rehder, of Scott City, has raised $555,000 through her campaign fund and another $369,000 through Southern Drawl PAC, her joint fundraising committee.

Of the three other candidates in the Republican primary — Paul Berry III of St. Louis County, Tim Baker of Franklin County and Matthew Porter of St. Louis County — only Porter has raised more than $100,000, and he suspended his campaign last month.

Wasinger has been missing from local Republican events that candidates use to introduce themselves around the state, Hough said.

“Some of us run campaigns,” Hough said. “I’ve been endorsed by law enforcement, first responders, business groups, as well as virtually every agricultural organization in this state. We’ve traveled tens of thousands of miles and met with thousands of voters. That’s what a campaign looks like.”

Hough is one of the few candidates who has a PAC that is easily identifiable with his candidacy. Some PACs report the candidate they support to the ethics commission but many do not.

“I will own what this stuff puts out,” Hough said. “Now, I don’t get to tell them what to do but my name is still on it, because I want to show everyone the ownership of me running my own race.”

The final campaign finance reports before the primary were due Monday at the Missouri Ethics Commission and last week at the Federal Election Commission.

Here’s a roundup of what they show:

Statewide races

Republican candidates in statewide primaries for the five constitutional offices have raised about $54 million, through candidate committees and PACs, including $22 million in the race for governor, through July 17.

They have spent almost all of that, more than $53 million, including $23.5 million in the governor’s primary, since the beginning of 2023.

In contrast, Democrats in statewide primaries have raised only  $4.8 million, and spending totals $4 million. Almost all of that has been raised and spent in the primary for governor, where businessman Mike Hamra has used $1.9 million in personal funds, raising $1 million more in donations to his campaign fund and Together Missouri PAC.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade of Springfield has raised $1.1 million for her campaign and $140,000 for Crystal PAC.

The top five Republican fundraisers for the primary are:

• Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, $13.8 million raised between his campaign and American Dream PAC, in his race for governor. 
• Will Scharf, $9 million raised between his campaign committee and Defend Missouri PAC as he runs for attorney general.
• State Treasurer Vivek Malek, $5.7 million between his campaign fund and American Promise PAC as he seeks a full term in a six-way primary.
• State Sen. Bill Eigel, $5.3 million raised between his campaign and BILL PAC as he runs for governor.
• Attorney General Andrew Bailey, $4.1 million raised as he tries to hold the post he was appointed to in early 2023.

Federal races

The most recent filings in federal races show challengers are outraising incumbents in two races and personal wealth fueling a candidacy for Congress in another.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Lucas Kunce reported raising $731,000 in the first 17 days of the month, compared to $184,422 for incumbent U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican. Kunce has outraised Hawley by almost $3 million since the start of 2023 but Hawley retains an advantage in accumulated cash, $5.7 million to $4.2 million for Kunce.

Wesley Bell, the St. Louis County prosecutor challenging U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in the 1st District Democratic primary, reported $611,000 in the period and $4.7 million total for the campaign, while Bush raised about $236,000 for the period and $3 million for the campaign. Bush had about $354,000 left and Bell about $1.7 million.

The race has also attracted millions in outside spending for and against both candidates.

In the open 3rd District, former state Sen. Bob Onder, a Lake St. Louis Republican, made a $200,000 loan to his campaign, bringing his total commitment to the race to $700,000. He has raised an additional $455,000. His main rival, former Sen. Kurt Schaefer of Columbia, has raised $272,000.

The 3rd District is another race where massive outside spending is exceeding the funds candidates are raising and spending.

University of Missouri System President Mun Choi discusses plans to reorganize diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by ending a separate campus division during a Friday briefing with reporters. He was joined by Vice Chancellor Maurice Gipson, who headed the division and is leaving for a new post in Arkansas. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

The University of Missouri will eliminate its division focused on diversity, social equity and inclusion on the Columbia campus, completing the dismantling of administrative structures put in place after protests in 2015 brought national attention to issues of racial equality.

The move coincides with the departure of division Vice Chancellor Maurice Gipson. It is designed to appease Republicans who are showing hostility towards efforts designed to attract and retain students from historically underrepresented groups, Mun Choi, University of Missouri System president and Columbia campus chancellor, said at a briefing with reporters last week.

There have been 13 bills targeting diversity, equity and inclusion filed in the legislature over the past two years Choi noted. During debate on the state budget during 2023, Republicans in the Missouri House added language banning any diversity efforts across state government, language that was deleted before the final budget passed.

One of the leading Republican candidates for governor, state Sen. Bill Eigel, has said he will fire every state employee who works to promote diversity and equity in state agencies, including universities.

“We realize the political situations that have occurred in other universities across the United States, including Texas, and Florida, Utah, and now Alabama, as well as many others,” Choi said.

Choi said the university has lobbied heavily against legislative action.

“We do believe that our proactive approaches in the past have really played an important role when diverting these bills from passing and I will be sharing our plans with elected leaders beginning this week,” he said.

The top goal is to protect the university’s operating and capital appropriations, Choi said.

“As a university we see about $500 million per year in appropriations and $200 million in capital one-time projects,” Choi said. “If we don’t see the $700 million dollars per year, we would have to eliminate every single position at all of the colleges that we have at universities. That is not a risk that I want to take.”

Gipson, hired as vice chancellor in 2020, is leaving to become interim president at Philander Smith University, an historically Black college in Arkansas. The four units of the division will be moved into other offices, which Choi said will make their mission part of the overall mission in each office.

No employees will lose their jobs, Choi said.

Gipson, who joined Choi in the briefing, said he’s confident that the work begun in the division will continue.

“We’ve been inspired and impressed that our colleagues here say, ‘this is going to work, we don’t have to all be underneath, necessarily the same place to get this work done,’” Gipson said.

The division’s units were moved out of the offices where they will return as part of a university commitment following the events of the fall of 2015, when long-simmering grievances about racial issues on campus led to a protest movement called Concerned Student 1950. 

The student group chose a name that reflected the year the first Black student was admitted to the school, which was founded in 1839. It sought to bring attention to overlooked school history that the campus was founded on the wealth of slaveholders and partially built with the labor of enslaved people.

A large group of students created a tent city, a graduate student started a hunger strike and the protests grabbed international attention when the Missouri Tiger football team joined the protest, stating they would not participate in sports until administrators showed they were meeting the demands that included the resignation of then-system President Tim Wolfe.

Other demands included more Black faculty, a plan to increase the retention rates for marginalized students and increased funding and personnel for the student support centers.

Wolfe resigned in November 2015 and the protest ended. In the year between his removal and the announcement that Choi would become the new permanent president, the university established both a campus division and a system vice-presidency focused on DEI efforts.

Choi, who was born in Korea, is the the third non-white permanent president of the university, following Manuel Pacheco, president from 1997 to 2002 and Elson Floyd, who was Black, holding the post from 2003 to 2007.

Choi became campus chancellor in 2020, becoming the first president since the university system was established in the 1960s to hold both jobs.

“This reporting structure in the chancellor’s office is important to cementing the level of support for this work,” Kevin McDonald, then-chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer for the UM System and vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity on the MU campus told the Columbia Daily Tribune in 2016. “I would hope it elevates the level of visibility of the work they have been doing.”

Despite those efforts, Black enrollment on the Columbia campus has fallen from 7.3% of the student body in fall 2015 to 5.3% last fall. The share of Hispanic students has increased to 5.5% from 3.5% in fall 2015 and the share of Asian students has increased from 3% from 2.2%.

The share of white students has remained virtually unchanged at about 77%.

The university anticipates an 11% increase in Black students and a 14% increase in Hispanic students on campus this fall, Choi said.

One specific demand was to increase Black representation among faculty to 10%. Black academics made up 3.5% of tenured and tenure-track faculty on the Columbia campus in the fall of 2023, down from 4.2% in 2018, the target year for the 10% goal.

While the share of Black students and faculty has declined, graduation rates for underrepresented ethnic groups on campus have increased, Choi said. The Columbia campus has the highest six-year graduation rate for Black students among public universities in Missouri, he said, and is near the median of flagship universities in nearby states for Black faculty.

The university began removing the structures put in place following the protests last year after a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled race-based admission policies were unconstitutional.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey ordered universities to “immediately cease their practice of using race-based standards to make decisions about things like admission, scholarships, programs and employment.”

The university responded by ending preferences in a number of scholarships and persuading donors to remove any racial or ethnic criteria from endowed programs. It also stopped requiring applicants for system administration jobs to include diversity statements in their job submissions.

Choi said the university has used those actions as part of its lobbying strategy.

“We do believe that our proactive approaches in the past have really played an important role when diverting these bills from passing,” Choi said, “and I will be sharing our plans with elected leaders.”

There were issues identified with a separate structure that the reorganization will address, Choi said.

“Because the ID division that works on student success programs were operating in an organization that was outside of the rest of the student success organization that’s in the Provost Office, there’s less opportunity to be inclusive, and less opportunities to be collaborative in that process,” he said.

The goal of the reorganization, Choi said, is to preserve the jobs and programs but to make them less visible.

“When you read the headlines that are out there, nationally, DEI is seen as an ideology, and it may be viewed by some as being exclusionary in the name of inclusion,” Choi said. “That is not what we do at the University of Missouri.”

This article has been updated to correct that Mun Choi is the third non-white president of the University of Missouri System.

Senate Majority Leader Cindy O'Laughlin, R-Shelbina, hugs Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring, after a contentious legislative session. She told reporters she did not always agree with Eigel, but she "loved him." (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

In the winter, Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin said she would vote to expel state Sen. Bill Eigel.

This summer, a political action committee connected to O’Laughlin is working to stop him from becoming governor.

On July 5, the NEMO Leadership PAC — which was created to support O’Laughlin — contributed $100,000 to the Great Northwest PAC — which supports state Sen. Rusty Black, a Republican from Chillicothe. 

Four days later, Great Northwest PAC, which had $12,822 on hand on June 30, purchased six direct mail pieces targeting Eigel, at a cost of $100,000. 

The donation from NEMO Leadership to Great Northwest was disclosed to the Missouri Ethics Commission the day after it happened because it exceeded the $5,000 limit for immediate reporting. The way the money was used was not reported until Friday, when Great Northwest filed its final pre-primary election disclosure.

Both NEMO Leadership and Great Northwest have the same treasurer, Amber Watson, an executive of the Republican campaign opposition research firm Capitol City Research who also is a professional at political finance compliance. 

Neither Watson, Black nor O’Laughlin could be reached Monday for comment.

Missouri Senate GOP warfare escalates with suggestion of expelling Freedom Caucus leader

Because contributions to Senate candidates are capped at $2,400, most also sponsor a political action committee. A candidate can solicit contributions to the PAC but cannot direct how the money is spent.

Unlike candidate committees, the PACs can accept unlimited donations. 

Eigel was a key member of GOP factions that disrupted regular business in the Senate over the past four years. 

O’Laughlin, elected Senate Republican floor leader in 2022 and expected to become Senate president pro tem next year, repeatedly clashed with Eigel.

Near the end of January, with frustrations reaching a boiling point, O’Laughlin said she would favor expelling Eigel during a question-and-answer session with editors and publishers gathered in the Capitol.

When Eigel learned what she said, he challenged her to repeat it on the Senate floor. He had to ask several times before he got his answer.

“I’d vote for it, yeah,” she said. “I absolutely would.”

Eigel has promised to continue his disruptive tactics if he becomes governor, saying he will veto large portions of spending bills and work to dismantle the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

At a campaign event in Jefferson City Monday, Eigel said the effort by PACs aligned with his Senate colleagues shows he is gaining ground as next Tuesday’s primary approaches. 

“This is an indication that my opponents know that they’re losing,” Eigel said.

He has trailed his major rivals — Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft — in most polls, but he has risen from single digits in the spring to being just outside the margin of error in more recent surveys.

“This really typifies what’s wrong in the Republican Party today,” Eigel said. “Those dollars that I think were made as contributions to the pro tem of the Senate ought to be saved for and used to help Republican candidates in the general election.”

A view of the Missouri Senate chamber from the visitors gallery (photo courtesy of the Missouri Senate).

The Missouri Senate could look very different next year.

Only 14 of 34 members are certain to be on hand for opening day 2025 as term limits force out some incumbents and others seek new offices.

Half the Senate is on the ballot every two years, and this year there is a contest in every one of those 17 districts — at least in the primary of the district’s dominant party.

This year’s election will be the first since redistricting for the seats on the ballot this year, adding another element of uncertainty about the outcome. Some incumbents are new to a majority of voters because of map changes and some seats that were safe for one party or another in the 2020 election may not be as certain.

There are 10 districts certain to elect new senators. In the other seven, incumbents face challengers, including four facing one or more primary opponents.

Three other seats that could become vacant are held by state Sens. Karla May, a St. Louis Democrat running for U.S. Senate; Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican running for secretary of state; and Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican running for lieutenant governor.

Another thing that could change is the partisan makeup of the chamber. Republicans have enjoyed a supermajority in the Senate — more than two-thirds of the seats — since 2009, and the current 24-10 split is unchanged since 2019.

“There’s more competitive races this year than there have been in a long time,” said Stephen Webber, a former legislator and Missouri Democratic Party chair seeking the 19th District seat being vacated by Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden.

How much of a stranglehold the GOP will have in the Senate will be decided in six districts, five of which are in major metro areas. The political history of all six — the 11th and 17th districts in the Kansas City area, the 1st, 15th and 23rd in the St. Louis region and the 19th in Boone County — gives them only a slight lean for one party or the other.

James Harris, a longtime Republican political consultant, said he sees little chance of the GOP losing the supermajority. The best-case Republican scenario — which concedes a flip in the 19th to Webber, he said — is for Democrats to lose both seats in the Kansas City area and hold the contested seats in the St. Louis region.

That would give Republicans 25 seats in the chamber.

“That is if it’s a great night for Republicans and Trump is just really doing well, which is possible,” Harris said.

Webber began raising money for his race about two years ago and has amassed a campaign treasury many statewide candidates would envy. His candidate committee has raised $542,000 since the beginning of 2023 and had $347,000 on hand on June 30. His joint fundraising committee, Homefront PAC, has raised $453,000 and had $437,000 available.

His Republican opponent has only started raising funds.

Because contributions to Senate candidates are capped at $2,400, most candidates also sponsor a political action committee. A candidate can solicit contributions to the PAC but cannot direct how the money is spent to promote their campaign.

Webber’s fund balances are second only to Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck of Affton among candidates on this year’s state Senate ballot. Beck is seeking a second term in the 1st District in south St. Louis County.

Beck has $434,000 in the campaign account under his direct control and another $504,000 in DougPAC. His opponent, Robert Crump, has not reported raising any money.

“I always run my campaign like I’m down,” Beck said. “I want to do what I need to do to win this. I have an extensive field game together, I’ll be doing mail and I’ll be doing TV, so I’m gonna do all the things that I need to do to win.”

Statewide, Beck said he expects to break the GOP supermajority and hopes to sweep the races that would give Democrats 13 total seats. The Democratic Party’s best year this century was a two-seat gain in 2006. 

“Three are keeps, and three are flips,” Beck said. “That’s what we’re shooting for.”

Initiative petitions to restore abortion rights and increase the minimum wage seem certain to appear on the November ballot. 

“Those two things drive us and help us exponentially,” Beck said. 

Democratic tactics will promote voting for the initiatives and the party’s candidates to protect them, Beck said. It won’t change the outcome in heavily Republican areas, he said, but it will make a difference.

“The areas we’re competing in are in the suburbs, and this is where the message is, and where people are going to be listening when they come out and vote,” Beck said.

Economic issues are what voters are worried about, Harris contends, not abortion rights.

Abortion rights don’t matter “other than to some very progressive people in Webster Groves and the Central West End. It is a rich and elite problem to be concerned with,” he said. “But as you move out of that little bubble, for people making under $100,000, it’s concerns about paying bills and credit card debts going up.”

Breaking the supermajority may be an unreachable goal, said Terry Smith, a professor of political science at Columbia College.

“In the last redistricting process, these districts got drawn up so that they were, with not very many exceptions, pretty red or pretty blue,” Smith said. “The way the districts are drawn, I just see that’s a real stretch.”

Democrats have “captured the narrative” on abortion and it will help them across the state, he said.

“The bottom line is, even if Democrats have a really good year, the best I think they can do is come close to not being in a super minority in the Senate,” Smith said.

Incumbents facing primaries

9th District (Jackson County including east side of Kansas City and Raytown). State Sen. Barbara Washington is being challenged by former State Rep. Brandon Ellington in the Democratic primary. Both Washington and Ellington have reported limited fundraising activity for the campaign, although Washington had about $78,000 on hand in her campaign account at the last full report. The winner will face Republican Derron Black, who also has not raised any significant campaign funds. This district votes about 80% Democratic.

13th District (northern St. Louis County including Jennings, Spanish Lake, Florissant and Old Jamestown). The 13th district is a Democratic primary that has the highest possibility of replacing the incumbent, outside observers said. State Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark is taking on incumbent state Sen. Angela Mosley in a test of well-established Democratic factions in St. Louis.

Mosley is promoting a slate of candidates — including two of her daughters — in contested primaries for legislative seats and other positions through her campaign social media accounts. Nickson-Clark is trying to move from the House to the Senate after a single term as a lawmaker.

One of the hottest issues in the race is the education bill passed this year that boosts the minimum salary for teachers, changes the formula for funding public schools and expands a tax-credit scholarship for private schools. 

Nickson-Clark was one of three Democrats who voted in favor of the bill in the House and Chantelle PAC has received two $10,000 contributions from the Quality Schools Coalition, a school choice advocacy group.

In an opinion piece published by the St. Louis-Southern Illinois Labor Tribune, Mosley called the bill a “sham” that was “packed with a few things that most reasonable people agree upon but also include hidden gifts for their special-interest supporters — like the millionaire-funded school-choice advocates.”

The American Federation of Teachers has paid for billboards backing Mosley.

Nickson-Clark has achievements she can counter with. A bill she was the only member to introduce, making it easier for women with breast and cervical cancer to get Medicaid-paid treatment, was included in a broader bill and signed into law.

But she has also had to deal with charges that Antonio Jones, her fiance and campaign employee, was named in a federal drug indictment and is currently awaiting trial. Her campaign continues to employ Jones, who has received $7,100 as a campaign worker since Nickson-Clark formed a committee in 2022.

29th District (Barry, Christian, Lawrence and McDonald counties). One of the Senate’s most conservative members, Mike Moon of Ash Grove, is being challenged by business owner Susan Haralson of Ozark.

Redistricting significantly changed the boundaries after the 2020 election, when Moon narrowly won his primary. Two of the counties Moon won, Stone and Taney, were moved to the 33rd District and two he lost, Barry and McDonald, remain. 

Christian County, home of Haralson, is now the largest population county in the district and Moon has never been on a ballot there.

The only bill introduced by Moon in his 12-year legislative career that has been signed into law limits medical procedures for transgender children. He is better known for lengthy filibusters, where he often reads religious-themed books, and fighting with the Senate leadership over rules of decorum and procedure.

Moon did not return a call this week. But he’s getting help from U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison, who defeated Moon in a primary in 2022, and other lawmakers from the Freedom Caucus faction.

“We’ve got to defend this guy,” Burlison said about Moon at a Springfield campaign event last month. 

Haralson, in an interview, said voters want more than an obstructionist who is fixated on social issues.

“I have never seen Mike very passionate about anything other than social issues,” Haralson said. “Well, there’s a lot more than social issues that we need in Christian County and McDonald County.”

Both candidates are spending modest amounts compared to other races. Haralson said she has found it difficult to solicit funds for her Present Day Conservatives PAC because donors don’t want to anger Moon if he wins. That could cause friction within the Senate, with the PAC associated with Sen. Jason Bean donating $15,000 on July 17 to Haralson’s PAC.

Ron Monnig, a Democrat from Eagle Rock, will face the primary winner in a district where Trump took 77.5% of the vote in 2020.

31st District. (Bates, Cass, Johnson counties). State Sen. Rick Brattin is the chair of the Missouri Freedom Caucus. Like Moon, he is running in a district that is markedly different from the one where he received just under 50% of the vote in a three-way primary in 2020.

Brattin’s home is in Cass County, which retains the largest share of votes in the primary. But two counties Brattin won, Barton and Henry, along with Vernon, have been replaced by Johnson County. That is the home of his best-funded opponent and 5,000 primary voters who only saw him on a 2022 congressional primary ballot, where he was a distant second to the winner, Mark Alford.

State Rep. Dan Houx of Warrensburg has raised $94,000 for his campaign fund and almost $320,000 for H-PAC. The two funds had more than $430,000 to spend as of June 30.

State Rep. Mike Haffner of Pleasant Hill is also a Cass County resident. Haffner has raised a little more than $105,000 between his campaign fund and CLCP PAC, his joint fundraising committee. His funds had about $85,000 on June 30.

Brattin has done better than Haffner but has only raised a little more than a third of the amount donated for Houx’s campaign. His campaign fund held $76,164 and his joint fundraising committee, True Patriot PAC, had $46,258 at the end of the second quarter.

In the spring, Brattin lashed out at both his opponents, who criticized the Freedom Caucus faction in the Senate for disrupting the legislative process.

Harris, who is consulting for Brattin’s campaign, said the Freedom Caucus’ disruptive tactics appeal to conservative voters.

“I think if you’re a conservative voter, you want people that take a gun to a knife fight,” he said. “They’re not really in the diplomacy phase.”

The winner will face Raymond James, a Leeton Democrat, in a district that gave 67% of its vote to Trump in 2020.

Primary only

27th District (Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Iron, Madison, Perry, Reynolds and Scott counties). ​​State Sen. Holly Rehder is passing up another term in the state Senate to run for lieutenant governor, generating a three-way primary between Jacob Turner of Jackson, making his first bid for office; and two veteran campaigners, state Reps. Jamie Burger of Benton, who has won two terms after being a county commissioner in Scott County; and Chris Dinkins of Lesterville, who has won four terms in the House.

The total spent in the primary will likely exceed $1 million.

Burger has raised $201,734 for his candidate fund since the start of 2023 and just over $250,000 for Bootheel Values PAC. The two funds have spent almost $200,000 so far and had a combined $263,000 on hand on June 30.

Dinkins has raised $204,000 for her campaign committee and almost $50,000 more for Red Hawk PAC. The two committees have spent about $150,000 and had about $140,000 on hand.

Turner has raised $102,276 for his committee, another $60,000 for Faith and Family PAC. Through June 30, the committees had only spent a combined total of about $50,000, leaving $105,000.

33rd District (Douglas, Howell, Ozark, Shannon, Stone, Taney and Texas counties). The seat is vacant because Karla Eslinger, elected in 2020, resigned to take the helm of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as commissioner of education. The primary between state Reps. Travis Smith of Dora, who is in his second term, and Brad Hudson of Cape Fair, who was elected three times as Stone County assessor before winning his House seat in 2018. The combined fundraising in the race has been less than $250,000, with Hudson holding the edge.

Primaries in competitive districts

11th District (northern Jackson County including Independence, Grain Valley and Sugar Creek). There are three Republicans vying for the chance to represent the hometown of Missouri’s only president, Harry Truman, with a well-funded Democratic candidate waiting for the winner. 

Incumbent state Sen. John Rizzo, a Democrat from Independence, resigned before term limits removed him from office to become executive director of the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.

State Rep. Aaron McMullen of Independence is the best-funded Republican, raising more than $300,000 by June 30 for his campaign and PAC, with $232,000 available for the final push and more large donations coming in.

Joe Nicola of Grain Valley, who has run for Congress and Senate in the past, has raised almost $90,000 and David Martin of Kansas City has raised less than $10,000.

State Rep. Robert Sauls, a Democrat from Independence, has just under $160,000 in his campaign fund and almost $260,000 in his Independence Leadership PAC. 

Harris said it won’t be enough.

“There’ll be a bump up for Trump,” Harris said. “That’s a little more blue collar area of Jackson County where Trump as the nominee, is kind of an asset to the Republican.”

Sauls is the best counter, Beck said. 

“Robbie Sauls is the only candidate in the state that has won a district that Trump won,” Beck said, noting his 45-vote victory in 2020 for an Independence-based House seat. 

15th District (western St. Louis County including Chesterfield, Wildwood, Manchester and Town and Country). With term-limited Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig leaving office, the GOP race has attracted three veteran politicians, with the winner facing a Democrat whose campaign fund has raised more than any other Senate candidate this cycle.

The Republican line-up is Mark Harder, who has three terms on the St. Louis County Council, Jim Bowlin, a two-term mayor of Wildwood, and former state Rep. David Gregory, who lost a 2022 primary for state auditor.

All three have shown substantial fundraising support, with Gregory having the slight edge. 

The Democratic candidate will be Joe Pereles, an attorney who was senior vice president of development and general counsel for Drury Hotels Company. Between his campaign committee and Fearless PAC, Pereles has raised more than the combined efforts of the Republicans and had more than $600,000 on hand on June 30.

The district, which voting history shows to be about 54% Republican, is one where abortion will make a difference in the fall, Beck said.

23rd District (eastern St. Charles County including St. Charles, St. Peters and West Alton). Democrats see a chance in the district that sent Eigel to Jefferson City because new boundaries were drawn after the 2020 census, giving it the largest concentration of union workers in the state, Beck said.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli of St. Peters, who has been elected to four terms, is the best-funded candidate, with more than $660,000 raised between his campaign committee and Gladius PAC. That is more than the other three candidates, three-term state Rep. Adam Shnelting of St. Charles, Dan O’Connell of St. Peters and Rich Chrismer of St. Peters, who was elected to four terms as St. Charles County Clerk.

The voting history has the district at 53% Republican. In his last election, Eigel won with 57% against a candidate who did very little.

Beck said Democrats are working to get funding for Matt Williams, a first-time candidate.

Harris said the blue-collar, pro-Trump vote that will influence the 11th District will help the winner of the 23rd District primary.

Primaries in safe districts

3rd District (Crawford, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, Washington, southern Jefferson County): State Sen. Elaine Gannon is not seeking re-election in this district where no Democrat filed in 2016 or 2020.

The candidates are House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson of Bonne Terre and two-term state Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Cordway of Festus. Henderson has raised nearly $300,000 since the start of 2023 for his campaign and joint fundraising committee, Leadbelt PAC, while Buchheit-Cordway has raised about half that amount.

Doug Halbert of Hematite is the Democratic candidate in a district that went about 69% for Trump in 2020.

7th District (downtown and historic northeast Kansas City and Grandview) The senator elected in 2020, Greg Razer, was appointed to the State Tax Commission in May by Gov. Mike Parson, setting off a primary between Pat Contreras, who a statewide primary for treasurer in 2016, and two-term state Rep. Patty Lewis.

The two are about evenly matched in fundraising, with Contreras having a slight edge. Joey LaSalle is the Republican candidate in the district that is heavily Democratic.

21st District (Cooper, Howard, Lafayette, Ray, Saline, and northeast Clay counties). Two incumbent state representatives are vying for the Republican nomination to replace term-limited state Sen. Denny Hoskins. The district has been significantly changed from 2020, when no Democrat filed, dropping Carroll, Livingston and Johnson counties and gaining Cooper and Clay counties. 

Two-term state Rep. Kurtis Gregory of Marshall has the fundraising edge over three-term state Rep. Doug Richey of Excelsior Springs. Jim Bates of Liberty is the Democratic candidate in the district that is rated 63% Republican based on voting history.

November-only races

1st District (southern St. Louis County). Beck has $434,000 in the campaign account under his direct control and another $504,000 in DougPAC to counter the challenge from Robert Crump, a candidate who has run unsuccessfully in the past for the House and Senate. Crump has not reported raising any money. The district leans slightly Democratic.

5th District (downtown and north St. Louis). State Sen. Steven Roberts is the Democratic incumbent, challenged by Robert Vroman, vice-chair of the St. Louis Republican Central Committee. It is a district that votes 88% Democratic.

17th District (southwest Clay County including North Kansas City, Claycomo, Pleasant Valley and Gladstone) Vacant since Lauren Arthur was appointed to the state Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, state Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern of Kansas City will try to hold it for Democrats against three-term Clay County Commissioner Jerry Nolte. Nurrenbern has amassed a campaign treasury of $320,000, with another $170,000 in the Northland Forward PAC. Nolte had $48,610 on hand on June 30. The district’s voting history is an almost even split between Republicans and Democrats.

Clay County “really is the bellwether,” Harris said. “Republicans can win it or lose it. That county is almost the Wisconsin or Michigan of Missouri.

19th District (Boone County) Rowden must leave office due to term limits and Webber, his 2016 opponent, is trying to flip it for Democrats. Boone County has only given a majority to a Republican in three Senate races since 1960, the last time in 2012. Rowden was elected when the district also included Cooper County. James Coyne is the Republican candidate who replaced Chuck Basye, who withdrew after filing because of a cancer diagnosis. Coyne has raised $3,700 since launching his campaign, according to a report filed Thursday.

25th District (Butler, Carter, Dunklin, Mississippi, New Madrid, Oregon, Pemiscot, Ripley, Stoddard and Wayne counties). Incumbent Republican state Sen. Jason Bean of Holcomb will face Democrat Chuck Banks of Silva, a former presiding commissioner of Jefferson County. This district gives, on average, 77% of its votes to Republicans.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft speaks to reporters Dec. 20 about the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to bar former president Donald Trump from the Colorado ballot (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A February poll of Republican primary voters showed Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft had the most recognizable name in the race for governor. 

That shouldn’t be surprising. 

Ashcroft has held statewide office for eight years, and his father John ran statewide seven times, winning five elections for state attorney general, governor and U.S. senator before becoming U.S. Attorney General under President George W. Bush.

Jay Ashcroft was born the year his father was appointed state auditor in 1973 and spent his teenage years living in the Governor’s Mansion. He learned that everything the family did was news when his mother got his dad in trouble by calling the state librarian on Mother’s Day so his brother could finish a homework assignment.

“When I was a little kid, I made the decision that I wasn’t going to go into politics,” he said in an interview with The Independent after announcing his candidacy. “I said, ‘I’m never going to go into politics. I’m never going to be an attorney. I’m going to have a real job.’ Famous last words.”

So first at the Merchant Marine Academy, where he did not do well, then later at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering management, Ashcroft stuck with his vow.

He worked first at a defense contractor and later as a teacher of mechanical engineering and engineering technology at St. Louis Community College. 

But he eventually did study law – at St. Louis University – and went to work in the law firm his father founded after leaving public life.

Then politics beckoned, though just like his father, his first race didn’t go well. His 2014 bid for a St. Louis County state Senate seat ended in defeat. 

He bounced back two years later when he was elected secretary of state, getting the second largest majority of all Republicans on the statewide ballot. He won a second term in 2020. 

Now he’s set his sights on following his father into the governor’s mansion. If he wins, he’ll be the first son of a governor elected to the office since John Sappington Marmaduke in 1884.

Locked in a three-way battle for the GOP nomination with Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and state Sen. Bill Eigel, Ashcroft hopes voters see how he has used his power as secretary of state to advance a conservative agenda. 

He’s implemented rules requiring libraries to obtain parental consent for materials their children borrow — or face a loss of state funding. And he’s being sued for imposing rules on financial advisers requiring them to get investor consent for making a company’s stand on climate action or other socially driven issues — also known as ESG for environmental social governance — a factor in an investment decision.

Perhaps his highest profile official action led to the court battle over ballot language for a proposal to make abortion a state constitutional right. When the language was challenged, Ashcroft took the rare step of officially joining the legal team defending it — a fight he ultimately lost. 

It was in the midst of that fight, however, that he won the endorsement of the state’s largest anti-abortion group, Missouri Right to Life.

Outside the strict duties of his office, in recent years Ashcroft has been testifying before legislative committees in favor of bills that would ban certain medical treatments for transgender minors and ban foreign ownership of farmland, among others. And he became highly involved in the unsuccessful effort to redraw Missouri’s congressional maps in a way that eliminated a Democratic seat in Kansas City.

In the run up to the Aug. 6 primary, The Independent asked Ashcroft a series of questions with one theme — what would Missouri be like if he becomes governor? Here’s some of what he said:

Budget and taxes

Like both his major opponents, Ashcroft wants to eliminate the state income tax. And like Eigel, he wants to repeal the 2021 gas tax increase.

The 2021 increase was the first state fuel tax increase since 1992, when John Ashcroft signed a bill adding 4 cents a gallon. The 2021 increase was passed with strong backing from Kehoe.

His plan, Ashcroft said, is to cut spending and reorganize the state tax system so more money from earmarked sources is placed in the general revenue fund.

“I truly think the government’s doing too much,” Ashcroft said. “Looking at COVID, we were spending the same amount of money but the government was seemingly shut down and life went along fine.”

In the eight years since Republicans took control of the governor’s office, the state budget has increased from $27.5 billion, with $9.7 billion coming from general revenue in fiscal 2017, to $51.6 billion and $15.1 billion from general revenue in the current year.

The top income tax rate is currently 4.8% and in the fiscal year that ended June 30, the personal income tax accounted for 65% of general revenue collections. There are future tax cuts, depending on revenue increases, that would drop the top rate to 4.5%.

The other two categories of money funding state operations are federal funds, often requiring a state match, and “other” funds, totaling $12.1 billion, generated by taxes and fees for specialized purposes.

“We want to go back to the people and say you have these designated funds,” Ashcroft said. “We’d like you to allow us to put those into general revenue to spend as the state needs and in return for that will give you an immediate decrease in your income tax for giving us that flexibility.”

If enacted, Ashcroft’s proposal would be the biggest reorganization of state government finances in state history. It would require intense legislative work, followed by one or more statewide votes.

Bringing dedicated funds into general revenue would eliminate earmarked funding for conservation and state parks and soil conservation. It would also end a 1982 sales tax that provides $1,513 per pupil to school districts and the motor fuel tax fund, which took in $1 billion.

Gambling taxes from casinos and the lottery are worth about $750 million annually, money that is dedicated to education needs. 

Putting the money under the control of the governor and lawmakers, Ashcroft said, will lead to greater oversight.

“In the road fund, the way it’s done, there is no accountability for how those funds are spent,” Ashcroft said. “But when you put them in general revenue, then the legislature can have oversight over those and we the people can really be involved in making sure those funds are being spent correctly.”

Through a combination of budget cuts and reorganization, Ashcroft said the income tax can be put on a “glide path” to elimination.

He’s not going to specify any cuts during the campaign, Ashcroft said.

“I’m not gonna roll all of that out right now,” Ashcroft said. “What I have done is shown that it’s eminently possible because of the number of dollars.”

Crime

Ashcroft’s proposals involve a multi-pronged approach to crime — more police on the streets, more investment in mental health services and local incarceration for some offenders.

He wants the state to support the hiring of 1,000 new police officers, Ashcroft said. The goal would be to increase the Missouri State Highway Patrol to its full strength of 1,064 troopers and help local agencies attract new officers.

“There are a whole lot of other things that we can do to draw people that are officers elsewhere and say, if you’re willing to serve the public, you want to be a public servant, Missouri is the place where you want to do it,” Ashcroft said.

Under the Missouri Constitution, the legislature is prohibited from requiring a “new activity or service or an increase in the level of any activity or service beyond that required by existing law” without paying for it with state funds.

Staffing shortages in local agencies mean they are under strength and the state can help without having to pay the full cost, Ashcroft said.

“There probably will be some financial support from the state but you also have to understand there are other things the state needs to do,” Ashcroft said.

Statewide, Missouri State Highway Patrol statistics show that both violent crimes and property crimes declined in 2023 compared to 2022. FBI data, however, shows both violent and property crime rates in Missouri have been higher than the national average for the past decade.

In addition to increasing the number of police patrolling Missouri’s streets and highways, Ashcroft said he wants to address mental health issues that lead to arrests. In February there were approximately 300 people in county jails awaiting a bed in a state mental health facility and state mental health officials forecast it will be 500 by the end of the year.

The Department of Mental Health faces major staffing shortages with more than one-third licensed practical nurse slots unfilled, two out of every five jobs for psychiatrists unfilled and fewer than one-third of licensed clinical social worker slots filled.

Missouri should invest more in community mental health programs that can provide help before people are in crisis, Ashcroft said.

“We’re already incurring a cost for these people, but we’re incurring it in such a way that we don’t incentivize the reduction of the costs or getting these people help,” he said.

Over the past decade, the number of people in state custody has gone down by about one-third, from an average of 31,442 in 2012 to 2014 to an average of 23,409 in the 2020-2022 period. Missouri closed a prison in 2019 and housing units in others during 2020  to save money on partially used facilities.

Despite that reduction, deaths in state prisons have increased from an average of 89 per year to 122 per year, with 135 deaths in 2023. Four corrections officers are charged with murder of an inmate at Jefferson City Correctional Center in December and the warden was fired.

One issue for the state is staffing shortages, Ashcroft said. Many prisons are in rural areas where there is a limited ability to recruit correction officers.

His solution, he said, is to house some offenders in local facilities. Federal agencies house their prisoners in county jails and the payments help defer local costs, he said.

“They don’t want to do that for the state right now because the state doesn’t pay what it costs to house those individuals,” Ashcroft said.

The state could pay more, and support regional facilities, he said.

There would also be a benefit for the families of people who are incarcerated, Ashcroft said.

“That might be better if their families are there,” he said. “Does that mean that you see your children more?”

Family legacy

The Ashcroft name means a lot in southwest Missouri, where John Ashcroft began his political career and Robert Ashcroft, Jay’s grandfather, was the first president of Evangel College, said state Rep. Bill Owen of Springfield.

The family still owns land near Willard.

Ashcroft’s father hasn’t taken a major role in the campaign, but he did make a video attacking Kehoe over land ownership by Chinese companies. And he shows up in campaign photos on occasion.

“The family is so ingrained in the community and in the area, people just feel really comfortable with him down here,” Owen said.

On the campaign trail, Ashcroft’s foes have accused him of running mainly on his famous name. 

After Ashcroft said at a recent debate that his father wasn’t happy about his opposition to public funding of professional sports stadiums, Eigel was ready with a rejoinder: “Jay, be a little easy on your dad, you need that last name.”

Jay Ashcroft has created his own identity, separate from his family, Owen added.

“Some people would be swallowed up by the shadow,” he said. “And I don’t think he has been. On his own merits, he’s been able to stand out on his own.”

In 1998, as he considered a White House bid, John Ashcroft wrote a book he titled “Lessons from a Father to his Son.” 

The biggest lesson he learned from his father, Jay Ashcroft said, is the honor in public service.

“It was ordained by God before time began the fact that public service is one of the, if not the, greatest things you can do in life because you spend your time making life better for others instead of just elevating yourself,” Ashcroft said. “And the idea of integrity of character, and how valuable it is to have a good name, and no matter what you do, to protect them.”

State Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring speaks at a July 2 campaign rally in Springfield. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Indepdent)

For most of his second term in the Missouri Senate, Bill Eigel has been a disruptor.

First with a homegrown Republican faction called the Conservative Caucus, and then with a state chapter of the national Freedom Caucus, Eigel led a small group willing to torpedo legislation to make their points heard.

It hasn’t won him many friends in the upper chamber. Eigel lost his chairmanship this year – and his Capitol parking spot – in a fight with GOP leadership that left Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin publicly musing about voting to oust him.

Tempers flare in Missouri Senate during GOP fight over initiative petition changes

And in 2022, Eigel and state Sen. Mike Cierpiot of Lee’s Summit nearly came to blows as tempers flared over a congressional redistricting plan.

Members of the right-wing faction have been called “a small group of swamp creatures” and accused of turning the Senate into a “clown show” by Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden.

In response, Eigel and his allies have called Senate leaders “RINOS” – Republicans in Name Only – and described the chamber majority as a “uniparty” alliance of Democrats and Republicans.

Despite years of headlines about his combative tactics, February polling showed that far more Missourians had never heard of Eigel than had any opinion of him, good or bad. He was 22 percentage points behind the then-frontrunner, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

Six more months of almost ceaseless campaigning and a June poll showed Eigel had cut the number of respondents who didn’t know his name by more than half. Coincidentally, he received identical numbers – 19.2% – for statewide support and statewide ignorance of who he is.

The June poll showed him statistically tied with Ashcroft behind a new frontrunner, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe. It also showed that almost 40% of Republican voters are uncertain about their choice.

If Eigel becomes governor, he will be the first elected from the state Senate since Phil Donnelly in 1944. 

He’s running for governor to reset the agenda for Missouri and the state Republican Party, Eigel said.

“It’s the position of governor in particular that could really change the trajectory of not just the state but of the state party,” he said.

Born on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to parents from St. Louis, Eigel himself was in the Air Force from 1999 to 2007 and achieved the rank of captain. After leaving the service, he purchased a company now known as National Skylight Solutions and sold it in 2015, a year before he won election to the state Senate.

In office, his priorities have been fiscal restraint and for several years he’s called for abolition of the personal property tax, paid on motor vehicles, mobile homes, livestock and other items of movable property. The money paid in personal property taxes, about $1.7 billion annually that supports local schools and governments, can be replaced from the state treasury surplus, Eigel contends.

It will be his highest priority in his first year in office.

“We’re going to turn around and keep the local areas whole with the surpluses that we create,” he said.

Another personal priority is establishing a way for investors in gold and silver to use it in commercial transactions and to pay taxes. Collectible bullion coins minted by the United States have a nominal face value far below the market price of the metal content and can be used for those values only at a great loss.

But Eigel’s political personality has overshadowed his policy proposals. He’s promising to continue disrupting things as governor, posting a video last year using a flamethrower to torch boxes “representing what I am going to do to the leftist policies and RINO corruption of the Jeff City swamp” and criticizing Gov. Mike Parson for making an ad calling for political civility with the Democratic governor of Kansas. 

Eric Greitens, who was in office 18 months before being forced out by scandal, used social media and his PAC to attack Republican lawmakers who didn’t fall into line on his priorities. This year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton recruited and financed primary opponents to lawmakers who opposed them.

He “absolutely” would do the same, Eigel said, and thinks Greitens’ biggest failure was his lack of experience in state government.

“My experience for the past eight years in Jefferson City, seeing firsthand how much the status quo really doesn’t care about the struggles that everyday Missourians are going through, is going to help me avoid some of the pitfalls that the previous governor ran into,” Eigel said.

In the run up to the Aug. 6 primary, The Independent asked Eigel a series of questions with one theme – what would Missouri be like if he becomes governor? Here’s what he said:

Budget and taxes

Along with eliminating the personal property tax, Eigel promises to abolish the state income tax.

After several years of cuts, the top rate is currently 4.8% and in the fiscal year that ended June 30, the personal income tax accounted for 65% of general revenue collections.

Part of replacing the revenue, Eigel said, will be higher state sales taxes like the rates paid in states like Tennessee and Texas, two states without an income tax.

The statewide rate in Tennessee is 7% and in Texas it is 6.25%. Missouri currently charges 4.225% for a statewide rate, with 3% for general revenue purposes. 

Each 1% of Missouri’s general revenue sales tax generates about $1 billion. Shifting $3 billion would put Missouri’s state sales tax at 7.225%, the second-highest in the nation behind California.

Missourians already pay the 11th highest average sales tax rate in the nation at 8.38%, according to the conservative Tax Foundation. The reason is local option sales taxes that many states do not allow.

The rest of the savings, Eigel said, will come from budget cuts.

“There’s no question that a big part of my plan is going to be a massive reduction in the state expenditures,” Eigel said.

After Parson’s recent vetoes, the budget for the current year is $51.6 billion, including $15.1 billion in general revenue.

When he’s in charge, Eigel said, the cuts will include personnel, earmarked appropriations and entire state departments, like the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“I don’t know that there’s a single department down there in Jefferson City that can’t find a way to be a heck of a lot more efficient than it is right now,” Eigel said.

There are thousands of state jobs unfilled because of staffing shortages – almost 13% of budgeted payroll was unspent in fiscal 2023.

And while Eigel said the existing workforce can be cut further, Missouri has a smaller public workforce than any state on its border except for Tennessee, according to the Rich States, Poor States report from the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Eigel also said his budget and tax agenda includes repealing the gas tax passed in 2021. The additional tax, currently 10 cents a gallon, has one more 2.5 cent step set to take effect on July 1, 2025.

Highway spending would be maintained from general revenue, Eigel said.

The tax increase was the first state fuel tax increase since 1992, when then-Gov. John Ashcroft – father of Jay Ashcfoft – signed a bill adding 4 cents a gallon. The 2021 increase was passed with strong backing from Kehoe and signed by Parson.

“Whether it was John Ashcroft or whether it’s Mike Kehoe or Mike Parson, when they sign on to these tax increases, they’re betraying the Republican brand,” Eigel said. “That’s not what we signed up to do.”

Education

The education of Missourians has been a responsibility of state government since the state was founded in 1821 with a constitution directing that “one school or more, shall be established in each township…”

This year, Eigel filed a bill to abolish the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and divide its duties among other agencies. But actually abolishing the department would require a statewide vote. It is one of the 15 departments authorized by name in the Missouri Constitution.

Under Eigel’s bill, Missouri would retain a state Board of Education and a Commissioner of Education, both also required by the constitution.

His proposal echoes a longstanding goal for many Republicans of abolishing the federal Department of Education.

“My call is not a call for an absence of government,” Eigel said. “We’re going to continue to comply with the state requirements. I just happen to think that we’ve got so much waste down there in Jefferson City that we’ve got a long way to go cutting away these different positions.”

Immigration

In 1838, Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs called out the state militia to handle a problem beyond the means of local law enforcement – the presence of Mormons.

“The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description,” Boggs wrote in the infamous “Extermination Order” that called out 1,800 men for service of the state.

Undocumented immigrants are the target for Eigel, who tells audiences he will invoke the post-Civil War clause giving the governor the power to declare an invasion of the state.

All the law enforcement power of the state will be focused on rounding up people who are not documented and transporting them to the border, he said.

“And if I have to drive the buses myself to the border of this country, we’re going to take our state back, folks,” Eigel said at a February campaign appearance.

He estimates that 50,000 to 70,000 people could be rounded up.

“We’re talking about individuals that can’t provide proof that they are legally allowed to be here in the United States,” Eigel said in an interview.

He promised humane treatment — he will ask for money to provide food, shelter and other necessities while the people are in custody — but he doesn’t think constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure or due process extend to undocumented immigrants.

“I don’t extend that protection to those that are breaking our laws and are here illegally,” Eigel said.

The primary

One undercurrent of this year’s GOP primary battles are that Republican voters could nominate three members of the Freedom Caucus – Eigel and fellow stateSens. Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg and Andrew Koenig of Manchester – for statewide office. 

Hoskins is running for secretary of state and Koenig is running for state treasurer.

There are also three of Gov. Mike Parson’s appointees in primary races, including Kehoe, State Treasurer Vivek Malek and Attorney General Andrew Bailey. 

The choices GOP voters make will determine whether the course set under Parson is acceptable or whether they are upset that more “big red things,” as Eigel puts it, haven’t been done.

“If you look at what’s going on in the national discussion right now, Donald J. Trump is winning America on this message of being a disruptor of the status quo in Washington, D.C.,” Eigel said. “We’re seeing that’s gonna play out the same way in Jefferson City.”

This article has been updated to correct that the 1992 fuel tax increase was the last time the tax was increased.

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe exits his campaign bus in Cuba, Missouri, on July 11 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

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.”

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, alongside his wife, Claudia, formally kicks off his 2024 campaign for governor with a rally in Jefferson City on April 5, 2022 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe’s campaign for governor has raised almost $13 million over the past two years and the two funds supporting him have lapped the field in the Republican primary.

During the second quarter of the year, Kehoe raised $907,288 for his campaign and his joint fundraising committee, American Dream PAC, took in $3.6 million. It is a fundraising lead Kehoe has held throughout the campaign.

The campaign crowed about the advantage over his major rivals, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel, in a news release after his quarterly report was filed Friday.

“Mike Kehoe is outworking every candidate in this race, and Missouri conservatives have responded with overwhelming financial and grassroots support,” campaign manager Derek Coats said in a news release.

Kehoe has been planning his race since he began his term as lieutenant governor.

Eigel’s campaign manager, Sophia Shore, said Kehoe  is “raking in corporate cash” and should take part in the televised debate set for 7 p.m. July 24. It will be broadcast on pubic television, NBC affiliates and public radio stations. Kehoe has not participated in any debates this summer.

“He thinks this campaign will be won in secret meetings with donors, but in reality the voters will decide,” Shore said. “He should have the courage to face them next week.”

Every candidate in the race running a full-scale campaign has both an official campaign committee and a joint fundraising PAC. Official campaign committees can accept donations up to $2,825, while the joint fundraising PACs can accept donations of any size.

Candidates can solicit donations for the PAC, but cannot direct how the money is spent. 

Kehoe’s official committee raised more than the combined totals of his rivals both in the most recent quarter and since the start of 2023.

State and federal finance reports for the three months ending June 30 were due Monday. There is one more report due before the Aug. 6 primary.

Missouri Republicans build cash advantage over Democrats as primary races heat up

The Independent compiled the totals for all statewide candidates, plus major congressional, legislative and ballot measure efforts.

The combined fundraising in the race for governor in both parties has exceeded $21 million. Republican candidates in contested primaries for all other statewide constitutional offices have raised more than $25 million more.

There was one withdrawal among federal candidates Tuesday as the fundraising numbers showed state Rep. Justin Hicks of Lake Saint Louis lagging behind his chief rivals in the 3rd Congressional District Republican primary.

Hicks faced former state Sen. Bob Onder of Lake Saint Louis, who is largely self-funding his campaign and has the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, and former state Sen. Kurt Schaefer of Columbia.

Schaefer has the backing of incumbent U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of St. Elizabeth.

Onder reported raising $224,000 in the quarter, Schaefer raised $124,000 and Hicks raised $89,000. 

“I am truly humbled and honored at the support our campaign has earned from so many people across Missouri and this nation,” Hicks said in a news release. “I am certain that there will be other opportunities for me to continue to serve our state and nation in the future, but for now, I look forward to spending time with my family and ensuring the Republican team wins up and down the ballot.”

Governor’s race

Of Kehoe’s two major rivals In the most expensive contest, the GOP race for governor, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft raised $310,000 in the quarter for his campaign, while state Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring took in $231,000. 

Committee for Liberty, Ashcroft’s PAC, raised $405,000 in the quarter, while Eigel’s committee, BILL PAC, raised $580,000. 

Between his campaign and PAC, Ashcroft has raised $2.1 million since the start of 2023. Eigel’s two committees have combined for $3.9 million.

Kehoe has used his big cash advantage to go on television early with advertising, erasing Ashcroft’s polling lead from the spring. 

Despite spending between the two committees that exceeds $8 million, Kehoe’s campaign had $2.2 million on hand as of June 30. The PAC account held $4 million.

Ashcroft’s combined spending was $2.7 million and the campaign committee had $770,000, while the PAC had $730,000.

Eigel has spent more than Ashcroft, $3.7 million from his two committees. On June 30, he had less money remaining that any of his major rivals, $588,000 in his campaign fund and $242,000 in the PAC.

Democratic rivals for Missouri governor see abortion rights as path to victory over GOP

In the Democratic primary, state Rep. Crystal Quade of Springfield raised $281,723, bringing her total for the campaign to just over $1 million. Her major rival, businessman Mike Hamra of Springfield, has put $1.25 million of his own money into the campaign so far.

Attorney General

The GOP primary for attorney general is the second-most expensive primary contest this year.

Incumbent Andrew Bailey, seeking to win a full term, raised $274,823 during the second quarter while Liberty and Justice PAC, his joint fundraising committee, took in $854,064.

His challenger Will Scharf, however, put in $500,000 of his own money into his campaign committee, and his joint fundraising committee, Defend Missouri, received $1 million from Club For Growth Missouri. The PAC took another $700,000 from Club for Growth Action Missouri on July 2. Since the beginning of 2023, the Concord Fund has donated $3.5 million to help Scharf through Club for Growth Action Missouri.

The winner of the primary will face Democratic candidate Elad Gross, who reported raising $69,414 in the quarter and is unopposed for the nomination.

U.S. Senate

There are no expensive primaries in the race for U.S. Senate this year in Missouri.

The only uncertainty is whether state Sen. Karla May was right when she told St. Louis Public Radio that “most people around the state know me” and that she will win the Democratic primary to face incumbent U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley.

May is looking to defeat Lucas Kunce, making his second bid for the Senate after losing a close primary in 2022 to beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine.

Hawley and Kunce are neck-and-neck in fundraising since Jan. 1 2023 and available cash-on-hand.

Hawley and the Hawley Victory Fund combined to raise $2.4 million in the most recent quarter, bringing the total to $9.5 million since Jan. 1, 2023. The Hawley Victory Fund transferred more than $655,000 to Hawley’s campaign committee.

Kunce took in $2.8 million for his campaign fund in the second quarter, bringing his total for the election to $10.5 million.

Hawley had $5.8 million on hand June 30, while Kunce was sitting on $4.2 million.

May has raised just under $50,000.

Other statewide races

State Sen. Lincoln Hough of Springfield took in the biggest total of donations during the quarter in the crowded GOP primary for lieutenant governor, but the $1.5 million loan to his own campaign by St. Louis attorney Dave Wasinger gave him the largest quarterly total.

There are four candidates who have raised at least $100,000 for their campaigns and two others, not so well funded, with a well of name recognition who believe they have a chance at the nomination.

Crowded GOP primary field vying to be Missouri’s next lieutenant governor

Hough’s campaign raised about $230,000 in the quarter, and Lincoln PAC, a joint fundraising committee, took in $730,000. The campaign had about $518,000 in the bank and the PAC was sitting on $639,000 as the quarter ended.

State Sen. Holly Rehder of Scott City took in $69,838 and her Southern Drawl PAC raised another $58,075. She had $338,000 in her campaign account and the PAC had $286,000 as the quarter ended.

Matthew Porter of St. Louis has raised $136,000 for his campaign so far and had $104,955 left.

Tim Baker, the Franklin County Clerk, and Paul Berry III, who has run several campaigns in St. Louis County, are the candidates who have not raised at least $100,000.

The even-more-crowded GOP race for Secretary of State, with eight candidates in all, has six candidates who have accumulated $100,000 or more for their campaign funds and includes candidates making waves on social media who are not raising large funds.

House Speaker Dean Plocher of Des Peres is counting on a large cash-on-hand balance to carry him through the primary since his fundraising dried up amid ethics inquiries. His campaign raised less than $12,000 in the quarter, and his PAC, Missouri United, did about the same. 

The funds had the largest cash balances in the race, with his campaign holding $508,415 on June 30 and Missouri United holding $765,000.

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman had the best fundraising quarter, taking in $120,373 for her campaign and $57,350 for her PAC, Conservative Solutions for Missouri.

Jamie Corley, a long-time GOP strategist making her first campaign, loaned her campaign $250,000 and raised another $28,800, while Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller, the GOP’s 2012 nominee, raised $39,709.

Incumbent State Treasurer Vivek Malek continues to dominate fundraising in the Republican primary as he seeks a full term in office. Malek raised $207,000 for his campaign, bringing his total to $1.8 million, including a personal loan of $800,000. Malek Had $1.3 million in the bank June 30.

Incumbent Missouri Treasurer faces four-way Republican primary

His joint fundraising PAC, American Promise, raised $1.8 million in the quarter, has taken in $3.3 million total and had $1.5 million on hand.

Malek’s best funded challenger is House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith of Carthage, based largely on the accumulation of cash from years in office. Smith took in $35,800 for his campaign, which had $291,000 on hand, and the Ozark Gateway Leadership Fund, his joint fundraising PAC, took in $54,850, and had a bank balance of $227,251. Both cash balances are more than Smith has raised since the start of 2023.

Close behind in funding is Lori Rook of Springfield, who has put $500,000 of her own money into her campaign. She has raised an additional $55,000.

State Sen. Andrew Koenig of Manchester, the only other candidate in the six-way primary to raise at least $100,000, lags behind. Koenig took in $13,562 in the quarter, while his PAC, Freedom’s Promise, raised only $1,288. 

Mark Osmack of Valley Park is the only Democratic candidate. He has raised $27,000 so far.

Congress

In other hotly contested Congressional races, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has far outstripped incumbent U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in fundraising for their 1st Congressional District Democratic primary. Bell has raised $4.2 million so far to Bush’s $2.8 million. 

Bush has spent far more than Bell, however, and she had $573,354 in the bank on June 30 compared to more than $2.4 million for Bell.

The 2nd Congressional District is a fall matchup that pits a veteran Republican, U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, against a long-time St. Louis media personality, Ray Hartmann. Both face nominal primary opposition.

Hartmann had a good fundraising quarter, taking in almost $200,000, but Wagner did better, raising $561,710, and cash accumulated during her years in office totaled $3.1 million on June 30, while Hartmann had $141,471 on hand.

Initiative campaigns

The signatures on four petitions proposing ballot measures for the November election are being checked and the campaigns are in a wait-and-see mode to know if they will be active in the fall.

That means fundraising now is for the fall campaign as they expect to make the ballot.

Winning for Missouri Education has spent the most, $6 million so far, for its campaign to legalize sports wagering and while it only reported $99,000 in the bank, the online platforms financing the campaign should be good for millions more if it makes the ballot.

The effort to put a constitutional amendment restoring abortion rights has cost $5 million so far and the committee backing it, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, has $1.9 million on hand.

Healthy Families and Fair Wages, which is pushing a measure increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and requiring employers to provide paid leave for illness and family needs, spent $850,000 making the ballot and had $1 million on hand.

Ozark River Gaming and Convention, seeking to create a licensed casino near the Lake of the Ozarks, has spent $4.3 million so far and, like the sports wagering proposal, has two deep-pocket backers, a development company and a casino operator, ready to finance a fall campaign.

This article has been updated to add a comment from Sophia Shore, campaign manager for Eigel and correct U.S. Senate fundraising totals.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a candidate for governor, speaks on Feb. 29 at the Boone County Republican Lincoln Days dinner in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

The first words of Jay Ashcroft’s opening message for visitors to his gubernatorial campaign website jump out in bold: “I am an engineer.”

Ashcroft earned a law degree from St. Louis University and bachelor and master’s degrees in engineering management from Missouri University of Science and Technology.

The Missouri secretary of state is licensed as an attorney and last year officially joined the legal team defending his ballot language for a reproductive rights initiative to restore legal abortion in Missouri. He has never been licensed as a professional engineer.

It’s his training in the engineering field, however, that he’s selling hard in his campaign.

But Ashcroft’s use of the title, and whether he is using it honestly, or even perhaps illegally, has become a flash point for the campaign just weeks before the Aug. 6 primary. A complaint to the state licensing board for engineers, from a supporter of one of his opponents, objects to his use of the term and cites a state law limiting use of the word.

It is also the newest attack line being used to chew away at Ashcroft’s once-impressive polling lead in the eight-way Republican primary for governor. 

“It’s silly politics,” Ashcroft said in an interview with The Independent.

But with three weeks to go before the primary, Ashcroft is explaining why he can call himself an engineer, not his policy plans. At least 11 times during the Republican gubernatorial debate last week with two of his rivals, Ashcroft used the title engineer to describe himself and the quality of his plans for Missouri. 

And Ashcroft calls his policy plan a “Red Print,” wordplay that substitutes the shorthand for the Republican Party in the word “blueprint” with its inclusion of the shorthand reference to the Democratic Party.

“I am a typical engineer,” Ashcroft said during the debate. “I’m not your typical politician. I don’t want to talk to people, I want to get stuff done. I want to act in the best interest of the people. I don’t want to just talk about it when I’m running for election. I want to do it when it matters and move conservative policy forward.”

The complaint, filed June 27 and first reported by KSDK-TV in St. Louis, was by a Rolla engineer who contributed $520 in March to Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe’s campaign. The engineer did not respond to telephone messages and emails to discuss the complaint.

Mike Hafner, an adviser to Kehoe’s campaign, said the campaign did not contact the engineer or ask for the complaint to be filed.

After graduating from Missouri S&T, Ashcroft worked for four years at Systems & Electronics Inc., now Leonardo DRS, and was enrolled with the licensing board as an engineering intern at that time.

Later, he taught mechanical engineering and engineering technology at St. Louis Community College. 

“I am not a licensed, professional engineer,” Ashcroft said, but said he has both the resume and legal right to use the term.

Under revisions to the licensing law made in 2007, no one without a license can call themselves an engineer while offering to design “buildings, structures, products, machines, processes, and systems that can affect the health, safety, and welfare of the public.” 

But the licensing board will not discipline someone referring to themself as an engineer as long as that is “clearly not indicating or implying that such person is holding himself or herself out as being a professional engineer.”

The undergraduate engineering management program Ashcroft completed at Missouri S&T is accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. 

“If a person graduates from a program accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET, then yes, this person typically uses the title of engineer,” said Amanda Grace Taylor, director of communications for the board.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers issued a position paper on the question of titles in 2022. Titles like professional engineer should be protected and used only by licensed individuals, the paper states.

But the title engineer has a broader meaning as well, which the public understands to be someone ”who has acquired special knowledge and ability” in the engineering field. Someone who graduated from a board-accredited program, the paper states, “should not be prohibited from using the title ‘Engineer.’”

Regardless of whether he is licensed or not, Ashcroft said his use of the title for his campaign is legal. 

“if you actually look at the statute,” he said, “the statute specifically says that I made the requirements.”

End licensing?

As Ashcroft became more strident in defending his use of the title “engineer,” during the debate last week, he aimed his response in a new direction, questioning the need for the state licensing board that received a complaint he is using the title illegally.

Ashcroft suggested that all professional licensing was government overreach when asked “are you an engineer” by the debate moderator.

He listed his education and employment, then went further:

“Why in the world are Republicans asking whether or not the government has to give us permission to go out and work legally?” Ashcroft said. “I’m an engineer, but it’s none of the government’s business. We need to get rid of this red tape. We need to allow people to live their lives the way they see fit, instead of kowtowing to faceless bureaucrats.”

The statement drew a quick rebuke from the Democratic Governors Association, which called it “a completely dangerous suggestion that could potentially create countless unsafe hazards.”

Hafner, the adviser to Kehoe, also said Ashcroft’s statement is a dangerous idea. Kehoe, who is leading the latest polls, did not attend the debate at Parkway West High School.

“As a fake engineer I’m sure Jay Ashcroft would like to use crayons and an etch-a-sketch to design our roads, bridges and buildings, but we believe there should be some level of oversight when it comes to keeping Missourians safe,” Hafner said.

Missouri has regulated the engineering profession since 1941 and the Board for Architects, Professional Engineers, Professional Land Surveyors and Professional Landscape Architects is one of 39 licensing boards housed in the Division of Professional Registration. 

The boards examine the skills of professionals from accountants and barbers to tattoo artists and veterinarians. Each has the ability to discipline licensed professionals and prosecute people who offer services without a license.

Professional licensing is essential to protecting the safety and health of Missourians, said state Rep. Jeff Coleman, a Republican from Grain Valley who chairs the House Professional Registration and Licensing Committee. Coleman has not endorsed any candidate in the GOP primary for governor.

There may be some unnecessary regulations and lawmakers watch for that, Coleman said.

“We have to have licensing in order to make sure that the people that are dealing with our folks, regardless of whether it’s engineering or medical or financial, that you have to have a license to prove that you are qualified to be able to do those things, to make sure that you are not hurting those citizens,” said Coleman, who is a licensed financial adviser. “That’s what the licensing process is all about, to make sure that you have the knowledge and the ability to take care of who you’re trying to help.”

One of Missouri’s most deadly disasters was an engineering failure, Coleman said, recalling the 1981 collapse of two skywalks at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City that killed 114 people and injured scores of others. 

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, Jay Ashcroft’s father and later U.S. attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, accused the engineers of gross negligence in a license action in 1984 as the elder Ashcroft was running for governor.

“That was an engineering problem, and we can’t have those types of issues happening because you didn’t get your license and can’t prove to us that you know what you’re doing,” Coleman said.

In a statement to The Independent on Friday, Ashcroft’s campaign said he didn’t propose abolishing professional licensing.

“The regulatory regime in Missouri stifles economic growth and as governor, Jay will take a close look at all regulatory and bureaucratic policies and consider ways of modernizing them to grow our economy,” said Jason Roe, a consultant working for Ashcroft’s campaign.

State Sen. Rick Brattin, standing, chats with Tom Mendenhall while campaigning for the 4th District Republican congressional nomination in April 2022 at Boone County Lincoln Days in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Tom Mendenhall of Columbia was just about packed and ready to drive to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention when he got word not to bother.

Mendenall, who has attended seven previous conventions, was told that the convention’s Credentials Committee had voted unanimously to reinstate the delegation selected at the May 4 state convention in Springfield. 

Mendenhall was on the replacement slate selected July 3 by the state party’s executive committee when a challenge displaced the “Truly Grassroots for Trump” slate. He’s not certain about what will happen with his hotel room reservation – only delegates and people with official passes can stay close to the convention hall – and he’s not happy with the conflict over the delegation.

“If there was ever a time for unity and getting people together, it’s now, but, but that episode down there in Springfield was pretty bad,” Mendenhall said.

Missouri presidential delegates rejected by Republican National Convention committee

The confrontation that has played out over the past two weeks between party regulars and insurgents who took over the convention will likely leave no one satisfied. The 54-member at-large delegation — 27 delegates and 27 alternates — has been discarded, replaced and reinstated all within that time.

The final decision came when the 95-member Credentials Committee took time to listen to the evidence amassed by backers of the Truly Grassroots for Trump slate, said Coby Culins, a member who prepared the appeal heard Friday.

During the two-hour period set aside for questions, he said, the committee displayed hostility to the decision to remove the convention-elected delegation and the state party leadership decision to replace it.

“As we answered questions, and we did our arguments, and you can just kind of feel the room shift,” Cullins said.

The dispute over the delegation began with a challenge from two candidates for delegate who claimed that the actions of the chaotic gathering should be discarded because the results could not be trusted.

The contests committee of the Republican National Committee agreed, and ordered the state party to select replacements after it found “alarming irregularities” in the credentialing of delegates to the state convention. 

That meant a slate that included gubernatorial candidates state Sen. Bill Eigel and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft among its membership could not attend the convention except as guests. Now both can attend as delegates.

The contests committee turned down a request for a rehearing on Monday, setting up the Credentials Committee review.

The state-party-selected delegation set aside included former U.S. Rep. Billy Long; state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a candidate for secretary of state; and Susan Klein, executive director of Missouri Right to Life. 

The replacement slate did include five members of the Truly Grassroots for Trump slate, but they were not informed they would be included and three of them told The Independent they would only attend as part of the original slate.

“The Missouri Republican Party never contested the convention or the original delegate slate, and we are pleased the RNC has finally settled this matter so we can focus on delivering our Party’s 54 national convention delegates to President Donald J. Trump, and electing Missouri Republicans up and down the ballot this November,” the state party said in a statement emailed by spokeswoman Erica Choinka.

The statement from the party isn’t inaccurate but it is misleading, Cullins said.

“They certainly didn’t support us when they had the chance,” Cullins said. “They chose their own slate. But I cannot contradict anything in that.”

Cullins amassed affidavits from state convention delegates, obtained a video recording of the 12-hour meeting and argued that the party apparatus led by chairman Nick Myers is being rewarded for a problem it created.

The credentials committee was the first national body to review the video or accept in-person arguments, Cullins siad.

The dispute was about more than who could shout Trump’s name the loudest as he is renominated, Cullins said.

It is about integrity in the process within the party, he said. The state convention was comprised of delegates elected by grassroots Republicans at mass meetings, he noted.

“Those are all elected delegates for our Republican Party,” Cullins said. “For them to ignore the 848 delegates at the state convention, and try to do something different, was a slap in the face. That was a steal. They stole our delegates, is what we believed.”

This story has been updated to provide comments from the Missouri Republican Party and the appellants.

A patron awaits her turn Dec. 2, 2020, at the Central Pantry in Columbias (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

For the third year in a row, taxpayers claiming Missouri’s food pantry tax credit found they didn’t get the full value when the state Department of Revenue reviewed their returns.

The credit, up to $2,500 per taxpayer for 50% of qualifying donations to food pantries, homeless shelters and soup kitchens, is capped at $1.75 million annually. 

But this year about $2 million was claimed.

That means every taxpayer using the credit got only 87.8% of the amount claimed. And unless a taxpayer paid extra, anticipating that the full credit may not be available, the disallowance notice also stated they had to cover the difference, plus interest and penalties on the unused portion.

The law creating the credit “does not provide provisions to waive interest and penalties due to the apportionment of the food pantry tax credit,” department spokeswoman Anne Marie Moy said in an email to The Independent. “Interest is statutory and cannot be waived.”

In each of the previous two years, less than 75% of each individual credit claim was allowed, Moy said.

“The champion for children tax credit has also been apportioned in the past,” Moy said. “It was last apportioned in fiscal year 2019.”

The cap on the champion for children tax credit, which helps agencies that support children involved in court cases or family crises, was $1 million in fiscal 2019 and has since been increased to $1.25 million.

A bill to stop the interest and penalties until a taxpayer has been given a chance to pay or make arrangements to cover the difference didn’t get very far this year. State Rep. Brenda Shields, a Republican from St. Joseph, said she was surprised to find out that people who thought they had paid in full were getting bills with interest and penalties.

“I had one constituent contact me, and when they contacted me and told me they received this, I said, ‘Oh, we don’t do that.’,” Shields said. “And sure enough, come to find out, we do.”

The food pantry tax credit is one of about a dozen that encourage charitable donations to organizations that promote adoptions, help victims of domestic violence, provide diapers and food for people in poverty and perform other tasks lawmakers wish to support. The credit is generally 50% or more of a donation and can only be used by the donor to offset their own state taxes.

If a portion of the credit can’t be claimed in the year it is issued, the remainder can be carried over for up to three years.

But that doesn’t excuse the interest and penalties. The maximum credit is $2,500, so a return that claimed the maximum would have been allowed $2,195. If the $305 remainder was not paid when the return is filed, the initial charge of interest and penalties would be $21.35.

“It’s annoying,” Shields said. “It discourages people from doing what we want them to do, which is to contribute to our local food pantries.”

Shields’ bill would give a taxpayer a grace period of 60 days after receiving notice that the food pantry tax credit has been disallowed to pay the balance or make arrangements to pay. Her bill includes a grace period for the champion for children credit, which also does not include an exemption for penalties and interest.

Many donors to food pantries, she said, are people who have used the free groceries to feed their families.

“We need to give them that grace period of figuring out the payment plan,” she said, “because they might not have extra $50 within five days to be able to pay that right back.”

In 2023, a federal appeals court ruled that nothing in federal law prevents pharmacy manufacturers from limiting the number of contract pharmacies they will supply with 340B discounted products (Getty Images).

A bill favoring Missouri pharmacies and health care providers in a national dispute with drugmakers will become law without Gov. Mike Parson’s signature.

The legislation, which passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities, bars pharmaceutical manufacturers from limiting where they will deliver drugs purchased at a discount under a federal program intended to help providers serving people in rural and high-poverty areas or with specialized health needs. 

It allows medical providers qualifying for the program, known as the 340B Drug Pricing Program for the section of federal  law where it is found, to enter contracts with an unlimited number of pharmacies to dispense the drugs to their patients.

The bill is “flawed,” Parson wrote in a letter explaining his action, but ultimately is better for patient access and affordability than if he vetoed it.

“Most troubling, the 340B program lacks requirements for cost savings to be passed onto patients and further lacks transparency as to how those cost savings are used,” Parson wrote.

Parson made his decision as he announced action on the last of 26 non-budget bills passed during this year’s legislative session. He had 45 days – until Sunday – to make his decisions and any bill not signed and not vetoed becomes law as if he had signed it.

Parson did not veto any bills.

The stakes nationally in the 340B program are huge, in a medical market with escalating prescription prices and increasing concentration of medical providers in direct employment by hospital groups. Nationally, pharmaceutical manufacturers sold nearly $100 billion in discounted drugs in 2021 and 2022 through the 340B program.

In 2023, a federal appeals court ruled that nothing in federal law prevents pharmacy manufacturers from limiting the number of contract pharmacies they will supply with 340B discounted products. But those limits go only so far, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled when it upheld an Arkansas law – very similar to the bill passed in Missouri – that bans manufacturer-imposed limits on contracts.

“The use of contract pharmacies by covered entities under the program – among other programmatic concerns – is an issue that should be addressed by Congress,” Parson wrote. The legislation, while laudable in intent, “ensures the expansion of a flawed federal program within the state of Missouri.”

Because many health care providers did not have in-house pharmacies when the 340B program was begun in 1992, a change in 1996 allowed a single contractor for each provider. That was expanded starting in 2010 to allow unlimited contracts.

The number of contract pharmacies grew from 2,321 in 2010 to 205,340 in 2024.

Pushing back against the growth, pharmaceutical companies have targeted the program’s use by “disproportionate share hospitals,” generally serving large populations of patients without insurance or on Medicaid or Medicare. Those hospitals account for about 80% of all drugs purchased through the 340B program, $41.8 billion in 2022 and $34.3 billion the year before.

Those hospitals should be required to show how they use the money to help the patients that cannot pay for doctor visits and medications, Nicole Longo, deputy vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, said in an interview last month with The Independent.

“They buy low and they sell high,” Longo said. “Patients bear a lot of that cost, and so that’s a major concern of the industry.”

In a statement, Stami Williams, PhRMA spokesperson, said the association agrees that the 340B program is flawed and in need of an overhaul by Congress.

The bill that will become law, she said, “does not help vulnerable patients more affordably access medicines. This legislation is a handout to large hospital systems, chain pharmacies, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).”

The Missouri Hospital Association, in a statement following Parson’s action, said the legislation will maintain access to essential medications. The overwhelming majority in favor of the bill recognized that, said Jon Doolittle, the association’s president.

“In doing so, they rejected artificial limits on pharmacies’ participation, to ensure members of their communities could access their medication and health care services close to home,” Doolittle said. “In addition, they recognized that the 340B program supports services that would not otherwise be available in many communities without the protections added through the legislation.”

The program is essential for keeping rural providers open and giving patients access to prescriptions near their homes, said Joe Pierle, executive director of the Missouri Primary Care Association.

The association represents federally qualified health centers, which serve patients regardless of their ability to pay. The health centers are the second-largest group of providers using the 340B program.

“This whole contract pharmacy (issue) is really about allowing us to contract with local pharmacies so that patients in the Mark Twain National Forest can can drive a mile or two to pick up a prescription instead of having to traverse the hills and mountains down there, which are difficult to navigate, to sometimes go to a different county to get the drugs,” Pierle said.

Criticism of contract pharmacies is a smokescreen, he said.

“Their whole focus,” Pierle said, “was trying to get everybody’s focus off the massive profits that they’re making and the high cost for medications that Missourians are having to pay.”

State Sen. Bill Eigel, left, and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel exchanged sharp attacks on each other and absent opponent Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe at one of the rare debates in the GOP gubernatorial primary Thursday night. 

Ashcroft and Eigel were joined on stage at Parkway West High School in Chesterfield by Chris Wright, a Joplin veteran who lags far behind them in funding and has not registered much support in polls. Kehoe, who has used a campaign war chest of more than $10 million to leap ahead of Ashcroft and Eigel in public polling, has not participated in any debates this summer as the Aug. 6 primary approaches.

The forum was sponsored jointly by Missouri Young Republicans, the St. Louis County Republican Central Committee and the Jefferson County Republican Club and moderated by Annie Frey of 97.1-FM St. Louis.

With more undecided voters than any candidate can claim in supporters — and platforms that are similar in their hard-right conservative proposals — Ashcroft and Eigel tried hard to show they have the bonafide credentials.

Ashcroft and Eigel both want to repeal a gas tax increase passed in 2021 with Kehoe’s backing. Eigel, who has led a GOP state Senate faction in repeated filibusters, should have prevented the tax from passing in the first place, Ashcroft said.

“I would not have sat down,” Ashcfoft said. “It’s unfortunate that we have so many people in the Senate that can filibuster for all sorts of reasons, but when it comes to protecting your pocketbook, they fell silent.”

Eigel responded that he did filibuster the bill for five hours but was told that if he did not relent, a bill seeking to nullify federal gun regulations in Missouri, known as  the Second Amendment Protection Act, would not come to a vote.

“That was the kind of choice that senators would have to make,” he said.

Eigel got a chance to throw an elbow at Ashcroft by using his political pedigree against him. Ashcroft’s father, John, was state auditor, attorney general, governor and U.S. Senator between 1973 and 2001. 

Ashcroft had just invoked his father’s legacy. Overspending is why he opposes any taxpayer financing for professional sports stadiums he said, adding “my dad wasn’t really happy about it” because the elder Ashcroft signed the bill financing the St. Louis domed stadium in 1989.

 “Jay, be a little easy on your dad, you need that last name,” Eigel quipped.

Kehoe is one of three officeholders appointed to their jobs by Gov. Mike Parson because of vacancies and on the ballot in this year’s GOP primary.

The barbs at Kehoe focused on his absence and backing from major donors with interests before state government. Eigel included Parson in his attacks, accusing him of growing the state budget “more in six years than every Democratic governor combined, going back to the founding of the state.”

Ashcroft, Eigel and Wright all endorsed proposals to ban foreign ownership of farmland, with Ashcroft specifying his support for banning ownership by “hostile” powers. Kehoe in 2013 supported a bill allowing 1% of farmland in the state to be foreign owned, ending a total ban, and voted to override a veto by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

“What we’re lacking on this is, really, action by the two individuals that are most responsible for this mess, that voted for it as state senators, Mike Parson and Mike Kehoe,” Eigel said. “Both of those guys not only voted for it as state senators, they overrode the governor at the time to ensure that it became law.”

When asked by the moderator if Jefferson City was corrupt, all three candidates said it was.

“I sure looks like there are a lot of people making decisions based on who’s funding their campaigns,” Ashcroft said. “And you know, there’s probably a reason why there’s someone missing.”

Wright agreed.

“Absolutely it is corrupt,” he said. “We’ve got to do something with the money and how it’s so easy to fund these PACs with $10 million. What are you going to do with $10 million? You know who I’m talking about.”

Kehoe wasn’t far away. He posted a photo on social media showing him at a backyard fundraising event in Jefferson County with Attorney General Andrew Bailey, another Parson appointee.

Great event in Jefferson County tonight with @AndrewBaileyMO & @SheriffMarshak. pic.twitter.com/MshPBMNrQA

— Mike Kehoe (@MikeLKehoe) July 12, 2024

The three candidates on stage had few significant differences in policies they would pursue. Both Eigel and Ashcroft have pledged to eliminate the state income tax, and Wright said he has been pushing to eliminate the personal property tax his entire campaign. That is one of Eigel’s pet issues.

All three criticized public education and the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

“The problem with public education right now is government being involved,” Ashcroft said.

Eigel wants to eliminate the department.

“We’ll go after and dismantle DESE so that we can get our schools back,” he said.

Wright said money should be the stick to make local schools do better.

“If you’re not performing as a school, then you should have that threat of money being taken away,” Wright said. 

One of the current debates in the campaign is whether Ashcroft can use his education and experience to claim he is an engineer. Ashcroft received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering management from Missouri University of Science and Technology, worked for four years in a defense firm and taught engineering courses at St. Louis Community College.

When challenged on whether that qualifies him to claim the title, even though he has never been a licensed engineer, Ashcroft said it does.

And as he defended his use of the title, Ashcroft suggested that licensing was government overreach.

“Why in the world are Republicans asking whether or not the government has to give us permission to go out and work legally?” Ashcroft said. “I’m an engineer, but it’s none of the government’s business. We need to get rid of this red tape. We need to allow people to live their lives the way they see fit, instead of kowtowing to faceless bureaucrats.”

Former Missouri state Sen. Bob Onder, who is running for Congress in the state's third district, speaks at a rally in support of a bill that seeks to change Missouri's initiative-petition process (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Former state Sen. Bob Onder, one of the leading Republican candidates in Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District, on Monday landed the endorsement of former President Donald Trump in the seven-way contest for the Republican nomination.

Trump, via statement on the Truth Social platform, said Onder “is an incredible America First Patriot” and a “highly respected physician and attorney” who would back Trump’s program on economic, border and military policies.

Onder, of St. Charles, former state Sen. Kurt Schaefer of Columbia and state Rep. Justin Hicks of Lake St. Louis are the three candidates in the GOP primary race who have organized significant campaigns. Trump’s endorsement includes a dig at Schaefer, but doesn’t mention the other candidates.

Onder’s “opponent, Kurt Schaefer, is WEAK ON MAGA,” Trump wrote. “That’s all you have to know!”

The 3rd District covers all or part of 16 counties, including Boone, Cole, St. Charles and Jefferson. The incumbent, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of St. Elizabeth, surprised the Missouri political world when he announced in January that he would not seek another term.

Other candidates in the Republican primary are Arnie C. AC Arn Dienoff of O’Fallon, a perennial candidate; Chad Bicknell of O’Fallon, who lost a primary to Luetkemeyer in 2018; Kyle Bone of DeSoto, who lost a 2018 primary for a Missouri House seat; and Bruce A. Bowman, a Jefferson City businessman.

In a statement to The Independent, Onder said he was “honored” to have the endorsement. 

“In 2025, we will reverse the disastrous policies of Joe Biden and the Democrats, and restore America First principles,” Onder said. “President Trump was the greatest President of my lifetime and I look forward to being his ally in Congress to pass his America First Agenda and Make America Great Again.”

Trump’s endorsement has been a coveted campaign asset for years, both in Missouri, where Trump got 57% of the vote in 2020, and in other Republican states. In the 2022 U.S. Senate primary in Missouri, Trump issued a vague statement endorsing “Eric” that did not distinguish between Eric Schmitt, who eventually won the seat, and Eric Greitens, a former governor.

Schaefer, who is counting on his name recognition in central Missouri to counter Onder’s strength in the eastern end of the district, didn’t concede that the endorsement will push the race to Onder.

“Unlike Bob Onder, I’ve always supported President Trump,” Schaefer said in a statement to The Independent.

In the 2016 presidential contest, Onder endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over Trump. 

“I’ll use my experience as a proven prosecutor with a record of enforcing the law to fight for President Trump and his agenda,” Schaefer said. “Together, we’ll restore law and order, expose DC corruption and secure the border.”

Schaefer has the endorsement of Luetkemeyer, made in April after denouncing the “antics” of “far right wingers” among the Republican conference in Congress.

Onder and Schaefer both served two terms in the Missouri Senate and both have failed in campaigns for other offices. Onder lost to Luetkemeyer the 2008 GOP primary in the old 9th Congressional District and Schaefer lost to Josh Hawley in the 2016 primary for attorney general.

Schaefer won his state Senate seat the same year Luetkemeyer won his seat in Congress.

This article has been updated to remove the name of Brandon Wilkinson, who withdrew as a candidate.

Former President Donald Trump in a pre-recorded message told The Danbury Institute, a group opposed to abortion, that he hopes to protect “innocent life” if elected in November. In this photo, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on Feb. 24 in National Harbor, Maryland (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images).

All of Missouri’s votes at the Republican National Convention are pledged to the nomination of former President Donald Trump, but the fight over who will cast those votes is putting new rips in the fabric of the state GOP.

On Wednesday, the executive committee of the Missouri Republican Party chose 27 at-large delegates and 26 alternates to replace the delegation elected at the May 4 state convention and discarded June 28 by the convention’s contests committee after a complaint about the selection process.

The contests committee ruled that “alarming irregularities” plagued the election at the Republican state convention in Springfield. It focused on a five-hour credentialing process that it said undermined confidence that the delegates on hand were those selected to attend the convention at county mass meetings.

The list of new delegates, obtained by The Independent, is heavily weighted toward the slate that was prepared for the convention, but never nominated, by state party Chairman Nick Myers. 

Missouri presidential delegates rejected by Republican National Convention committee

The executive committee could have resubmitted the discarded list. But only five people selected at the convention – two delegates and three alternates – were selected for the replacement delegation. And three of those delegates told The Independent they didn’t agree to be included.

Carla Grewe of St. Louis, elected as an alternate at the state convention and in the new list, said she and her husband Gary Grewe – like her, elected both at the convention and on Wednesday list – never agreed to be split off from their slate.

“We think what the party has done is horribly corrupt,” Grewe said in a text to The Independent. “Nick should re-submit the ‘Truly Grassroots for Trump’ slate.”

Sam Alexander of Fair Play, in a text message, said he is asking to be removed from the new delegate list.

Of the 27 newly chosen delegates, 20 were a delegate or alternate on the party leadership list. Of the 26 newly chosen alternates, 10 were on the party leadership slates.

The original delegation included two of the party’s three leading candidates for governor, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel, and they were not in the new delegation. 

“I wouldn’t be a part of any slate other than the one duly elected by the GOP State Convention,” Eigel said in a text to The Independent. “Anyone participating in this new ‘Swamp Slate’ – from the GOP executive committee to the delegates themselves accepting a role in this sham – is part of the problem.”

Ashcroft declined to comment.

Recognizable names in the new delegation include former U.S. Rep. Billy Long, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a candidate for secretary of state, and Missouri Right to Life Executive Director Susan Klein.

The move to reject the state convention-elected delegation is causing rumblings of discontent in the GOP.

“The state party was responsible for the disorganization at the state convention and now in charge of hand-picking new delegates and alternates to attend the national convention, less than two weeks away,” read a statement from Mark Schneider, chair of the 6th Congressional District Republican Central Committee posted to several social media accounts. “Hotel rooms, flights and other arrangements have been made. This is an absolute disgrace to the process, our party and the grassroots movement that took their time to participate at the county and state level.”

Schneider said the solution is to resubmit the names elected at the convention.

“The in-fighting in our party must stop and it starts with state leadership recognizing the results of the state convention and allowing those duly elected delegates and alternates to attend the national convention,” he wrote.

While the deadline for submitting the new delegation was 4 p.m. Friday, the deadline for appealing the contests committee decision is Saturday. Coby Cullins, a member of the convention-elected delegation, is preparing the appeal, he wrote in an email to The Independent.

Cullins said he believes the contests committee was a “tainted jury” influenced by Missouri Republican National Committee member Carrie Almond.

The appeal will present evidence that the state convention result should be accepted.

“We have the facts on our side, including hours of video proof and almost 300 notarized affidavits.”

If the contests committee doesn’t reverse itself, there is a final appeal to the convention’s credentials committee.

“We hope that this completely different committee will allow us to speak and if that happens we are confident the truth will prevail,” Cullins said. “The grassroots of Missouri are tired of being told to ‘get in line.’ We are fighting back in an attempt to take our Republican Party back from the establishment swamp.”

Missouri Republican Party spokeswoman Erica Choinka did not return telephone and text messages seeking comment.

Dan O’Sullivan, one of two candidates for delegate who filed the complaint, said he doesn’t see how an appeal can succeed.

“I can’t imagine how some would appeal our decision without being able to produce a list of people that were credentialed at the convention,” O’Sullivan said.

O’Sullivan said he was told there were offers made to include more of the delegates and alternates elected at the convention but they were refused.

O’Sullivan and Derrick Good of Jefferson County, who also filed a complaint, were selected as delegates on Wednesday.

The May 4 convention was a chaotic affair, and the contests committee report states that the evidence shows many delegates arrived without their credentials, only to find a party staff using incorrect lists and distributing newly minted credentials without verifying who was receiving them.

It took five hours to get the convention seated, followed by a fight over the chairmanship that elected Sophia Shore, manager of Eigel’s campaign for governor, over Eddie Justice, the party leadership choice.

Under the convention rules, delegations were elected by slates that had to have all the slots filled. Before slates were nominated, there was a fight over what Shore’s backers considered an inconsistency in the rules. 

One portion of the rules said the slates had to have 27 delegates and 27 alternates, while another said that 16 delegates and 16 alternates were to be nominated at congressional district conventions and offered by Myers at the state convention.

Missouri can send 54 delegates and 54 alternates to the Republican National Convention scheduled to start July 15 in Milwaukee. Of that number, there are three each from the state’s eight congressional districts, 27 at-large and three slots reserved for party leaders.

Once the convention agreed to the change that removed the allowance for 16 delegates and 16 alternates offered by Myers, the Truly Grassroots for Trump slate was the only complete slate nominated. 

The fight over the rules was cited in the complaints filed by O’Sullivan and Good but the contests committee found that the credentialing process was so badly flawed that it did not need to consider that portion of the complaint.

“The committee reserves the right to reconsider any of the remaining issues, should there be an appeal,” the report stated.

O’Sullivan said he filed the complaint because the convention was so poorly run, not because he was upset he wasn’t chosen as a delegate. He said the party leadership is to blame for the poorly organized start to the convention and it was so bad the meeting shouldn’t count.

“They didn’t do the credentialing correctly,” O’Sullivan said. “There was no conspiracy to screw it up. It was incompetence. That’s embarrassing for everybody.”

This article has been updated to add a comment from Sam Alexander and to clarify that the Truly Grassroots slate was the only one nominated at the convention.

Darrell McClanahan of Milo, a candidate for governor who the Missouri Republican Party attempted to remove from the ballot for being an 'honorary' KKK member. He is shown in a photo from his 2022 campaign for U.S. Senate, standing in front of the flag of the Missouri State Guard, a military force formed in 1861 to oppose the Union in the Civil War (Campaign photo).

An “honorary KKK member” will lead the list of Republicans on the ballot for Missouri governor in the Aug. 6  primary, in part because it is too late for an appeal court to hear a case seeking to remove his name.

And eight candidates for county office in Vernon County will also be on the ballot despite efforts by the county Republican central committee to have them stricken.

In decisions handed down Tuesday, the Western District Missouri Court of Appeals dismissed the two cases as moot. State law doesn’t allow the courts to change ballots later than eight weeks before the primary, the judges wrote.

“The names of the eight candidates cannot now be stricken or removed from the ballot, and the ballot cannot be modified in any way,” Judge Lisa White Hardwick wrote in the opinion dismissing the Vernon County appeal.

In the Vernon County case, the eight candidates refused to participate in the vetting process devised by the county committee to test whether candidates are truly Republican enough to represent the party.

The candidates who the party wanted to exclude are four incumbents – the current county assessor, county treasurer, public administrator and an associate commissioner as well as two candidates for sheriff and two candidates for a commission seat.

A trial court in Vernon County sided with the county central committee, which refused to accept the filing fees of the eight candidates, and directed the county clerk to remove the candidates. The court of appeals ordered them restored to the ballot when the appeal was filed but since that date, Hardwick wrote, the last date for the courts to make changes to the ballot has passed.

In the other case, from Cole County, the Missouri Republican Party lost a lawsuit seeking to kick Darrell McClanahan III off the ballot for governor. McClanahan, a resident of Milo in Vernon County, is listed first, with eight other candidates.

The state party doesn’t want McClanahan on the ballot because he admitted being an “honorary member” of the Ku Klux Klan in a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. McClanahan also faces felony property damage and stealing charges in a case being heard in Wright County.

The state Republican Party sued Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to remove McClanahan, but Circuit Judge Cotton Walker wrote that by accepting his $500 filing fee, the party was stuck with him.

Walker issued his order on May 17. The state Republican Party waited until June 17 to file its notice of appeal, almost a week after the June 11 deadline for the courts to order changes to the ballot.

The order signed by Chief Judge Anthony Gabbert does not discuss the merits of the appeal. It cites the law limiting judicial power and states the court “would be unable to grant relief.”

The core of both cases is whether political parties can control who appears on the primary ballot by refusing filing fees. 

For state candidates like McClanahan, the fee must be paid directly to the political party. Candidates for county offices can pay the fee at the local election authority office and it is then forwarded to the local party.

The secretary of state’s office won’t allow a candidate to file if they do not have the receipt showing their filing fee has been accepted. In the Vernon County case, the clerk accepted the fee and the filing paperwork at the same time, only to learn later that the party refused the money.

In 2018, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that a political party had no legal duty to accept the filing fee. The case involved a state candidate and the law that allowed candidates to pay the fee to the secretary of state as local candidates can to their election authority has since been changed to require direct payments to the party.

There is no similar precedent covering filing fees that are payable to local committees. In the ruling on the Vernon County case, Hardwick noted that both parties asked that the case be heard to provide guidance in future elections. 

“Because there is no practical effect on the ballot from taking either of these actions,” Hardwick wrote, “we decline both requests.”

A Republican committee on Friday tossed out 27 of Missouri’s delegates to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images).

The Missouri Republican Party must replace 54 national convention delegates and alternates selected at its chaotic state convention because of “alarming irregularities” in the process, the Republican National Convention Committee on Contests ruled Friday.

The list of rejected delegates includes two of the major GOP candidates for governor, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel.

“The committee holds that the State Convention was not properly credentialed, and that any slate of delegates and alternate delegates adopted at the State Convention must be discarded,” states the report signed by Chairwoman Jeanne Luckey of Mississippi.

The committee acted after investigating complaints from state convention delegates Daniel O’Sullivan of St. Louis County and Derrick Good of Jefferson County. 

They alleged delegates to the state convention were not properly credentialed as the convention was organized, that the rules for selecting the state’s at-large delegates were improperly changed during the convention and that some delegates were listed on more than one slate of names in violation of the rules.

The committee, after determining that the complaint about credentialing had merit, wrote that it did not need to consider the other complaints and made no ruling on them.

“Contestants have provided ample proof of alarming irregularities in the state convention’s credentialing procedures, including the absence of names on delegate lists, the distribution of delegate credentials to alternate delegates without confirming who they were replacing, and the failure to ensure alternate delegates were raised from the same counties as the delegates they were replacing, among other things,” the report stated. 

The committee’s ruling gives the state party executive committee until 5 p.m. Friday to select a new set of at-large delegates and alternates. 

The executive committee will meet that deadline, the Missouri Republican Party said in a statement to The Independent.

The state party had no role in the determination by the national contests committee, the statement read.

“We understand the urgency and importance of this matter and are working diligently to ensure that all proper procedures are followed within the constrained deadline,” the statement read. “While this process unfolds, we remain focused on selecting a delegation that will represent Missouri well at the RNC.”

O’Sullivan, who ran for Congress in 1996 and has been a member of the St. Louis County Republican Central Committee for more than 20 years, said the ruling highlights just one set of problems springing from the convention.

“They can’t produce a list of who was in attendance,” O’Sullivan said. “They can’t certify who the delegates to the convention were, so the committee can’t say that the product of the convention was valid, and they therefore did not even deal with the questions we had regarding things that occurred during the event itself.”

O’Sullivan expects to be on the list of delegates that will be selected to replace those elected at the convention.

So does Good, a Jefferson County attorney who also has been a long-time county committee member. 

“The State Executive Committee will put together a new delegate list by the end of the week, and I’m confident those are folks that are committed and able to participate,” Good said.

The main fight at the convention was between people relatively new to the convention process and those who had been party stalwarts with many conventions under their belts. It became clear after the congressional district conventions that the faction that would buck the party establishment had a convention majority.

The projected timeline for the convention was for it to have all delegates seated by 9 a.m., the time it was officially scheduled to begin, and for all business to be completed by 2 p.m. The credentialing process, however, took five hours and the only business completed by 2 p.m., when the convention took a lunch break, was the election of Sophia Shore of Camden County, as convention chair over Eddie Justice.

Shore manages Eigel’s campaign for governor.

“The MO GOP, whether it be nefarious intentions or just incompetency, completely botched their one job — credentialing,” Shore said in a statement to The Independent. “It is asinine that the contest committee would accept a challenge that was orchestrated by the MO GOP on the basis of their own error and then reward them for their incompetence.” 

Missouri has 54 delegate votes at the GOP national convention in Milwaukee, which is set to begin July 15. Of that number, 24 were elected at eight congressional district conventions in April and 27 were elected as at-large delegates at the state convention on May 4. Three additional delegate slots are reserved for party leaders.

There were also 27 alternates selected at the state convention.

All delegates were elected on slates to fill all available seats but a change in rules during the afternoon session made The Truly Grassroots for Trump slate the only one presented for a vote.

The executive committee should restore the delegation without changes, Shore said in her statement.

“The MO GOP should own their mistakes, re-submit the Truly Grassroots for Trump slate elected by the convention delegates, and be done with it,” she said.

Many of the delegates selected at the convention have not reserved their hotel rooms in Milwaukee and seem unlikely to attend, Good said. But they would not have been removed as delegates if the rules written before the convention had been followed, he said.

“If they just played by the rules, there would be no complaint,” Good said. “They had the votes. They did a good job of building a coalition going into it.”

The delegate slates prepared, but ultimately withdrawn, had the same goal as the now-discarded delegates who were selected, to re-elect Trump, he said.

“There’s a place to have these kinds of fights,” he said. “There are rules to have them under, and then at the end of the day, hopefully we find a way to come back together for the common goals.”

The afternoon session was marked by disputes over whether those who left for lunch could re-enter the convention, whether the rules could be changed and how slates of delegates and amendments to the platform had to be presented to be in order.

“When the credentialing went to hell, the confidence in the people running the convention was lost,” O’Sullivan said.

After the vote, delegates drifted away and the convention ended, without adopting a platform, when there was no longer a quorum to conduct business.

“The event itself was embarrassing,” O’Sullivan said.

Othel Moore died at the Jefferson City Correctional Center in December while restrained and in isolation (Caspar Benson/Getty Images).

Four former Missouri correctional officers face murder charges and a fifth is charged with involuntary manslaughter for the December death of a man incarcerated at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

Othel Moore, 38, was pepper-sprayed in the face multiple times, had his face improperly covered by a hood that blocked his nose and mouth and left unattended in a cell for more than 30 minutes, documents filed Friday in Cole County Circuit Court state.

Moore, who suffered from asthma, screamed at officers that he could not breathe as he was being transported to the cell, the documents state. He died on the morning of Dec. 8.

Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Locke Thompson charged Justin Leggins, 34, of Cadet, Jacob Case, 31, of Desloge, and Aaron Brown, 24, and Gregory Varner, 34, both of Park Hills, with second degree assault and second degree murder.

Warden of Missouri prison replaced after investigation of inmate death

Thompson charged Bryanne Bradshaw, 25, of Jefferson City with involuntary manslaughter in the second degree.

Leggins was hired by the department in 2022, according to information on the Missouri Accountability Portal. Case worked for the department in 2014 and 2015 and returned in 2020. Brown was hired in 2021. Varner worked for the department from 2014 to 2016 and returned in 2019. Bradshaw started in 2018.

All five had been arrested or surrendered to authorities by Friday afternoon, Thompson said.

No information was available indicating whether the officers have hired attorneys.

Four corrections officers were fired in March during the investigation of Moore’s death. The warden of the Jefferson City Correctional Center was terminated as an employee of the department earlier this month. 

The autopsy of Moore ruled his death was due to “positional asphyxiation” and the death was determined to be a homicide, documents filed with the case state.

“The sheriff’s department did a very thorough investigation and when we set down and reviewed all the evidence available, that is what led us to those charges,” Thompson said in an interview with The Independent.

The charges, highly unusual in an inmate death case, were first reported by the Associated Press. Thompson said he has some cases of inmate-on-inmate violence pending, but no other cases involving correctional officers assaulting inmates.

“Right now we have two offender-on-offender homicides, and we have had those in the past as well,” Thompson said.

In a press release, Thompson said Moore’s death was linked to a Corrections Emergency Response Team operation to sweep one of the housing units for contraband. Moore was pepper sprayed twice during the operation before being placed in a spit hood, leg wrap and restraint chair and transferred to a separate housing unit, where he was left in the hood, wrap, and restraint chair for approximately 30 minutes. 

The probable cause statements for each of the five describe their role in Moore’s death.

Leggins was present outside Moore’s cell during the operation. Moore spoke to another inmate and Leggins told him to remain silent. 

“The victim looked back over his shoulder without moving any other part of his body and asked the suspect why he had to be quiet,” Sgt. Greg Henson of the Cole County Sheriff’s Department wrote in the probable cause statement on Leggin’s charges. “lt was at this point Leggins raised a ‘fogger’ canister of pepper spray and deployed it from a very close distance into the face of the victim.”

The spraying violated department policies that the inmate had to be a danger to the officer or other inmates, Henson wrote. 

“This unwarranted reckless behavior inflicted undue suffering and pain on the victim,” Henson wrote.

Case pepper sprayed Moore in the face as he lay on the ground.

“During the initial interview Case stated he pepper sprayed the victim in the face while he was on the ground at the top of the staircase for not following directives to stop resisting,” Det. Aaron Roberts of the sheriff’s office wrote in the court documents.

Brown placed the mask on Moore’s face, Deputy Merideth Freeeman wrote in his probable cause statement. He claimed Moore was spitting at corrections officers, which other officers denied.

“Brown placed the spit mask on the victim’s head without allowing him the opportunity to decontaminate from the pepper spray even though the victim was fully restrained and cooperative at the time,” Freeman wrote, noting that he placed it improperly, blocking Moore’s nose and mouth.

Varner supervised the placement of Moore into a restraint device while masked.

“During my interview with Varner, he confirms that by the time the victim reached the bottom level after being sprayed multiple times, he was yelling that he couldn’t breathe, and that the victim was saying he had asthma,” Henson wrote in a probable cause statement.

Bradshaw was the highest ranking officer in the unit where Moore was taken in restraint. When he arrived at about 7:50 a.m. that morning, he was in distress.
“Sgt. Bradshaw stated that when Moore arrived he was yelling and screaming and although she said she couldn’t understand what he was saying, she said he could have been saying he couldn’t breathe or was in distress,” Henson wrote. “Additionally, Bradshaw said she knew Moore from previous encounters, and didn’t think he would be making up medical issues if that’s what he was trying to relay when yelling.”

Moore was placed in a locked room, restrained and masked. He was not checked on until he was unresponsive about 8:20 a.m. that day.

Prison reform activist Michelle Smith had not heard about the charges when contacted Friday.

“The fact that they’ve absolutely been charged, yes, that’s amazing,” Smith said. “I appreciate it. I think that it is necessary, and you know, it will serve to get the information out to the public.”

Smith organized a vigil in January to highlight the growing number of deaths among inmates. Moore’s death was one of 135 in Missouri’s state prisons in 2023, according to Missouri Prison Reform . The number of deaths have been rising even as prison populations fall.

From 2012 to 2014, department data shows, there was an average of 31,442 incarcerated people in state prisons. Deaths averaged 89 per year. Over the period 2020 through 2022, with an average of 23,409 incarcerated people in state prisons, deaths averaged 122 per year.

Many of the deaths are natural, but they also include increasing numbers of overdose deaths.

The Moore investigation should not end with the criminal charges, Smith said. The way prisoners who told his family about his death were treated needs to be addressed as well, she said.

“The person who called the sister and told her he was killed, they put him in the hole,” Smith said. “They retaliated against several men and put them in the hole who were talking about it.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson delivers the State of the State speech to a joint session of the legislature in January (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

More than 170 items were struck from the Missouri state budget Friday as Gov. Mike Parson cut $1 billion from the spending plan passed this year by lawmakers.

In a statement explaining his cuts, Parson said he vetoed earmarked items that he believes were loaded into the budget for special projects and organizations without considering the future financial stability of the state.

“The use of the veto pen is not something I do eagerly, but today these vetoes represent the elimination of unnecessary pet projects and the protection of the taxpayer dime,” Parson said in a news release announcing his budget actions. “We may be leaving $1.9 billion on the bottom line, but that doesn’t mean we spend for the sake of spending.”

It was the second year in a row Parson cut the budget despite near-record surpluses. 

State budget loaded with earmarks nears deadline for action by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson

One of the biggest cuts was $150 million in general revenue that was part of a $727.5 million plan for expanding Interstate 44 in southwest Missouri. The cut leaves $577.5 million available, with $363 million coming from borrowed money.

Other projects, large and small, that Parson did not approve include grants to not-for-profit organizations, support for local projects and set-asides that targeted a single vendor for a state purchase.

Many of the individual items carried a warning — that the fund being tapped was “grossly overappropriated,” that it was a local responsibility or that the long-term financial health of the state required the cut.

A new education law will cost an estimated $400 million more annually for public schools when fully implemented, with the foundation formula estimated to cost $300 million more in fiscal 2026, Parson wrote in a message repeated several times.

“We have obligations both this year and in future years that must be accounted for today to avoid future budgetary pains tomorrow,” Parson said in the news release.

The budget — $50.5 billion for state operations in the year that begins Monday — has several spending initiatives that Parson did approve. He requested several of them and accepted others added by lawmakers.

• Almost $700 million for roads including the $577.5 million for I-44, $150 million to widen U.S. 67 through Butler County and $40 million for construction on U.S. 65 from Buffalo to Warsaw. 
• Full funding of the state’s 75% share of school transportation costs for the third year in a row. The transportation support has not been fully funded for almost 30 years until the budget surplus started growing.
• A 3% increase in funding for state colleges and universities, plus $367 million in new funding to complete construction projects begun in 2022 or for new campus construction.
• A 3.2% pay raise for state employees.
• A boost in state grants to support teacher pay to make the minimum salary $40,000. In May, Parson signed a bill mandating the $40,000 minimum salary for all districts.
• $1.5 billion in federal grant awards to expand broadband access in rural areas.
• $56 million for public and charter schools to provide Pre-Kindergarten programs to all students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.

Parson left in place initiatives he called for, such as increased rates for child care providers, even if the budget did not fund them at the levels he requested.

Some of the vetoed items have become targets for criticism, including $12.5 million to purchase land for a state park in McDonald County inserted into the budget by state Rep. Dirk Deaton of Noel.

Parson also vetoed $1 million to assist Deaton’s hometown recover from the closure of a Tyson plant. The state has helped plan job fairs and sought to market the Tyson plant site, the veto message states.

“Beyond all of these efforts, the state has been unable to determine the intended use of these specific funds,” Parson wrote.

There were other items vetoed because there was too little information about how the money would be used.

For one, $502,000 to support an historical society that operates a museum and a cemetery, the administration had no information at all.

“The demographic language is not specific enough to identify where this project is located,” Parson wrote.

Some of the items vetoed were repeats from last year. One of those items was $8 million for a law enforcement training center in O’Fallon in St. Charles County. 

“That project is built on a partnership that includes commitments from five different counties from the region,” Parson wrote. “Whereas the state senators that represent the county in which this facility is located voted against (the spending bill), this leads my administration to believe that there is not widespread, regional support for this training facility.”

St. Charles is represented by state Sens. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring and Nick Schroer of Defiance, members of the Freedom Caucus group that disrupted plans for orderly debate on the budget with a 41-hour filibuster.

One of the smaller earmarked items that was vetoed was $38,000 for sales tax refunds sought by state Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove. The refunds were for taxes found to be owed when the interpretation of tax law changed because of a court ruling.

None of the items cut were vetoed because the state lacks money. 

On May 31, the general revenue fund held $4.8 billion and there was $1.6 billion in the bank in other funds that could be spent like general revenue. There are also funds set aside for major projects that are not so far along that they couldn’t be stopped, like $600 million set aside for expanding the state Capitol Building.

Parson’s administration put out a two-page summary seeking to dispel the idea that the state has substantial surplus cash. There are large fund balances, the document states, but there are also large pending obligations that will draw down those balances.

”Reductions in revenue and increased ongoing expenditures approved by recent legislation mean we have obligations beyond the current fiscal year that rely on Missouri’s fund balance in the future,” the summary states.

Parson’s budget office projects a $1.9 billion general revenue balance on June 30, 2025. The budget passed by lawmakers spent $50.9 billion total on state operations, with $15.2 million from general revenue.

Parson said in the news release that he cut that to $50.5 billion total for operations and $14.9 billion in general revenue. The budget is based on a projection for $13.1 billion in general revenue receipts.

That means an accumulated surplus must be tapped to fill the gaps on ongoing operations, but there are trends that will reduce the drawdown.

Last June 30, Missouri had a general revenue surplus of $5.1 billion, $1.3 billion more than had been projected when the budget for that fiscal year was written.

Parson’s budget proposal from January projected it would decline to $3.2 billion when the current year ends Sunday and stand at $1.6 billion on June 30, 2025. 

Those estimates were based on a slight decline in revenues this year, but through Thursday collections are up 1.1%, which will add a small amount to the surplus. The state has collected $94 million more in general revenue in the current year, $13.3 billion total so far, than in fiscal 2023.

The estimate for almost flat revenue in the coming year is unchanged, Budget Director Dan Haug said Friday in an email to The Independent.

That would mean approximately $200 million would be available during the coming fiscal year that is not anticipated in the original budget.

The other factor reducing the draw on general revenue and other state funds is understaffing at state agencies, in some cases more than 10% down from authorized strength.

Working to reduce state revenue are pending tax cuts. If this fiscal year ends with revenue exceeding last year’s total by $200 million, it would trigger a reduction in the top income tax rate of 0.1%, to 4.7%, on Jan. 1.

The increase through Thursday isn’t enough to trigger the refund but there are collections to come.

“We won’t,” Haug said, “be able to make that calculation until after we see what final collections will be.”

Gov. Mike Parson discusses his plans for the coming fiscal year's budget Thursday following groundbreaking for a new multiagency state laboratory in Jefferson City. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

Hundreds of earmarked items in the $51.7 billion budget passed by lawmakers this year will be vetoed, Gov. Mike Parson said Thursday, just days before the new fiscal year begins.

Speaking with reporters after groundbreaking for a new multi-agency state laboratory, Parson had two criticisms for the budget plan — it goes overboard on earmarks and shortchanges essential state services.

Parson said the administration’s budget staff had identified more than 600 earmarked items throughout the 16 appropriation bills for the fiscal year that begins Monday.

“We’re going to veto a lot of the earmarks, especially some of them that maybe were not even ready to be done, that just people put different things in there,” Parson said. “There’s gonna be a lot of the those making it across the finish line, but not everybody’s gonna get what they want.”

State budget loaded with earmarks nears deadline for action by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson

The Independent analyzed the budget and found more than 400 earmarked items – with 284 new this year – totaling $2.1 billion in spending. 

Parson called those earmarks “a lot of overspending.” The state services that are not fully funded will require a large infusion of additional cash, he said, but lawmakers won’t have to return this fall to pass a supplemental budget.

“You’ll see one of the largest supplementals at the beginning of next year that you’ve seen,” Parson told reporters.

The state is sitting on a large surplus, but Parson said it is not as large as the fund balances in the treasury would make it appear. The budget passed by lawmakers spends $15.3 billion in general revenue — including $700 million on earmarked items identified by The Independent. 

When they were finished with the budget in May, legislative leaders claimed two achievements – a total $1 billion less than Parson requested in January and ongoing general revenue spending that was less than ongoing revenues.

In legislative language, that means that spending above the expected $13.1 billion in general revenue would be one-time expenses met by tapping the surplus.

When the total after his vetoes is added to the amount of the supplemental budget needed to maintain services, he said, that will no longer be true.

“That was more of a political gesture than it was anything,” Parson said.

The House Budget Committee chairman, state Rep. Cody Smith of Carthage, and the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, state Sen. Lincoln Hough of Springfield, are both running for statewide office.

Even with spending from the surplus, Parson said, the state will have about $1.5 billion in extra cash at the end of the coming fiscal year.

“I’m gonna make sure,” Parson said, “that there’s enough finances available for the next administration.”

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, R-Carthage, made sure his $727.5 million earmark for Interstate 44 was well-publicized when he summarized his budget proposal at a March news conference. The sponsors of other earmarks are not so apparent. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

For years, state Sen. Mike Moon has railed against the unfairness of businesses being told they owe money when the Missouri Department of Revenue revises the list of things covered by the state sales tax.

That happened after 2008, when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that fitness clubs were places of “amusement, entertainment or recreation” and must charge tax on memberships and class fees. Audits subsequently resulted in tax bills for thousands of dollars that businesses struggled to pay.

Moon has filed bills seeking to force a refund and this year, for the second time, has secured an earmarked appropriation of $38,000 to refund the money paid by a Kansas City fitness club owner. Gov. Mike Parson vetoed a $150,000 appropriation for the same purpose in 2021, arguing that the proposal violates the state Constitution’s ban on “refunding money legally paid into the treasury.”

Moon, in an interview with The Independent, said he won’t be surprised if it happens again.

“I don’t know that the governor will leave it in there,” Moon said. “He has been known to cut it out of that before.”

Moon’s $38,000 proposal is one of more than 400 earmarks, spending more than $2.1 billion, sprinkled throughout the $51.7 billion state budget passed by lawmakers this year. The total includes 284 new earmarked items, worth $1.7 billion, and 124 that are to receive continuing appropriations.

Last year, The Independent identified 275 earmarked items, totaling about $1.1 billion. The number began increasing during the 2021 session, as the size of the growing state budget surplus became apparent.

Parson must take action on the 16 appropriation bills before the new fiscal year begins on Monday. Whether the earmarked items are approved is not a question of money – the state has almost $6.4 billion in surplus funds and revenues through Tuesday have already exceeded estimates for the current fiscal year with three more days for collections.

But despite that surplus, Parson has targeted earmarked funds in his veto messages in each of the last three years. Last year, he cut $550 million from the budget by vetoing or reducing 201 budget items.

The previous year, the veto pen fell on $650 million in spending lines.

In an analysis of the budget, The Independent defined an earmark as an item not originally requested by Parson that is directed to a specific organization or region.

The largest example in this year’s budget is $727.5 million from general revenue and borrowed funds for improvements along Interstate 44 in southwest Missouri. The earmark was inserted by House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, a Republican who represents Jasper County and is a candidate for state treasurer.

Other big road items include $150 million to widen U.S. Highway 67 through Butler County and $48 million for work on U.S. 65 between Buffalo and Warsaw.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lrw5K/2/

Some of the items, like Moon’s refund money, are repeats of items Parson vetoed last year. One is $3.4 million for improvements to LeCompte Road on the east side of Springfield.

“This is a local responsibility with minimal statewide impact,” Parson wrote about the project in last year’s veto message, a line that found a place in many vetoes.

There’s money to build hospitals in Kirksville and in Dunklin County, to fund eight local water and sewer projects, to convert a building at the University of Missouri-Columbia to the state Wine and Grape Institute and to pay for a parking lot at the stadium where the KC Current play soccer.

The Urban League of St. Louis is in line for a $1 million grant through the Department of Higher Education and the Boys and Girls Club of Poplar Bluff is in with a $2 million grant from federal COVID relief funds.

Obscure origins

Smith wanted to make sure everyone knew who was inserting the money for I-44 by holding a news conference to announce it. And Moon doesn’t hesitate to say that he sought the money for the tax refunds.

But finding the sponsors of the remaining 406 earmarks is more difficult. Unlike the earmark process in Congress, there are no legislative rules requiring members to make their appropriations requests public.

At their end-of-the-year news conferences, Republican and Democratic leaders in the Missouri House took opposite views on whether lawmakers should have to put their name on earmark requests.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, a candidate for secretary of state, said the legislature as a whole has responsibility for spending. There are no new earmarks that are targeted to Plocher’s St. Louis County district.

“We’re not up here for personal credit,” Plocher said. “I don’t think it’s about bringing money back to your district.”

Every legislator who voted for the budget bills is responsible for the earmarks, Plocher said.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade of Springfield, a candidate for governor, said lawmakers “absolutely” should have to identify the earmarks they seek. 

The Independent identified eight earmarks targeted to her district, totaling $45.8 million, for items ranging from $250,000 for the Springfield Sports Commission to $15 million for an alliance of health care providers to expand medical training.

“I’m proud when I’m able to bring money home to my district,” Quade said. “I wouldn’t ask for something I was ashamed of that I didn’t think Missourians would be happy with that money going towards.”

The transparency of requiring earmarks to have sponsors, Quade said, would help Missourians understand the legislature.

This year’s budget process, derailed by filibusters and finished with hours to spare under the constitutional deadline, was particularly obscure, with Smith and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Lincoln Hough cutting the final deal on every item behind closed doors.

“We should be responsible and be held accountable to the people of Missouri, and they should know how we’re making those decisions,” Quade said.

For more than 250 of the new earmarks, The Independent was able to identify the House or Senate district where the appropriation is to be spent, either by decoding the legislative language describing the item or assigning it based on the home address of the organization to receive the funds.

Moon said he often has trouble figuring out where a spending item is going.

“When a particular area, a county, is mentioned in a legislative bill, you talk about counties with a certain population, but not not less than or not more than a certain amount, and of course, that's a way around the special law prohibition,” he said.

In Moon’s view, many of the appropriations violate the constitution’s long-standing provision against grants of state money or credit to private entities. He filed constitutional objections, printed in the Senate Journal, specifically questioning 64 earmarked items totaling $131.9 million.

The largest item on Moon’s list is $17.5 million to support the Kansas City organization preparing for the 2026 World Cup matches at Arrowhead Stadium. In Moon’s letters, he encouraged Parson to veto the appropriations.

The constitutional limit only applies to state funds and includes an exception for using federal funds for designated public purposes. Many of the items on Moon’s list for the Department of Social Services use money the state receives for the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, or TANF.

Since the enactment of a federal welfare overhaul in 1996, Missouri has received about $200 million annually as a block grant intended to equal the amount used for cash benefits before the law. 

Because Missouri only paid out $16.5 million in direct benefits in fiscal 2023, the remainder is available for anti-poverty program grants. The earmarks in this year’s budget from TANF funds total $29.4 million.

Spending questions

Some earmarks began taking flak before the final budget votes. 

Democrats criticized $12.5 million to purchase land for a state park in McDonald County in the district of House Budget Committee Vice Chairman Dirk Deaton.

And Northeast Regional Medical Center in Kirksville attacked an earmarked $15 million for Hannibal Regional Healthcare System to construct a radiation oncology center in Kirksville. Northeast Regional’s attorney, Chuck Hatfield, said in a letter sent in April to Hough that the appropriation is improper because it allows Hannibal Regional to open a competing hospital where no need has been established.

Missouri requires medical providers to obtain a Certificate of Need for major capital investments. Hannibal Regional hasn’t even begun the process of obtaining the certificate, Hatfield noted.

“It would be inappropriate for the legislature to provide funding for a project that has not provided or demonstrated need in accordance with Missouri law,” Hatfield wrote.

If the Kirksville facility is not licensed as an inpatient hospital or long-term care facility, it would not need a certificate of need, Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Senior Services, said in an email.

It could need a certificate for capital purchases of $1 million or more, she said.

There are $57 million in earmarked appropriations for hospital construction or capital equipment in the budget plan on Parson’s desk. The largest is $25 million for an acute care inpatient behavioral health center at KC Children’s Mercy and the smallest is $425,000 for a computed tomography scanner at Golden Valley Memorial Hospital in Clinton.

The increased number of earmarks while the state enjoys a large surplus is likely to continue. Requiring legislative sponsors to be public for each item might cut back on the special spending, Moon said.

“It would make it a lot more transparent,” Moon said. “Most people, especially those who are opposed to earmarks, would like it. Those who want earmarks may not be so inclined to like it, though.”

Darrell McClanahan of Milo, a candidate for governor who the Missouri Republican Party attempted to remove from the ballot for being an 'honorary' KKK member. He is shown in a photo from his 2022 campaign for U.S. Senate, standing in front of the flag of the Missouri State Guard, a military force formed in 1861 to oppose the Union in the Civil War (Campaign photo).

The Missouri Republican Party is continuing its effort to remove an “honorary KKK member” from the primary ballot for governor, but his attorney says the move comes too late and the party should know it.

On May 17, Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker ruled that Darrell McClanahan III of Milo would remain on the ballot for the GOP nomination for governor. The party’s attorney, Lowell Pearson of Jefferson City, filed a notice of appeal Monday with the Western District Court of Appeals seeking to reverse that decision.

McClanahan, who is listed first on the ballot among nine candidates, is not running a full-scale campaign. He has not organized a committee to raise and spend money on his behalf. Only three contenders – state Sen. Bill Eigel, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe – are running full-scale campaigns, raising and spending millions and traveling extensively.

The appeal is too late, said David Roland, McClanahan’s attorney. Ashcroft certified the list of state candidates and issues on the ballot on June 11 and under state law the courts cannot “order an individual or issue be placed on the ballot less than eight weeks before the date of the election.”

Roland filed a motion seeking to dismiss the appeal and impose sanctions for a frivolous court action.

GOP candidates will remain on Vernon County ballot pending review by Missouri appeals court

“There is literally no way that their appeal could succeed,” Roland said in an interview with The Independent. “They were only asking for one thing in their petition, and that was an injunction to prevent his name from being certified for the ballot. That ship sailed back in May when the secretary of state did exactly what the law required him to do, certifying the name for the ballot.”

Pearson declined to comment on the appeal or Roland’s filing. 

The state party doesn’t want McClanahan on the ballot because he admitted being an “honorary member” of the Ku Klux Klan in a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. McClanahan also faces felony property damage and stealing charges in a case being heard in Wright County.

The state Republican Party sued Ashcroft to remove McClanahan, but Walker wrote that by accepting his $500 filing fee, the party was stuck with him. McClanahan was a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022 and his views were known, Walker wrote.

The Republican Party “is a sophisticated entity and the record shows that it was not only aware of a party’s authority to reject a filing fee offered by a candidate,” Walker wrote, “but that segments of the Missouri Republican Party have already adopted a policy of rejecting filing fees from any candidate who has not completed a prescribed vetting process.”

A case from Vernon County, testing whether a political party can reject a filing fee paid at the county clerk’s office to keep a candidate off the ballot, is set for a hearing June 25 before the Western District Court of Appeals.

The Vernon County case was decided May 8 and the appeal began immediately. The appeals court stayed the ruling of the trial court that removed the candidates and set up an expedited process that will test whether the court has authority to act.

The state Republican Party didn’t seek to expedite the case at trial in Cole County and let the ruling become final in the regular legal schedule, Roland wrote in his brief asking the court to dismiss the appeal.

As a major political party, Roland wrote, the GOP “is a sophisticated party well versed in this State’s election laws.”

And Pearson, he wrote, is a “highly respected attorney who is experienced in litigating under this state’s election laws.”

With no ability to provide the relief being sought, Roland wrote, the appeal wastes the court’s time.

“An appeal that presents no justiciable question and is obviously devoid of merit is frivolous,” he wrote.

Because the party didn’t seek to speed up the case or the appeal, Roland said, the court would be unlikely to rule before the primary. No transcript of circuit court proceedings has been requested and the case file has not been prepared, he noted.

“If they were serious about it, they should have already had the transcript prepared,” Roland said. “They should have gone ahead and filed the legal file today alongside their notice of appeal. That is the only possible way they were going to get this case heard before the election.”

States that receive federal funding are required to report prison and jail deaths to the U.S. Department of Justice (Darrin Klimek/Getty Images).

The warden of Jefferson City Correctional Center, where four corrections officers were fired earlier this year following the investigation of a December death of an inmate, has been replaced.

An acting warden has taken over for Doris Falkenrath, Karen Pojmann, spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said in an email to The Independent. Falkenrath is no longer with the department, Pojmann wrote.

“I’m not able to comment on the nature of or reasons for Warden Falkenrath’s separation from the department,” she wrote. 

Falkenrath worked for the department since 1999 and previously held the position of warden at the Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center. Her last day was Thursday, Pojmann wrote. 

Othel Moore was 38 and being held in the Jefferson City Correctional Center when he died on the morning of Dec. 8. Prison activists at the time described a painful death where his pleas for help were ignored after he was placed in administrative confinement.

The department launched an internal investigation, with a parallel inquiry conducted by the Cole County Sheriff’s Department. The four correctional officers were fired in March because of their conduct at the time of Moore’s death but the department did not release any details about the terminations.

Those investigations have been completed, said Andrew M. Stroth of Action Injury Law Group, one of the attorneys representing Moore’s family. He has not received all the reports, he said.

“Under (Falkenrath’s) command, Othel Moore was unjustifiably killed,” Stroth said. “We also believe that the officers that were terminated are responsible for the tragic and unjustified death of Otto Moore.”

According to accounts provided by Stroth and others, Moore was pepper sprayed, his head was covered with a hood and he was placed in restraints. He could be heard screaming that he could not breathe and inmates described seeing blood coming from his mouth and ears as he was removed from the cell.

The family has not received the surveillance video it has demanded from the department nor has it received a full autopsy report on his death, Stroth said.

“The family is grateful that the warden has been terminated, that the officers involved have been terminated and we look forward to advancing their case in the courts,” Stroth said.

Activists tracking deaths in Missouri prisons have been increasingly trying to raise the alarm as deaths increase at the same time prison populations have declined.

From 2012 to 2014, department data shows, there was an average of 31,442 incarcerated people in state prisons. Deaths averaged 89 per year. Over the period 2020 through 2022, with an average of 23,409 incarcerated people in state prisons, deaths averaged 122 per year.

The numbers continue to increase, said Lori Curry of Missouri Prison Reform. She said Monday that her figures show 135 deaths in custody during 2023, up from 125 in 2022.

Deaths attributed to accidental causes – including drug overdoses – have been a major factor driving the increase. 

So far this year, she said, there have been 66 deaths reported in Missouri prisons through May 31, a rate that would result in more than 150 deaths by the end of the year.

“I’m glad there has been some accountability in this situation,” Curry said. “You know, there were some other employees that were fired that were more directly involved in the situation. However, there are still employees that I believe were involved or should have some accountability.”

Getting information about individual deaths in custody has been extremely difficult, even for family members of the deceased. Willa Hynes of St. Louis won a case in April where the Western District Court of Appeals found the department violated the Sunshine Law when it asserted that records of the death of her son, Jahi Hynes, in 2021 were inmate medical records protected from disclosure.

Jahi Hynes was 27 when he hanged himself with a bedsheet in an isolation cell.

“We find there was substantial evidence from which the trial court could have found the DOC acted with the intent to achieve some purpose by violating the Sunshine Law, namely, to hinder Hynes from pursuing a potential civil claim against the DOC relating to her son’s death,” Judge Edward Ardini wrote.

Willa Hynes has a wrongful death lawsuit against the department pending in Mississippi County, the location of the Southeast Missouri Correctional Center.

Moore, who had been in prison for almost 19 years at the time of his death, was serving a 30-year sentence for second-degree domestic assault, possession of a controlled substance, first-degree robbery and armed criminal action.

Moore’s family hasn’t filed a lawsuit yet but it is coming, Stroth said.

“It’s three law firms and a whole team of lawyers that are representing the Moore family, to pursue justice for this family,” he said.

The courts can’t be the only way to implement changes in the department, Curry said. The corrections agency needs to take further actions to show it is serious about putting an end to unnatural deaths among people in custody, she said.

“I don’t see accountability across the board in this situation,” Curry said.

Rex Sinquefield at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis on May 7, 2012 (Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images).

Missouri’s most prolific political donor dropped another $1 million into the campaign of his preferred candidate for governor last week, bringing the total he’s spent during the 2024 election cycle to almost $3 million. 

Retired investor Rex Sinquefield has given more than $45 million in contributions since he became a significant donor around 2006 mostly to Republicans, though not exclusively.

His donations last week included $1 million to American Dream PAC, which supports the gubernatorial campaign of Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, and $250,000 to Liberty and Justice PAC, which supports Attorney General Andrew Bailey. 

Sinquefield has donated roughly a third of all money received by American Dream PAC since the beginning of 2023.

American Dream PAC, which can raise money alongside Kehoe but must spend its funds independently of his official campaign, is already the richest in the race for governor. It reported $4.5 million on hand on March 31, more than double the amount in the PAC backing Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and four times the funding available for BILL PAC, which is supporting state Sen. Bill Eigel.

The Sinquefield checks, one for $250,000 and another for $750,000, were reported Thursday to the Missouri Ethics Commission. Other large donors have given Kehoe’s PAC $182,674 since the last full report was filed.

The commission requires contributions of more than $5,000 to be reported within 48 hours of receipt.

Ashcroft’s spokesman, Jason Roe, said Kehoe “has been bankrolled by the Jefferson City lobbyists and special interest groups because they know what they are going to get — a transactional big government governor. He has the endorsement of nearly every special interest group in the state because they know he will raise taxes, they know he will increase spending and they know they will be the beneficiaries.”

Ashcroft’s PAC, Committee for Liberty, has raised $155,661 in large donations since March 31. The largest, $50,000, was from his mother, former First Lady Janet Ashcroft. With those reports, it has reported raising just under $1 million since the beginning of 2023.

The committee reported $1.9 million on hand on March 31.

Sophia Shore, Eigel’s campaign manager, said Kehoe “is no doubt the establishment donors choice; he has enough money to burn a wet mule.”

Eigel’s joint fundraising committee, BILL PAC, has received only one donation greater than $5,000 since March 31 — $10,000 from Joan Langenberg of St. Louis on May 6. The PAC has raised $2 million since Jan. 1, 2023.

Sinquefield has a long history of cutting massive checks for his preferred candidates. He has often focused his efforts on cutting income taxes and changes to the state’s education system.

In 2016, he bankrolled a slate of candidates in GOP statewide primaries, spending nearly $11 million supporting candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general and treasurer. 

Of the candidates he supported, only one prevailed.

In September 2020, Sinquefield parted ways with his longtime advisors, Pelopidas, owned by Travis Brown. He made no political contributions until late 2021, and since the beginning of 2022 has made $4.3 million donations, including $1.7 million reported since Jan. 1.

Pelopidas closed its doors after Sinquefield withdrew his backing. In 2021, a Missouri appeals court ordered Brown and the firm to pay $7.5 million to Rachel Keller, Brown’s former wife and business partner, in a case filed in 2016, two years after the couple.

Both Eigel and Ashcroft have received donations from Sinquefield, but not since he fired Pelopidas as his consulting firm.

As a candidate for state Senate in 2014, Ashcroft received a donation of $25,000 from Sinquefield. In 2020, when he sought re-election as secretary of state, Sinquefield contributed $2,650.

There were no limits on contributions directly to candidate committees in 2014. Those limits were imposed by a constitutional amendment and for this year’s elections, the limit for statewide candidates is $2,825.

BILL PAC received $225,000 from Sinquefield in 2019 and 2020, when Eigel sought re-election to the state Senate.

Missouri is in the middle of a battle between pharmaceutical manufacturers and health care providers over access to discount prescription drugs through the 340B Drug Pricing Program. (Mint Images/Getty Images)

In a battle that pits some of the biggest players in health care against each other, the Missouri General Assembly has come down on the side of hospitals who want unlimited access to discounted drugs for their pharmacies.

On the last day of this year’s legislative session, the Missouri House passed a bill making it illegal for pharmaceutical manufacturers to refuse to supply the discounted medications to qualifying hospitals and health clinics and their contracted pharmacies. 

Pharmacy manufacturers, who are playing defense on similar bills across the country, want Gov. Mike Parson to veto the legislation because the discounted prescriptions are often sold to patients at full retail price. 

The stakes nationally are huge, in a medical market with escalating prescription prices and increasing concentration of medical providers in direct employment by hospital groups. Nationally, pharmaceutical manufacturers sold nearly $100 billion in discounted drugs in 2021 and 2022 through a federal program known as 340B, for the section of law where it is authorized.

With an average discount of about 60%, according to representatives of the drug manufacturers, the wholesale value of the discounted prescriptions over two years is approximately $250 billion. The retail markup adds hundreds of millions more to the total revenue stream.

Much of that revenue goes to the bottom line instead of being passed on or used to cover the cost of care for people who cannot afford it, Nicole Longo, deputy vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, said in an interview with The Independent.

“We provide tens of billions of dollars in discounts on medicines each year in the hopes that it improves access to affordable medicines for low income patients,” Longo said. “And we’re not seeing that happening.”

In 2023, a federal appeals court ruled that nothing in federal law prevents pharmacy manufacturers from limiting the number of contract pharmacies they will supply with 340B discounted products. But those limits go only so far, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled when it upheld an Arkansas law – very similar to the bill awaiting action by Parson – that bans manufacturer-imposed limits on contracts.

Many of the restrictions manufacturers are implementing aren’t practical, said Daniel Good, vice president of pharmacy for the Mercy health system. A limitation, for example, to one contract pharmacy per qualified provider – an idea being used by some companies – doesn’t allow Mercy to serve its patients most effectively, Good said.

“Even though we have 58 retail pharmacies, plus specialty infusion pharmacies, there’s not enough of the brick-and-mortar pharmacies that are owned and operated by Mercy to meet the entire footprint that Mercy has,” Good said. “Therefore, we have to have contract relationships with some of those pharmacies in those rural communities in order to meet that need.”

The program

The 340B program was part of a 1992 federal law intended to fix an unintended consequence of changes to Medicaid made in 1990: Pharmaceutical companies stopped giving drug discounts to hospitals serving rural and poorer communities and clinics for people with expensive medical conditions such as AIDS.

It had two components – drug manufacturers had to deliver their products at a discount to eligible providers and eligible providers could only use the program to provide prescriptions to patients they treated directly.

Eligible hospitals were designated as those serving children, those that were the only hospitals in their community, those designated as “critical access hospitals” providing care that would otherwise be absent, and those serving large numbers of indigent patients known as “disproportionate share hospitals.”

Rural hospitals rely on the 340B drug pricing program

Other qualifying providers include federally qualified health care centers – clinics that receive grants to support operations so they can base charges on ability to pay – as well as clinics that serve AIDS patients, black lung victims and other debilitating diseases.

The drugs available at a 340B discount are purchased by the providers and dispensed at in-house or contract pharmacies for outpatient use. The charges paid by patients may or may not reflect a discount from regular pricing, depending on the policies of the individual provider.

The use of contract pharmacies started in 1996, when the Department of Health and Human Services began allowing one contractor per provider as recognition that many providers did not have in-house pharmacies.

In 2010, along with passage of the Affordable Care Act, the allowance for contracts was expanded to allow any number of contracts. That is when use of the program increased exponentially.

The 45 hospitals and clinics enrolled in 1992 grew to 1,191 in 2010 and stands at 2,724 currently, according to data from PhRMA. The number of contract pharmacies grew from 2,321 in 2010 to 205,340 in 2024.

“One disproportionate share hospital in the 340 B program might have 400 contracts with pharmacies across the country and vice versa,” Longo said. “A single CVS that’s on your corner might have 30 contracts with hospitals and clinics, both in state and out of state, through the 340 B program.”

“The lunar surface”

When pharmaceutical companies started pushing back on that growth, the federal department issued an advisory opinion that made it clear it backed unlimited contracting and expected the drug manufacturers to honor them wherever the products were sent.

“The situs of delivery, be it the lunar surface, low-earth orbit, or a neighborhood pharmacy, is irrelevant,” the 2020 advisory opinion, since withdrawn, stated.

In the 2023 ruling that upheld limits on contracts imposed by manufacturers, Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the department improperly interpreted the intent of Congress.

“When Congress’s words run out, covered entities may not pick up the pen,” Bibas wrote. “Plus, Congress’s use of the singular ‘covered entity’ in the ‘purchased by’ language suggests that it had in mind one-to-one transactions between a covered entity and a drug maker without mixing in a plethora of pharmacies.”

If the case was about whether clinics and hospitals enrolled in the 340B program could use contracted pharmacies at all, Bibas wrote, the ruling would go another way. Because many eligible entities do not have an in-house pharmacy, he wrote, contracted pharmacies have to be part of the program.

But manufacturer-imposed restrictions that allow some use of contract pharmacies are acceptable, he wrote.

“Under the three drug makers’ policies at issue, all covered entities can still use the Section 340B program,” Bibas wrote. “Though the covered entities cannot squeeze as much revenue out of it as they once could, drug makers need not help them maximize their 340B profits.”

As the dispute moved through the courts, it also became fodder for state legislatures. Including Missouri. There are 29 states that have enacted bills – including seven this year – that prohibit restrictions on contracts.

Governors in five states – Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi and West Virginia – signed the bill in their states. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the bill passed in his state this year.

And while the courts have said federal law doesn’t give Health and Human Services the power to bar manufacturer limits, they have also said that same law doesn’t restrict states’ ability to do so.

In a ruling on a bill passed in Arkansas in 2021, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld financial penalties on manufacturers who refuse to deliver 340B discounted medications to contract pharmacies.

“Arkansas is simply deterring pharmaceutical manufacturers from interfering with a covered entity’s contract pharmacy arrangements,” Judge Michael Melloy wrote in the ruling handed down in March.

The money

For many providers, the revenue obtained by selling the discounted drugs at standard prices is the difference between staying open and closing. KFF Health News last month reported that many small rural hospitals aren’t willing to take federal payments to transition facilities to a new “rural emergency hospital” model because they would lose access to 340B discounts.

An obscure drug discount program stifles use of federal lifeline by rural hospitals

State Rep. Rick Francis, a Perryville Republican  who became CEO of Cape Girardeau-based Cross Trails Medical Center on May 20, said the revenue is vital to his new employer, a federally qualified health center. 

Cross Trails has locations in four counties and 11 contract pharmacies.

“The 340B revenues allow us to cover patients who can’t pay for medicine,” said Francis, who voted in support of the bill when it passed the House. “We have plenty of those who need help.”

But those providers aren’t the main target for the drug manufacturers. Instead, they focus criticism on the disproportionate share hospitals. Those hospitals account for about 80% of all drugs purchased through the 340B program, $41.8 billion in 2022 and $34.3 billion the year before.

The New England Journal of Medicine, in a study published in January, found that hospitals marked up 340B medications by 6.5 times as much as private physicians for infusion treatments.

“This study showed that hospitals imposed large price markups and retained a substantial share of total insurer spending on physician-administered drugs for patients with private insurance,” the study concludes.

Those hospitals should be required to show how they use the money to help the patients that cannot pay for doctor visits and medications, Longo said. 

“They buy low and they sell high,” Longo said. “Patients bear a lot of that cost, and so that’s a major concern of the industry.”

The demands for disproportionate share hospitals to cut prices for patients receiving medications obtained with a 340B discount, or to forgo collection efforts on unpaid bills as a requirement for participation in the program, are hollow arguments, Good said.

Other legal requirements prevent having different prescription prices for people with insurance coverage and those who do not, he said.

But Mercy, realizing that the arguments are having an impact on public perception, identifies the programs it funds with 340B revenue, he said. It supports clinics in St. Louis and Springfield, mobile care vans with mammography screening and other services, and behavioral health care, as well as other services.

“We have very specific services that we can tie directly to the money that is saved from 340B, that we’re able to continue or expand our patient care services in those areas,” Good said.

By putting the focus on disproportionate share hospitals, Good said, the pharmacy industry is trying to politically divide users of the 340B program.

“We want to stick together, and we do believe that healthcare will be stronger if we stay together as a group and we maintain the 340B program, so it benefits all and that we don’t abuse it,” Good said.

The Missouri bill

The legislation awaiting Parson’s action has three main components – a requirement that drug manufacturers deliver medications to all contract pharmacies without restriction, enforcement by  declaring a violation to be an unlawful merchandising practice, and punishment meted out by the state Board of Pharmacy for violations.

Sponsored by Republican state Sen. Justin Brown of Rolla, the bill was pared back from its original language that also targeted pharmacy benefit managers and practices in the private insurance market. Brown did not return calls or messages sent by email to his Capitol office.

During House debate on the final day of the session, state Rep. Tara Peters, a Rolla Republican who shepherded the bill through the lower chamber, said provisions on pharmacy benefit managers were removed to make the bill more likely to pass.

The bill is intended to increase access to prescriptions for Missourians, she said.

“Let’s allow Missourians access to pick up their medications closer to home,” Peters said.

Other supporters focused on the program’s benefits for safety-net hospitals and clinics. 

The bill is needed to block drug makers from limiting when and where a provider can provide prescriptions, supporters said. The revenue realized helps patients by subsidizing high-cost services, such as behavioral health care, as well as supporting clinics that provide free or low-cost services.

“There are aspects of this program that are not as we would wish them to be,” said Rep. Mike Stephens, a Bolivar Republican, “but it is vitally important to the small hospitals, to the FQHCs and to many people who can’t afford medicines otherwise.”

There was only nominal opposition to the bill, which passed 28-3 in the Senate and 133-18 in the House, with only Republicans voting against it.

“It’s a problem, in my estimation, of a federal program that has seen significant increases in utilization and at the same time, there are big players that are directly benefiting in a way that most people would not assume,” one of the opponents, state Rep. Doug Richey, a Republican from Excelsior Springs, said in an interview with The Independent.

The bill’s sponsors played on legislators’ sympathy for people struggling with high-cost care, Richey said.

“When you have somebody get up on the floor, and they talk about patient care, the high costs of healthcare and helping people who are needing help, and then you start having anecdotes that are shared about the suffering and the anguish that people have, there is an emotional component to these types of bills that begins to take over,” Richey said.

Francis said the bill fills in gaps in federal law.

“That said ‘you will make these drugs available to these Missouri clinics,’” Francis said. “What it did not say is that big pharma, you can be in charge of dispensing and determining where you’re going to allow these drugs to go.”

Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, speaks during a Freedom Caucus news conference in January, accompanied by, from left, Sens. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, Nick Schroer, R-Defiance, Jill Carter, R-Granby, and Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester. Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer are being sued for defamation over social media posts after the Chiefs’ victory parade shooting. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

The Kansas man suing three Missouri lawmakers for defamation is challenging their assertions that their statements accusing him of being involved in the shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration were made in the course of official business.

In filings Monday in the federal lawsuits Denton Loudermill is pursuing against the three state senators, his attorneys demand a chance to test those assertions. Loudermill’s attorneys – Arthur Benson, LaRonna Lassiter Saunders and Katrina Robertson – filed three almost identical responses Monday to the motions for dismissal by state Sens. Nick Schroer, Rick Brattin and Denny Hoskins.

The three senators are being represented by Attorney General Andrew Bailey and their filings have claimed legislative immunity for their social media posts and that the Kansas federal court where the case was filed has no jurisdiction over them.

“Defendant’s assertion of immunity depends on a facts not conceded by plaintiff: whether or not Defendant was engaged in ‘legitimate legislative activity,’” Loudermill’s attorneys wrote in a response to Schroer’s motion to dismiss the case. “And that factual contention involves issues of whether or not defendant was formulating, making, determining, creating or opposing legislative policy.”

The filings demand a chance to conduct an investigation of the immunity claim if the case cannot move forward without a determination.

No hearings have been scheduled in the case.

Loudermill was detained briefly by law enforcement after gunfire erupted near Union Station in Kansas City as the Super Bowl celebration was ending.

The violence, tied to a dispute among the partiers, led to the death of Lisa Lopez-Galvan and left 22 others injured. Three men, none of whom is an immigrant, face state murder charges for their role in the shootings and three others face federal firearms charges for selling guns involved in the shootings.

Loudermill, who was born in Kansas, was detained briefly because he was too slow to leave the area of the shooting, he told The Independent in an interview earlier this year. 

He was photographed with his hands behind his back, sitting on a curb. An account on X, formally known as Twitter, with the name Deep Truth Intel used the photo and labeled Loudermill an “illegal immigrant” under arrest as the shooter.

It then showed up in posts from the Missouri Freedom Caucus, the group of six Republican state senators who battled with the Senate’s GOP leadership. The post was deleted and replaced with one that affirmatively stated he had nothing to do with the shootings.

Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer, as well as U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, also spread the incorrect information on social media, including the Deep Truth Intel post or a similar post with Loudermill’s photo.

Burchett is also being sued by Loudermill and is challenging the jurisdiction in the federal court in Kansas. Burchett is not claiming any form of official immunity for his post.

In the filings written by assistant attorney general Jeremiah Morgan, Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer have sought to tie their statements to their official duties.

Brattin’s first post linking Loudermill to the shooting, since deleted, demanded “#POTUS CLOSE THE BORDER” and incorporated the deleted Deep Truth Intel post.

That is a policy statement by an elected official, Morgan wrote about Brattin’s post.

“Defendant’s statement, directed at the President of the United States, was a statement on border security at the southern border—an issue of clear national and political importance,” he wrote.

Hoskins’ version on X shared a screenshot of the Deep Truth Intel post and blamed President Joe Biden and political leaders of Kansas City for making the shooting possible.