U.S. Senator Josh Hawley speaks to reporters aat the governor's ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia on Aug. 15 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

One of Josh Hawley’s favorite lines of attack during his first run for U.S. Senate in 2018 was to lambaste his Democratic opponent for using a private jet to travel the state. 

“I say, ‘Look, I’m driving everywhere, why don’t you drive?’ She can’t do it,” Hawley told Politico during the 2018 campaign about then-Sen. Claire McCaskill. “She’s totally addicted to her luxury lifestyle.”

Six years later, as Hawley seeks a second term, the attack is being turned back against him. 

Lucas Kunce, the Democratic candidate for Senate, is pouncing on videos being circulated by his campaign of Hawley boarding a Gulfstream IV SP to hopscotch the state last week for rallies with Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. 

The three-stop tour with Butker, Kunce said, was the senator’s first event in Missouri in weeks.

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said at a campaign rally in Jefferson City on Saturday. By contrast, Kunce says he’s traveling to campaign events in a minivan with his wife and 16-month-old son. 

It’s a familiar knock on Hawley, who even as he was hammering McCaskill in 2018 over private planes still accepted a $6,000 charter jet flight as an in-kind donation from a Jefferson City lobbyist. 

But Hawley’s use of chartered jets began to increase last December, according to his most recent disclosure filed with the Federal Elections Commission in July. Hawley’s campaign spent more than $132,000 on chartered flights between mid-December and June. The largest expenses were $23,000 on March 19 and $21,000 on Feb. 6 to Air Charter Advisors.

The next round of campaign disclosure reports are due this week. 

Responding to the criticism, Hawley’s campaign pivoted to its attack on an essay Kunce wrote in 2021 making the case that the U.S. needed to end its reliance on fossil fuels for the sake of national security.

“We get it,” Abigail Jackson, Hawley’s spokeswoman, said in an email to The Independent. “Kunce has made it clear he hates all vehicles that run on gas and diesel.”

Hawley and Kunce are entering the final weeks of a contentious fight for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat. 

Every public poll has shown Hawley in the lead, and national Democrats have largely ignored the race. But Kunce has run a populist campaign fueled by millions of small-dollar donations that have allowed him to go toe-to-toe with Hawley in television ad spending. 

Since the August primary, Kunce’s campaign has spent more than $6 million on television advertising, according to FEC records analyzed by The Independent. 

Hawley’s campaign has spent $3.9 million, while an independent PAC supporting his re-election, Show Me Strong, has spent roughly $1.9 million. 

Kunce, a Marine veteran, paints Hawley as an out-of-touch plutocrat that’s he’s dubbed “Posh Josh” who only is running for Senate to benefit himself and his future political aspirations.

“While I spent 13 years in and out of war zones overseas, Josh Hawley and his political buddies were literally waging war on the people I’d signed up to serve right here at home,” Kunce told a rally of supporters at the Marine Corps League in Jefferson City Saturday. “And that’s not a hyperbole.”

Hawley, who served as Missouri attorney general for two years before joining the Senate, has portrayed Kunce as a radical on issues like immigration and LGBTQ rights. And he’s worked to tie Kunce to national Democrats in a state where Republicans have won every statewide election since 2018. 

“We have to save our country,” Hawley told a crowd of supporters in Parkville on Thursday. “We are in crisis. This country is in crisis. It’s in chaos. And you and I know why that’s true. It’s in crisis because of the policies of my opponent, Lucas Kunce.”

Hawley’s campaign has repeatedly demanded Kunce state who he supports in the upcoming presidential election, something he has steadfastly refused to do. 

“Now will he answer a simple question on the presidential election?” said Jackson, Hawley’s spokeswoman. “Is he voting for Trump or Kamala?” 

Kunce says he won’t answer the question because it’s an effort by Hawley to distract voters and nationalize the race. 

And he claims Hawley’s motivation is fear.

“He sees us coming for him,” Kunce said. “He knows he’s unlikable and he knows he is on the wrong side of every single issue.”

The Independent’s Anna Spoerre contributed to this story. 

Success in the 11th, 15th and 17th would give the Democrats 12 seats in the Senate, denying the GOP a supermajority for the first time since 2008 (Getty Images).

Democrats hoping to chip away at the GOP supermajority in the Missouri Senate got a big boost last week when its candidates in two swing districts won the endorsement of the state’s largest business advocacy group. 

In a third hotly contested district, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry chose not to weigh in at all. 

The Missouri Chamber, an historically Republican-leaning organization, formally endorsed Democrat Robert Sauls in Senate District 11 and Joe Pereles in Senate District 15. 

In a third race — for the 17th Senate District in Clay County — the chamber declined to endorse Republican Jerry Nolte or Democrat Maggie Nurrenbern. 

Of the 17 Senate races taking place this year across the state, the 11th, 15th and 17th are widely considered the most competitive. 

Sauls, a Democrat from Independence, is taking on Republican Joe Nicola of Grain Valley for the seat vacated by former Democratic state Sen. John Rizzo. 

Both Pereles and his GOP rival, David Gregory, are from Chesterfield. They’re vying for the seat being vacated by Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig. 

Nurrenbern, a state representative from Kansas City, and Nolte, a former state lawmaker and presiding county commissioner, hope to replace former Democratic state Sen. Lauren Arthur. 

In announcing its endorsements, the chamber pointed to “political dysfunction” that has derailed the Senate and “stalled key business priorities, harming Missouri employers and families.”

Factional infighting between Republican members of the Freedom Caucus and the Senate’s GOP leadership has derailed the chamber for the last four years.The bad blood came to a head during the 2024 legislative session, when members of the Freedom Caucus waged a 41-hour filibuster that nearly upended the state budget. 

The 2024 legislative session was the least productive in living memory, surpassing even the COVID-shortened 2020 session in futility.

Nicola is widely expected to join the Freedom Caucus if he wins next month. Gregory is a trial attorney, a group that has bankrolled Missouri’s Freedom Caucus in recent years. 

“Ultimately, the Missouri Chamber PAC chose to endorse Sauls and Pereles because we believe they are strong candidates and will work with the business community to move Missouri forward,” said Kara Corches, the chamber’s interim president and CEO. 

In addition to its endorsement, the chamber’s PAC reported earlier this month spending $25,000 to support Pereles in the race. 

Republicans currently hold 24 of the Senate’s 34 seats. 

Democrats are expected to pick up one seat currently held by Republicans — the Boone County-based 19th District.  

Success in the 11th, 15th and 17th would give the Democrats 12 seats in the Senate, denying the GOP a supermajority for the first time since 2008. 

Sauls vs. Nicola

Senate District 11 in Jackson County includes eastern Kansas City and Independence. While held by a Democrat for the last few election cycles, former President Donald Trump carried the district in 2020 and 2016. 

Nicola, a pastor, overcame a massive fundraising disadvantage to defeat state Rep. Aaron McMullin in the August GOP primary, spending roughly $100,000 this cycle compared to $500,000 for McMullin. 

His last report, filed in September, shows only $15,000 cash on hand. 

Sauls, an attorney and former prosecutor, was unopposed in the Democratic primary and reported $202,000 cash on hand in September. Since that report was filed, a political action committee supporting his candidacy — called Independence Leadership PAC — has received $130,000 in large contributions.

Sauls began airing television ads this week, spending $134,520 so far. Nicola has not purchased broadcast time.  

Nicola brushed off the chamber’s endorsement, saying that he will be a “pro-business senator” who will “work to cut taxes, slash governmental red tape and let the free market do what it does best: promote entrepreneurship and create wealth.”

But he mostly chalks up the Missouri Chamber’s endorsement to his opposition to “vaccine mandates, China owning our farmland and taxpayer-funded DEI indoctrination.”

“I completely disagree with these positions,” he said, “and the fact that my opponent is endorsed by a group with these radical policies is telling and completely out of touch with my district.”

Pereles vs. Gregory

The 15th District includes a large portion of suburban St. Louis County, including Chesterfield and Ballwin. It has historically been a Republican stronghold, but has slowly trended towards Democrats in recent years. 

Gregory, a former state legislator, won a three-way Republican primary in August, emerging with only $30,000 in his campaign committee and $4,000 in a PAC supporting him called Show-Me Growth PAC, according to disclosure reports filed last month. 

Pereles, a retired Drury Hotel executive, was unopposed in the Democratic primary. His campaign reported $650,000 cash on hand last month, with a PAC supporting him — called Fearless PAC — receiving more than $400,000 in large donations since the primary. 

Pereles is up on TV, spending $53,000 so far on ads hammering Gregory’s support of Missouri’s abortion ban and mocking his push to build a castle in Jefferson City for his family to live in if he were to win the Senate seat. 

The Missouri Senate Campaign Committee, which supports GOP candidates, launched an ad this month trying to tie Pereles to U.S. Rep. Cori Bush and arguing that Pereles is soft on crime. 

Nurrenbern vs. Nolte

The 17th District covers Clay County and was held by Republicans until 2018, when Arthur captured the seat in a special election and cruised to an easy re-election in 2020. 

Both Nolte and Nurrenbern were unopposed in the August primary. 

Nolte reported nearly $70,000 in his campaign account in a disclosure filed last month. 

Nurrenbern reported $375,000 cash on hand as of last month in her campaign committee and another $200,000 in a PAC supporting her candidacy. 

Since the primary, the pro-Nurrenbern PAC — called Northland Forward — has received around $200,000 in large contributions. 

Nurrenbern’s campaign has spent $440,295 on TV ads, while Nolte is currently not on the air. Majority Forward, a PAC organized to support Democratic Senate candidates, has also spent $264,885 so far running a TV ad in the district. 

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story. 

Correction: This story was updated on Oct. 11 to note that Lauren Arthur was re-elected to the Missouri Senate in 2020. 

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).

After weeks of tussling between the two campaigns, Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Democrat Lucas Kunce are finally set to square off in a televised debate less than a week before voters head to the polls.

The debate will air Oct 31 on Missouri Nexstar stations, including KTVI/KPLR-St. Louis, WDAF-Kansas City, KRBK-Springfield and KSN-Joplin and their digital platforms. It could be the only time the two main contenders for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat share a stage.

The Missouri Press Association has held a Senate debate every election cycle for years at its annual convention. Kunce is set to appear at this year’s debate on Friday in Springfield along with third-party candidates Jared Young and Nathan Kline, according to Mark Maassen, the press association’s executive director.

“No word yet from Josh Hawley,” Maassen said.

Hawley’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Friday’s debate.

Caleb Cavarretta, Kunce’s campaign manager, said in an emailed statement that Kunce agreed to Friday’s debate because “unlike Josh Hawley, Lucas respects the responsibility of a candidate and U.S. Senator to connect with folks they are meant to represent.”

“This year, we’ve got two weeks of no excuse in-person absentee voting in Missouri so it would be great for voters to hear from Josh Hawley before then,” Cavarretta said, “but unfortunately he wants to hide out as long as he can before election day.”

Kunce initially challenged Hawley to five televised debates. Hawley, however, demanded a debate at the Missouri State Fair in early August.

When State Fair officials said that was not possible, and that no one from Hawley’s campaign had alerted them to the possibility of a debate, Hawley pushed for a debate hosted by the Missouri Farm Bureau, which has endorsed him in the race.

Kunce said he would sign off on the idea as long as Hawley would formally agree to his suggestion of five televised debates, and the farm bureau showdown never materialized.

Instead, Kunce and Hawley crossed paths at the Governor’s Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair, trading insults and demands for debates.

In 2022, Republican Eric Schmitt also refused to participate in the press association’s debate, only the second time since 1988 that a major-party candidate refused to attend one of the organization’s forums.

While Hawley is unlikely to attend, the two major candidates for Missouri governor will debate on Friday, Maassen said.

Republican Mike Kehoe, Democrat Crystal Quade and third party candidates Paul Lehmann and Bill Slantz have agreed to participate in the gubernatorial forum, Maassen said.

Both the gubernatorial and Senate debates will be moderated by David Lieb of the Associated Press, with a panel of journalists from around the state — Lucas Presson of the Southeast Missourian, Christine Temple of the Springfield Business Journal and Alvin Reid of the St. Louis American.

House Speaker Dean Plocher sits with his attorney, Lowell Pearson, during a March 12 hearing of the Missouri House Ethics Committee (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

A political action committee created to support outgoing Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher’s political career paid attorneys defending him against allegations of misconduct almost $75,000 in late August. 

According to campaign disclosure forms filed earlier this month, a PAC called Missouri United paid David Steelman and his law firm $21,000 on Aug. 23. The PAC paid Lowell Pearson’s law firm $52,000 on Aug. 28.

Missouri United is not required to file another disclosure report detailing its spending until Oct. 15. 

Steelman and Pearson defended Plocher while he was under investigation by the Missouri House Ethics Committee earlier this year. Pearson is Plocher’s attorney in a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him, his chief of staff Rod Jetton and the Missouri House. 

A Cole County judge on Tuesday set Oct. 23 for a hearing in that lawsuit, which accuses Plocher and Jetton of retaliating against the chief clerk of the House after she raised concerns about alleged mistreatment of women and misuse of state funds.

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

Plocher was set to run for lieutenant governor this year until shortly before the candidate filing deadline, when he switched and ran for secretary of state instead. 

He ended up finishing fourth in the Republican primary. 

After his loss, Plocher’s candidate committee — Plocher for Missouri — spent the remainder of the $295,000 it had left on hand paying his campaign advisers and settling debt from the campaign. On Sept. 5, the committee was permanently shut down. 

Missouri United, however, remains active and had $56,000 cash on hand as of Sept. 1. 

Plocher’s troubles became public late last year when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was eventually filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Speaker Dean Plocher accused of ‘absolute obstruction’ in House ethics investigation

In May, a lawsuit was filed in Cole County by Dana Miller, the chief clerk of the House. She claims in the litigation that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

Miller alleges Plocher pushed to privatize constituent management because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

In retaliation for her resistance Hernandez wrote, Plocher threatened MIller that he “would take it to a vote” to remove her as chief clerk,  “a warning of possible dismissal.”

Plocher has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and sought to get himself dismissed from the case, arguing that any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.”

He also argued Miller was not a whistleblower and that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to her by a third party and are therefore hearsay. And he cited a provision in Missouri’s constitution saying members of the General Assembly “shall not be questioned for any speech or debate in either House.”

Gov. Mike Parson speaks at his last Governor's Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson is the guest of honor Tuesday night at a fundraiser for a pair of PACs at the home of a longtime Jefferson City lobbyist.

The event is being advertised as a “celebration of public service” for the Republican governor and First Lady Teresa Parson. It’s hosted by Steve Tilley, a longtime lobbyist and adviser for Parson. It coincides with Parson’s 69th birthday. 

Some of the invitations ask for donations to Uniting Missouri PAC, the political action committee created to bolster Parson’s political career. 

For the last two years, Uniting Missouri has mostly existed to bankroll Parson’s trips to the Super Bowl. But in the weeks leading up to the GOP primary, it spent several hundred thousand dollars supporting the candidacies of Mike Kehoe for governor and Andrew Bailey for attorney general. 

Parson is leaving the governor’s office in January because of term limits, and he has repeatedly said he has no intention of ever running for office again. 

‘Exploiting a loophole’: PACs tied to Missouri lobbyist draw new criticism 

Other invitations to Tuesday night’s gathering seek to raise money for Missouri Prospers PAC, which was formed last week by Tilley’s son-in-law. 

Missouri Prospers is one of a constellation of political action committees connected to Tilley, a former Missouri House speaker who became a lobbyist after resigning from office in 2012. 

For years, Tilley’s lobbying clients have spread donations among six PACs associated with him and his firm. The PACs then donate that money to candidates. 

It’s a practice that’s drawn criticism from those who see it as a way to skirt limits on how much a candidate can accept from an individual or PAC, as well as a ban on direct corporate contribution to candidates. 

And in the past it’s drawn scrutiny from federal law enforcement. The FBI began looking into utility contracts in Independence after four Tilley-connected PACs donated to the city’s mayor just days before a key vote. 

Each of the PACs had received money from a company connected to one of the contacts. 

No charges have ever been filed in any matter involving Tilley, and he has long denied any wrongdoing.

Parson and Tilley have been friends for years, going back more than a decade to when they served together in the Missouri House. 

When Tilley resigned from office to become a lobbyist, he still had more than $1 million in his campaign committee. He invested a big portion of it in a Perryville bank, and later used the money to donate to candidates, such as Parson, who would then hire Tilley as a campaign consultant. 

Lawmakers felt Tilley had found a loophole in Missouri’s campaign finance laws, ultimately taking aim at his practices by passing legislation in 2016 requiring elected officials to dissolve their campaign committees when they register with the Missouri Ethics Commission as lobbyists.

Since then, Tilley has been a prolific fundraiser for Parson and Uniting Missouri. At one point during the 2020 election cycle, a quarter of the governor’s campaign funds could be connected to Tilley. 

And Parson’s years in office have been lucrative for Tilley. 

Before Parson took over as governor in June 2018, following the resignation of former Gov. Eric Greitens, Tilley had 25 lobbying clients. A year into Parson’s first term, that number had ballooned to more than 70.

The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City (Tessa Weinberg/Missouri Independent).

Missouri lawmakers will return to Jefferson City this week to consider whether to override any of Gov. Mike Parson’s vetoes. 

And while they are in town, many will also engage in another veto session tradition — raising campaign cash at a parade of parties and fundraisers all over the Capitol City.

Less than two months out from the November election, there are 25 fundraising events scheduled over the course of three days this week, offering everything from “fellowship and coffee” to “live music” to “debate watch and karaoke.”   

The first event takes place Monday night, when nine incumbent Republican senators will be joined by eight GOP nominees for open Senate seats at the Jefferson City office of the Armstrong Teasdale law firm. 

A few of those listed on the Armstrong Teasdale invite are also scheduled to attend another fundraiser at the same time less than a block away at CORK & and Board, which advertises itself as Jefferson City’s “one and only board game pub.”

On Tuesday, another 19 fundraisers are scheduled, kicking off at 1:15 p.m., when House Majority Leader Jon Patterson will be the special guest at an event for five of his fellow Republican representatives at the offices of the Association of Realtors. 

Democrats get into the act by 3 p.m., with seven representatives holding an event at The Grand Cafe. 

Statewide candidates are raising money Tuesday as well, with Republican Denny Hoskins gathering supporters at Bar Vino to aid his campaign for secretary of state at 3:30 p.m. and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Crystal Quade joins members of her caucus in the House at the Millbottom at 6:30 p.m.

Quade’s rival in the governor’s race, GOP Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, is hosting “dessert by the pool” at his Jefferson City home at 8 p.m.

Patterson, who is expected to be the next House speaker, and state Rep. Alex Riley, the leading candidate to replace Patterson as majority leader, will host a fundraiser at 5:30 p.m. at the offices of the Missouri Times, an online compendium of press releases and opinion pieces. That will also be the venue for an 8 p.m. fundraiser for state Rep. Melanie Stinnett of Springfield.

The next morning, GOP Sens. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and Curtis Trent will hold a fundraising event at the Association of Realtors headquarters and nine Republican representatives will gather to raise money at a breakfast event just down the street. 

Veto session officially kicks off at noon on Wednesday. 

Dave Wasinger (photo submitted)

The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor has dropped a defamation lawsuit he filed before the Aug. 6 primary against the corporate owner of Missouri television stations and one of his political rivals. 

David Wasinger filed the lawsuit on Aug. 2 claiming that a television ad run by another Republican vying for the lieutenant governor nomination — state Sen. Lincoln Hough — was false and misleading because it claimed he was an “abortion-loving Democrat.”

The suit was filed against the political action committee that supported Hough and paid for the ad, called Lincoln PAC, and Hearst television stations, which ran the ad.

He asked a St. Louis judge to pull the ad off the air and award him at least $25,000 in damages. 

The judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order, and the ads continued airing through the primary election. 

“Simply put, this ad is so riddled with errors and Lincoln PAC does not even attempt to substantiate many of the falsehoods,” the lawsuit alleged. 

Wasinger edged out Hough for the nomination, winning by just one percentage point. 

On Tuesday, he agreed to dismiss the case. 

The lieutenant governor is next in line for governor, sits on various boards and breaks ties in the state Senate. In Missouri, unlike many other states, the lieutenant governor doesn’t run on a ticket with the governor. 

Wasinger is an attorney at a St. Louis law firm he owns and manages, and a certified public accountant. He was the main funder of his own campaign, loaning himself $2.6 million.

He will now face Democrat Richard Brown, a state legislator from Kansas City, and Libertarian Ken Iverson of St. Louis in November.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed the lawsuit challenging the Second Amendment Preservation Act, arguing it has undermined federal drug and weapons investigations (Getty Images).

A Missouri law declaring some federal gun regulations “invalid” is unconstitutional because it violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, a federal appeals court in St. Louis unanimously ruled on Monday. 

A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a district court ruling from last year that blocked Missouri from enforcing the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a law passed in 2021 that penalizes police for enforcing certain federal gun laws.

Among the law’s provisions is a $50,000 fine for law enforcement agencies that“infringe” on Missourians’ Second Amendment rights.

Some of the gun regulations deemed invalid by the law include imposing certain taxes on firearms, requiring gun owners to register their weapons and laws prohibiting “law-abiding” residents from possessing or transferring their guns.

“Because the (Second Amendment Preservation) Act purports to invalidate federal law in violation of the Supremacy Clause, we affirm the (district court’s) judgment,” Chief Judge Steven Colloton, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in the unanimous opinion. 

The U.S. Department of Justice filed the lawsuit challenging the law arguing it has undermined federal drug and weapons investigations. Late last year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Attorney General Andrew Bailey to allow Missouri to enforce the Second Amendment Preservation Act while its appeal is ongoing.

In a statement through his spokeswoman, Bailey said he is reviewing the decision. He added: “I will always fight for Missourians’ Second Amendment rights.”

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas released a statement Monday afternoon praising the court’s decision. 

“Two years ago, Missouri enacted an unconstitutional law, claiming to invalidate federal gun laws,” Lucas wrote. “The law was rejected in federal appeals court today… I am saddened that our state expended the time and energy of many in our legal system in service of this clearly unconstitutional effort.”

Students hold up anti-abortion signs at the Midwest March for Life on May 1 at the Missouri State Capitol (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

A pair of Republican state legislators and an anti-abortion activist filed a lawsuit Thursday asking a judge to block an abortion-rights constitutional amendment from appearing on the Nov. 5 ballot. 

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly and Kathy Forck sued last year challenging the cost estimate for a proposed constitutional amendment rolling back Missouri’s ban on abortion. 

The campaign behind the proposal ultimately turned in enough signatures to earn a spot on the November ballot, where it is set to appear as Amendment 3. 

Missouri voters will decide whether to legalize abortion in November 

On Thursday, Coleman, Kelly, Forck and Marguerite Forrest, the operator of a shelter for homeless pregnant women in St. Louis County, filed a new lawsuit in Cole Circuit Court arguing that the decision to place the amendment on the ballot should be reversed.

The amendment violates the Missouri Constitution, the lawsuit argues, because it illegally includes more than one subject. It also fails to specify the laws and constitutional provisions that would be repealed if it were approved by voters, the lawsuit argues. 

In a joint statement released to the media, the plaintiffs said Amendment 3 is a “direct threat to the lives of Missouri women by erasing the will of voters who chose to protect the safety of women and the child by electing strong pro-life leaders.”

Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, which is supporting Amendment 3, called Thursday’s lawsuit “yet another baseless and desperate attempt from politicians to silence Missouri voters and prevent them from being heard. We will not let that happen.”

Sweet said she is confident the courts will “see through this thinly veiled effort to block Missouri voters and dismiss it swiftly.”

Missouri was the first state to ban abortion after the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the constitutional right to the procedure. Since then, abortion has been virtually illegal, with limited exceptions only in cases of medical emergencies. There are no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest.

If approved by voters, Amendment 3 would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability, an undefined period of time generally seen as the point in which the fetus could survive outside the womb on its own, generally around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 

Such an amendment would return Missouri to the standard of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which also legalized abortion up to the point of fetal viability. Missouri’s amendment also includes exceptions after viability “to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”

Missouri’s amendment also states that women and those performing or assisting in abortions cannot be prosecuted. Under current Missouri law, doctors who perform abortions deemed unnecessary can be charged with a class B felony and face up to 15 years in prison. Their medical license can also be suspended or revoked.

The lawsuit filed Thursday argues that Amendment 3 illegally includes more than one subject, in part because of its use of the phrase “fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” 

The lawsuit argues this phrase is “unlimited in scope” and is “systematically neutralizing all laws, existing or future, that attempt to limit this new, limitless ‘right to reproductive freedom.’” It lays out numerous restrictions on abortion and other laws that could be repealed by Amendment 3 if it were approved by voters, including restrictions on when abortions can be performed and bans on certain stem cell research. 

This story was updated at 2:35 p.m. with a comment from Missourians for Constitutional Freedom and at 3:11 p.m. to correct the spelling of Kathy Forck’s name. 

The Cole County Courthouse in downtown Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A pair of administrative law judges are suing the Parson administration claiming wrongful termination and illegal withholding of salary. 

Ryan Asbridge, who has served as an administrative law judge since 2019, and Gina Mitten, who has served since 2021, filed a lawsuit last week in Cole Circuit Court. 

They allege the administration of Gov. Mike Parson declared them at-will employees without any authority to do so, thus allowing Mitten to be dismissed and Asbridge’s pay to be withheld while he was on active military duty.

Administrative law judges are appointed by the governor and handle cases involving things such as worker’s compensation. They receive a roughly $120,000 salary. 

In May, Mitten says she was contacted by Parson’s director of the division of worker’s compensation dismissing her from her position. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs argue that state law is clear that administrative law judges can only be discharged or removed after receiving three or more votes of no confidence two years in a row from a five-member review committee that audits their performance. 

Administrative law judges are also subject to retention votes every 12 years by the review committee. 

Lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to change this process over the years, and the lawsuit notes that during legislative hearings the Parson administration admitted that there is no other process for removing administrative law judges other than the review committee. 

Judges can also be removed if the legislature doesn’t allocate enough money to cover all salaries. But the lawsuit says the Department of Labor budget has funding for 28 administrative law judges, including Mitten and Asbridge. 

Asbridge is still listed as an administrative law judge, though the lawsuit says he has been on a military leave of absence for the last three years. A major in the United States Air Force Reserves, Asbridge’s deployment on active duty began in November 2021 and had previously been extended through at least August. 

He continued to receive his salary from the state while deployed with the Air Force. According to the lawsuit, Missouri law requires the state to pay salaries of administrative law judges regardless of the hours they work. There is no provision in state law, the lawsuit says, that authorizes the department to withhold Asbridge’s salary. 

Asbridge’s three years of military leave was “an expense beyond what the citizen of Missouri should be responsible for supporting,” the workers compensation division director wrote in a letter included with the lawsuit. 

Mitten is asking to be reinstated and provided back pay, and Asbridge is asking for back pay withheld since June. 

Spokesmen for the governor and the office of administration, which handles payroll for the state, did not respond to a request for comment. In addition to Parson and Office of Administration Commissioner Ken Zellers, named defendants in the lawsuit include Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the director of the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Anna Hui.

The Cole County Courthouse in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

A lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks to block a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing sports wagering in Missouri from being placed on the November ballot. 

The suit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, argues the methodology used by the Missouri Secretary of State’s office to certify that the sports betting proposal collected enough signatures was unconstitutional. 

To make the ballot, proposed initiative petitions must receive signatures from 8% of legal voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts.

Lawmakers redrew those districts following the 2020 U.S. Census, but the secretary of state’s office did not use the new districts when it calculated whether enough valid signatures were collected, the lawsuit said. But it used the current district lines to determine where people who signed the petition lived. 

Had the count been based on current district lines, the lawsuit contends, the proposal would have fallen short in the 1st Congressional District. 

The secretary of state should have calculated the required number of signatures per district, the lawsuit asserts, by taking the total vote in the 2020 gubernatorial election, multiplied that by 8%, and divided that total by eight.

Under that scenario, the proposal would have fallen short in both the 1st and 5th Districts. 

The lawsuit also alleges the secretary of state’s office deemed some signatures as valid that were not legal in the 1st and 5th Districts. 

A spokesman for the secretary of state’s office could not be immediately reached for comment. 

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.

Bill DeWitt III, president of the St. Louis Cardinals, called Wednesday’s lawsuit “completely without merit as Missourians came out in force to sign the petition that will be on the ballot in November.”

If approved by voters this fall, 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.

If approved by voters, new gambling tax revenue from the casino would be earmarked to early childhood literacy programs in public schools.(Getty Images).

A group hoping to build a new casino near the Lake of the Ozarks filed a lawsuit Tuesday arguing it collected more than enough signatures to earn a spot on the November ballot. 

The Osage River Gaming & Convention Committee is asking a judge to reverse a decision by the Missouri secretary of state’s office that its initiative petition did not qualify for the statewide ballot because it was short 2,031 signatures in the 2nd Congressional District. 

The proposal collected enough signatures in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th districts. 

The group claims it has identified more than 2,500 valid signatures that were rejected and should have been counted in the 2nd District. 

Sports wagering, minimum wage hike headed for November vote in Missouri

“Verifying every signature on multiple initiative petitions this summer has been a very long process for election officials and we realize mistakes happen,” the group said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “However, (Osage River Gaming & Convention) has always been confident their initiative petition contained a sufficient number of valid signatures from legal voters to qualify for placement on the Nov. 5 general election ballot and are now asking the court to do so.”

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.

It 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 $4.1 million raised for the petition drive.

The proposal is being pushed in response to a casino development announced in 2021 by the Osage Nation, the Native American tribe that the river is named for. That project, a $60 million development, includes construction of a casino, hotel and convention center.

Backers of the initiative effort say their casino project will  provide 700 to 800 jobs.

According to the ballot summary, the casino is expected to produce admission and fee revenue of $2.1 million annually, money that is split with the local government with jurisdiction over the site and the Missouri Gaming Commission. The tax on casino net winnings is projected to be about $14.3 million annually.

New gambling tax revenue would be earmarked to early childhood literacy programs in public schools.

House Speaker Dean Plocher during the 2023 veto session (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher’s arguments to dismiss a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him earlier this year don’t withstand scrutiny and are an effort to “mislead this court,” attorneys for Chief Clerk Dana Miller wrote in a motion filed this week. 

Miller’s lawsuit, filed in May, accuses Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of retaliating against her after she raised concerns about his alleged mistreatment of women and misuse of state funds.

Plocher sought to get himself dismissed from the case last month, arguing that any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.”

He also argued Miller was not a whistleblower and that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to her by a third party and are therefore hearsay. And he cited a provision in Missouri’s constitution saying members of the General Assembly “shall not be questioned for any speech or debate in either house.” 

Miller’s attorney, Sylvia Hernandez, wrote in opposing Plocher’s motion that alleged actions taken by the speaker fit the definition of retaliation. 

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

He allegedly moved to change hiring and discipline policies for the House in order to sideline Miller, all of which “can be seen as a reprimand, a reassignment of duties, withholding of work, and as a possible demotion,” Hernandez wrote. 

Plocher also targeted other nonpartisan staff for dismissal, Hernandez wrote, in retaliation against the clerk and circulated a memo containing allegations against Miller aimed at convincing the House to remove her. 

All of this came, Hernandez wrote, after Miller disclosed violations of House policy, “gross waste of funds or abuse of authority, waste of public resources, mismanagement, and danger to public safety.”

By justifying his behavior as simply “political disagreements,” Hernandez wrote, Plocher is trying to “mislead this court” by applying the constitution protections for speech during House debate to conversations that took place behind closed doors. 

Plocher, who last week finished fourth in the GOP primary for secretary of state, became embroiled in controversy last September when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the Legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee in November, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Plocher has denied any wrongdoing. 

Miller claims in her lawsuit that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

Miller alleges Plocher pushed to privatize constituent management because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

In retaliation for her resistance Hernandez wrote, Plocher threatened MIller that he “would take it to a vote” to remove her as chief clerk,  “a warning of possible dismissal.”

The chief clerk is a nonpartisan officer elected by the House.

Plocher also fired his first chief of staff, Miller says in her lawsuit, because he “didn’t stop Danagate,” and allegedly sent Jetton to tell her to “back off” if she wanted him to “let it go.”

Missouri Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate in the Republican primary Jay Ashcroft presses on a "I voted" sticker Tuesday morning at a Jefferson City polling location (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft believes his third place finish in Tuesday’s GOP gubernatorial primary can be explained by his rival’s massive fundraising advantage. 

In an email message to supporters Friday, Ashcroft noted that polls had him tied for the lead with Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe going into the campaign’s home stretch. But when the dust settled Tuesday night, Ashcroft garnered only 23% of the vote, finishing behind Kehoe at 39% and state Sen. Bill Eigel at 32%.

“Tuesday’s result was not what we were expecting,” Ashcroft said. “With polls showing us tied going into the final weekend, and the response we’ve been getting traveling to all 114 counties, we had high hopes. At the end of the day, however, it is hard to prevail when you are outspent 3-1.”

According to the last round of campaign finance disclosures, Kehoe raised roughly $11 million between his candidate committees and affiliated PACs. Eigel raised nearly $6 million and Ashcroft raised around $4 million.

However, Ashcroft did benefit from a $3 million spending spree in the campaign’s final weeks by a PAC called Stand for US. Where the PAC’s money came from is unclear, as its only publicly disclosed contribution is from a nonprofit that doesn’t have to reveal its donors. 

After thanking his supporters, Ashcroft urged them to move past the primary and help elect Kehoe defeat the Democratic nominee, House Minority Leader Crystal Quade.

“While the primary is over, the election is not,” he said. “Republicans need to come together and focus on November and do whatever it takes to elect Mike Kehoe and to ensure his success as our next governor.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson congratulates Andrew Bailey on being appointed attorney general on Nov. 23, 2022 (photo courtesy of the Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday. 

But he was still one of the biggest winners of the night. 

Watching from the sidelines as election results poured in — barred from running again because of term limits — Parson’s legacy was before voters in the form of the three men he appointed to statewide office: Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Treasurer Vivek Malek.

Each emerged victorious in Tuesday night’s GOP primaries. 

In a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2018, Kehoe is now the favorite to replace Parson as governor, while Bailey and Malek hope to earn full terms in November.  

“How can you not say that tonight was a great affirmation of all the nominations the governor has made?” said Mark Milton, who served as treasurer of Committee for Liberty, the PAC supporting one of Kehoe’s rivals for the gubernatorial nomination, Jay Ashcroft. 

Margie Vandeven, the state’s former education commissioner, agreed that Tuesday night was a big win for Parson. 

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “He did a great job.”

Mike Parson works to boost his favored candidates in Missouri GOP primaries

The governor has made it no secret that the success of his appointees is a big part of the legacy he hopes to leave behind. He touted his impact on state government through his appointees in his final State of the State address to the legislature earlier this year, and has made it clear he’s willing to do whatever he can to ensure their success.  

In some ways, Parson’s entire governing philosophy was on the ballot Tuesday, with his appointees facing candidates who decried the culture of Jefferson City as corrupt and pilloried him as a RINO — a “Republican In Name Only.”

“You got to realize you don’t have to agree with everybody on all the issues, but you still got to govern,” Parson posted on social media Tuesday morning, “and that’s what we come up here to do.”

Parson did more than just endorse his favored candidates. Throughout the campaign, he’s shown a willingness to use his taxpayer-funded office to put his thumb on the scale — earning criticism and allegations that he was illegally using public resources for campaign purposes.

But he largely shrugged off those concerns, and by the campaign’s final week, wasn’t willing to stand by and let the primaries play out. 

The PAC that has supported Parson’s political campaigns since 2018 — and bankrolled his trips to the Super Bowl the last two years — started spending its massive war chest to boost Kehoe and Bailey. 

The money came in large chunks from loyal Parson donors — David Steward, whose technology firm holds contracts with the state; the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, an industry regulated by the Parson administration; Torch Electronics, a Wildwood-based company accused of operating illegal gambling machines; and MACO Development Co., a beneficiary of low-income housing tax credits.

He also got a $300,000 from the St. Louis law firm of Eric Holland. 

Kehoe benefited from some of that spending, but the focus was Bailey, who was working to fend off a well-funded Republican challenger, former assistant U.S. attorney and member of Donald Trump’s legal team, Will Scharf. 

The pro-Parson PAC ran TV ads attacking Scharf. And days before voters headed to the polls, the governor used official letterhead to publicly condemn an ad attacking Bailey and convened a press conference in the Capitol with the attorney general to announce a crackdown on unregulated cannabis products.

“In this race, we were not just up against the Bailey campaign,” Scharf told supporters Tuesday night during his concession speech. “We were up against the official office of the Attorney General. We were up against Gov. Parson. We were up against the entire Jefferson City establishment.”

In an interview last month, Kehoe acknowledged that he’s seen by many as Parson’s stylistic and ideological successor. But he also said there have been plenty of areas where the two have disagreed over the years. 

“But we don’t air that in public,” he said. 

His approach to being governor would likely be very different from Parson’s, Kehoe said, but he hopes to live up to the high standard he believes Parson has set. 

“I consider Mike Parson a friend. I’ve known him for a long time,” Kehoe said. “Mike has taken on some very tough challenges. And he has tried to make decisions that’s best for Missourians and from his heart.”

The Independent’s Rudi Keller, Annelise Hanshaw and Clara Bates contributed to this story. 

Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, points at fellow Senate Freedom Caucus members as he tells reporters that the Missouri Senate Freedom Caucus will outlive their time in the chamber (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

State Sen. Denny Hoskins emerged from an eight-way primary Tuesday to capture the Republican nomination for Missouri Secretary of State. 

He was declared the winner by the Associated Press at 10:15 p.m., holding 24% of the vote. 

Hoskins served in the Army National Guard before becoming a certified public accountant. He has represented Warrensburg in the state House and Senate, leaving the legislature after this year because of term limits.

His statehouse career is defined in recent years by his membership in the Senate Freedom Caucus, where Hoskins and his cohorts clashed with the chamber’s GOP leadership — creating years of gridlock in a battle over the party’s priorities. 

Those rumbles with Republican leaders are also a key part of Hoskins’ campaign message, which he insists is proof he’s a fighter who will stand up for the values of his party.

“I am running because I believe Missouri needs secure elections; we have to ensure that none of the electoral fraud that took place in 2020 and stole the election from President Trump happens here,” Hoskins said after his victory. “I will work hard to eliminate electoral fraud and advocate for a return to secure elections using in-person voting and no machines that can be hacked or sabotaged.”

If elected in November, Hoskins says he’d push for the hand counting of ballots, eliminating absentee voting except for the military and disabled and making Election Day a holiday to make it easier for Missourians to vote.

This story will be updated. 

Former state Sen. Bob Onder of O'Fallon, a candidate for Congress in the 3rd District, speaks Feb. 29 at the Boone County Republican Lincoln Days dinner in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Former state Sen. Bob Onder is the Republican nominee in Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District, defeating another former state lawmaker to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer.

The Associated Press called the race at 10:15 p.m., with Onder leading former state Sen. Kurt Schaefer 45% to 39%. 

Onder is a physician who ran for Congress and lost to Luetkemeyer in 2008. During his two terms as a member of the Missouri Senate, he earned a reputation as one of the most vocal members of the self-styled conservative caucus, upending the chamber by filibustering a litany of bills, including congressional redistricting, needle exchanges for addicts and Medicaid financing.

The battle between Onder and Schaefer played out on TV airwaves across the sprawling 16-county district, with both sides accusing the other of being a phony conservative who supported selling Missouri farmland to China. 

Onder was among the rare Missouri politicians who won the sole endorsement of former President Donald Trump. In other contentious GOP primaries, Trump refused to make a decision on who to support.

Wesley Bell, who is hoping to unseat Cori Bush for Missouri's First District congressional seat, tells reporters he believes Bush isn't properly representing the district (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell defeated U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in the Democratic primary for the 1st District Congressional seat on Tuesday, capping a showdown between the highest profile political figures to emerge from the Ferguson uprising 10 years ago. 

The Associated Press called the at 10 p.m. with Bell holding 51% of the vote, Bush at 46% and former state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal at 3%. 

“I am deeply honored and humbled by the trust the people of this district have placed in me,” Bell said. “This victory belongs to every volunteer, every supporter, and every voter who believes in our vision for a better future.”

Bell shocked the Missouri political establishment in 2018 by defeating a seven-term incumbent to become St. Louis County prosecutor. Yet his win Tuesday was considered a victory for the political establishment, who have long been disenchanted with Bush. 

Bush lost her initial run for Congress in 2018, then rebounded two years later to defeat 10-term incumbent William Lacy Clay in the heavily Democratic district.

She easily won re-election in 2022, defeating state Sen. Steve Roberts by more than 30 percentage points in the Democratic primary. During her time in Congress, she has been a high-profile member of a group of progressive Democrats nicknamed “The Squad.” 

But it was her comments following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that drew Bell into the race and laid the groundwork for his victory. She condemned the attack but called for an end to “Israeli military occupation and apartheid.” 

That earned her opposition from groups like the United Democracy Project, the political arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which dominated the airwaves in the district with millions of dollars worth of ads praising Bell and attacking Bush. 

Bell’s election in 2018 as the first Black prosecutor in St. Louis County’s history was part of a wave of progressive wins in prosecutor races around the country seeking to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. 

Before that, Bell worked as a public defender and served as a member of the Ferguson City Council.

The 1st Congressional District includes all of the City of St. Louis and North St. Louis County, along with pieces of the central corridor such as Clayton and Webster Groves.

Andrew Bailey is hoping to win his first full term as Missouri's attorney general after being appointed to the position in November 2022 by Gov. Mike Parson (Photo provided by Andrew Bailey's campaign).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s efforts to delay sentencing in former President Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York were rejected Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision came a day before Bailey won the Aug. 6 primary election against Will Scharf, a member of Trump’s legal team.

In a one-page order, the court refused to intervene in the case, meaning a gag order against Trump will remain in place and sentencing on his 34 felony convictions will move forward as scheduled next month.

Bailey argued the New York prosecution was politically motivated and urged the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene because it has jurisdiction in cases involving one state suing another. He sought to delay sentencing until after the election and lift the gag order placed on Trump that prevents him from speaking out against prosecutors, court staff and their families.

The court rejected Bailey’s argument without comment.

“It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court refused to exercise its constitutional responsibility to resolve state v. state disputes,” Bailey posted on social media, adding that his office would continue to challenge the “illicit prosecutions against President Trump.”

Trump is slated to be sentenced just weeks before the November election after being convicted on 34 counts for falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Bailey’s loss on Monday earned a sharp rebuke from Will Scharf, who is running against the attorney general in Tuesday’s GOP primary. Scharf is part of Trump’s legal team that successfully argued to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken in office.

“I win the cases I file,” Scharf said. “My team and I have won case after case for President Trump, including at the Supreme Court.”

This story has been updated to reflect the results of the primary election.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson prior to the State of the State address on Jan. 24, 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A political action committee that for two years has mostly existed to bankroll Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s trips to the Super Bowl has begun spending money to bolster his preferred candidates in next week’s GOP primaries.

And while his PAC spends money, Parson is also wading into the primaries through his taxpayer-funded office — drawing criticism that he may be illegally using public resources for campaign purposes.

Uniting Missouri, which was created to support Parson’s bid for a full term in 2020, donated $100,000 this week to the PAC backing Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe’s bid for governor and spent roughly $100,000 on TV ads in the Kansas City market attacking Will Scharf, who is seeking to oust Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

The PAC spent nearly $600,000 on “digital advertising” and $36,000 on radio ads in central and southwest Missouri, although public reports do not indicate who is being targeted in those advertisements.

Parson, who is barred from seeking another term as governor, appointed Kehoe and Bailey to their current jobs and endorsed them both for the Aug. 6 primary. 

The spending spree for Parson appointees was made possible by a pair of large donations last week. 

David Steward, co-founder of World Wide Technology and a former member of the Washington University Board of Trustees, donated $100,000 to Uniting Missouri on July 25. 

The St. Louis law firm of trial attorney Eric Holland donated $300,000 on July 26. The firm gave Uniting Missouri $250,000 earlier this year. 

Uniting Missouri also reported receiving $5,000 from MACO Development Co., a low-income housing developer; $10,000 from a group called 36 Political Fund, which is connected to the sheet metal workers union; and $25,000 from five different PACs that are all controlled by the lobbying firm of Steve Tilley, a longtime adviser to the governor. 

Last month, Uniting Missouri accepted a $50,000 donation from the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association and $15,000 from Torch Electronics, a Wildwood-based company accused of operating illegal gambling machines across the state. 

Governor’s Office weighs in

Uniting Missouri’s intervention in the GOP primary is only the latest example of the governor seeking to put his thumb on the scale for his favored candidates. 

Parson last year used official letterhead from the governor’s office to unsuccessfully pressure a national Republican organization to support Bailey’s candidacy. And his department of labor spent $100,000 for a television advertisement that featured Bailey.

In both instances, Parson faced accusations that he violated a state law prohibiting the misuse of public resources for campaign purposes. 

He seemed to double down on the practice on Tuesday, when Parson once again used official letterhead from the governor’s office to weigh in on the attorney general primary. This time, he condemned a TV ad attacking Bailey paid for by a group that supports Scharf.

And on Wednesday, Parson announced he would hold a joint press conference with Bailey this week in order to discuss “the danger posed by unregulated cannabinoids.”

Parson endured similar criticism from Kehoe’s main Republican rivals — Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel — when earlier this year he included the lieutenant governor in a press conference and executive order pertaining to foreign ownership of Missouri land.

Super Bowl trips

Parson took over as governor in June 2018 when his predecessor — Eric Greitens — resigned to avoid impeachment and settle a felony charge in St. Louis. 

He won a full term in 2020. But because Greitens had more than two years left on his term when he resigned, Parson is prohibited from running again because of term limits. 

Immediately after his 2020 victory, Uniting Missouri spent much of its money on campaign advisers and advertising —  $69,000 on consultants in 2022, along with $150,000 on ads.

But spending patterns changed the last two years and have focused mostly on Parson’s travel.

Uniting Missouri paid $56,000 in February 2023 to the Kansas City Chiefs for a “fundraising event,” covering costs associated with the governor’s trip to Arizona for the Super Bowl. It also paid more than $110,000 during the first three months of 2023 to an aviation company connected to Tilley.

The PAC spent $64,000 earlier this year on credit card payments. The charges appear to be for another “fundraising event” at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, and included a $56,000 payment to the Kansas City Chiefs; $8,400 to Ticketmaster; and $650 to the NFL Experience.

This story was updated at 8:37 a.m. on July 31 to include Gov. Mike Parson’s letter condemning a TV ad attacking Andrew Bailey. 

White and pink buds on dogwood and tulip trees brighten the Missouri State Capitol grounds in Jefferson City (Getty Images).

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that Missouri’s ban on lawmakers and legislative staff working as lobbyists for two years after leaving office is unconstitutional.

First enacted in 2018 as part of a voter-approved initiative called “Clean Missouri,” the revolving-door law was designed to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption. But the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found the restriction violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“Missouri had to show that it has a compelling anti-corruption interest and that its lobbying ban is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. It did neither,” said Judge David Stras, writing for a three-judge panel.

The lawsuit was filed by former state Rep. Rocky Miller and legislative assistant John LaVanchy, arguing that the two-year ban not only violates the First Amendment but improperly limits their employment opportunities. It was filed against the Missouri Ethics Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the ban.

Miller, a Republican from Lake Ozark, won four terms in the Missouri House and was re-elected to his final term in 2018 at the same election where voters passed the lobbying ban. About 10 months after he left office in January 2021, he received an offer to work as a paid lobbyist for Presidio, a waste management company with headquarters in his hometown.

Miller registered as a lobbyist after the ban expired. He currently has six active clients, including Presidio.

Monday’s decision overturns a ruling last year by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Harpool, who upheld the ban as a way to prevent corruption, noting public officials are fully aware that accepting a taxpayer-supported job also includes accepting restrictions on speech.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, answers reporters' questions following adjournment of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher is asking a Cole County judge to dismiss him from a whistleblower lawsuit filed earlier this year, arguing any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.” 

House Chief Clerk Dana Miller filed a lawsuit in May accusing Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of harassment and intimidation. It stems from disputes between Miller and Plocher that emerged last year over an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a lucrative software contract.

In a motion filed Friday with Cole Circuit Judge Cotton Walker, Plocher’s attorneys argue that the speaker is not a “public employer” that would allow him to be sued by Miller. 

The speaker “had no ability to discipline (Miller) or otherwise demote her,” Lowell Pearson, Plocher’s attorney, wrote in the motion, later noting that Miller, “simply did not suffer any type of ‘disciplinary action’ whatsoever. Indeed, she continues to work as the Chief Clerk of the House today.”

The chief clerk is a nonpartisan officer elected by the House. Miller has worked in state government for 31 years, with 23 years as a member of the House staff. She became chief clerk in 2018. She has said she plans to leave her position as clerk when her term is up in January 2025.

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

Pearson also argues that Miller is not a whistleblower and her case instead documents “political disagreements” with Plocher that don’t constitute the basis for a lawsuit.

Plocher, who is running for Missouri secretary of state in the Aug. 6 GOP primary, became embroiled in controversy last September when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the Legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee in November, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Plocher has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. 

Miller claims in her lawsuit that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

In the motion to dismiss, Pearson argues that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to Miller by a third party — not Plocher — and are therefore hearsay. 

The lawsuit, Pearson wrote, is simply “a political dispute between two political actors involving political questions. This court should not entertain (Miller’s) attempt to circumvent the political process through litigation and should dismiss the claim against Plocher.”

There have been no filings in the case from Jetton, who is also a named defendant, and no attorney is listed for him. Though the lawsuit was filed in May, plaintiffs have been unable to serve him with a summons to appear before the court. 

Donald Trump participates in the final presidential debate against Joe Biden in 2020 (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images).

Former President Donald Trump’s coveted endorsement in the Missouri GOP gubernatorial primary finally arrived Saturday night, with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and state Sen. Bill Eigel forced to share the honor.

All three quickly crowed to supporters about Trump’s endorsement, never mentioning the fact that it was split three ways.

“All have had excellent careers, and have been with me from the beginning. They are MAGA and America First all the way!” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “I can’t hurt two of them by Endorsing one so, therefore, I’m going to Endorse, for Governor of the Great State of Missouri, Jay Ashcroft, Mike Kehoe, and Bill Eigel. Choose any one of them – You can’t go wrong!”

Trump took a similar step in 2022, when he endorsed “Eric” in the U.S. Senate race instead of choosing between the race’s GOP frontrunners, Eric Schmitt and Eric Greitens.

Schmitt went on to win the seat.

Trump endorses ‘Eric’ in Missouri GOP Senate primary, but doesn’t clarify which one

Eigel was out quickly with a statement, proclaiming that he’d won the endorsement.

“Grateful for the kind words and endorsement, President Trump,” Eigel posted on social media.

Kehoe was next, saying in a press release that now that his campaign has Trump’s endorsement, “we’ll unite conservatives across Missouri and have a great victory in November, but we first need to win on Aug. 6.”

Ashcroft took a slightly different tack, posting on social media that he was the only candidate in the race for governor who has been endorsed by both Trump and Missouri Right to Life.

Trump easily won Missouri’s 10 electoral votes in both 2016 and 2020, and is expected to win the state again this fall.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A Clay County judge on Friday refused to reverse her order from earlier this month that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey answer questions under oath about conversations with a local official that may have violated legal ethics rules.

Judge Karen Krauser ordered Bailey to sit for a deposition after it was discovered he and a deputy met with a member of the Jackson County Legislature without the knowledge of the county’s attorneys. 

Bailey filed a lawsuit in December over Jackson County’s property assessment process, and the Jackson County Legislature is a named defendant. 

The meetings appear to have violated the rules of professional conduct set out by the Missouri Supreme Court, which prohibit attorneys from meeting with individuals involved in a lawsuit without the consent of their lawyer. Krauser ordered Bailey to answer questions under oath about the meetings from Jackson County’s attorneys.

Jason Lewis, general counsel for the Attorney General’s Office, urged Krauser to reconsider her decision during a Thursday hearing, arguing that requiring Bailey to sit for a deposition could set a troubling precedent.

“The Attorney General’s Office has profound institutional interest that a sitting statewide official cannot be deposed in every case,” Lewis said.

Bailey has argued that Krauser’s order “chills the attorney general’s free-speech rights on the campaign trail,” since the meeting he had with the county official was “a brief, casual meeting between two elected officials and their campaign staffs unrelated to the lawsuit but where, at most, a passing remark was made about the lawsuit.”

The judge did not lay out her reasoning for denying the motion to reconsider her order in the one-page ruling released Friday. She also denied Bailey’s motion to disqualify Jackson County’s attorneys from the property tax case. 

Bailey’s spokeswoman said the attorney general’s office is examining all legal options. 

Will Scharf, left, is facing off with Andrew Bailey in the GOP primary for Missouri Attorney General (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A trio of political action committees supporting either Andrew Bailey or Will Scharf in the Republican primary for Missouri attorney general have raised $4.6 million in large donations this month.

The money has translated into an onslaught of TV ads, mailers and text messages from both sides hoping to win the GOP nomination in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2018. 

Voters head to the polls on Aug. 6, though no-excuse early voting has already opened. 

Bailey, who was appointed attorney general by Gov. Mike Parson in 2022 and is seeking a full term, is being supported by Liberty and Justice PAC. 

It raised $1.9 million in large donations this month — checks of more than $5,000 that must be immediately reported. 

Most of that money came from Rex and Jeanie Sinquefield, Missouri’s most prolific political donors, who have given the PAC more than $1 million in recent weeks. Another $500,000 came from the Kansas law firm of Michael Ketchmark. 

So far this year, Liberty and Justice PAC has taken in $3.5 million in large donations. 

Scharf, a former assistant U.S. attorney, is being supported by two PACs — Defend Missouri and Club for Growth Action. 

Most of Defend Missouri’s money has come from Club for Growth Action, though it did receive a $1.1 million donation this week from the Concord Fund — an advocacy organization bankrolled by groups connected to conservative activist Leonard Leo.

Club for Growth Action has raised $1.9 million this month, with $1.3 million of that coming from its federal PAC and $250,000 coming from Scharf’s father. 

So far this year, Club for Growth has taken in $7.6 million in large donations. 

Christopher Dunn was convicted for a 1990 deadly shooting of a teen in St. Louis. Others involved in the case later admitted they lied about Dunn’s involvement. No DNA ever tied Dunn to the murder. A judge also admitted that the lack of evidence is enough to prove Dunn is innocent (photo submitted).

The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the release of Christopher Dunn, days after a St. Louis judge ruled he has been wrongfully incarcerated for 33 years.

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and his wife, Claudia, at a campaign rally in St. Louis in June (campaign photo).

CUBA, Mo. — Mike Kehoe wanted to make one thing perfectly clear to the several dozen supporters of his campaign for governor who gathered earlier this month at Cowtown USA. 

“I don’t scream and holler about politics,” said Kehoe, Missouri’s lieutenant governor. “I’m running against people who are of the ‘burn it down’ variety. I’m just not a burn it down guy.”

The winner of the Aug. 6 primary will be a heavy favorite heading into the fall in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2018. And most recent public polls of the race have Kehoe at or near the top, thanks in part to a massive campaign war chest he’s managed to build to flood the airwaves with his message — and attacks on his two main rivals for the nomination, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel. 

Kehoe knows his style is a bit of an anachronism in modern politics, especially in a race where his opponents have pilloried him with derisive nicknames like RINO (Republican in name only), “Tax Hike Mike” and “Kung Pao Kehoe.”

But he doesn’t think that kind of campaign will work in Missouri. 

“Missourians are a little bit sick of hate politics,” Keho said in an interview at his campaign headquarters with The Independent. 

“The good Lord, if He gave me anything, it was that I work very well with people even when they don’t agree with me,” he said. “Now, we still might not agree at the end of our conversation, but that doesn’t make them the enemy. When I look at the field, I don’t see a lot of other people who will govern that way.”

To his supporters, that’s exactly what Missouri needs. 

“He’s a conservative who will fight for his values,” said Charlie Kruse, who served as director of agriculture under former Gov. John Ashcroft – father of Jay Ashcroft – as well as president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. “And he can get things done. I have watched Mike Kehoe in action. He’s willing to talk to anybody. He’s willing to try to reason with anybody.”

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.

“I was born and raised dirt poor, though my mom said so we couldn’t afford dirt,” Kehoe said. “Growing up poor doesn’t necessarily give you the qualities to be a good governor. Building up and running a business doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a good governor. But it gives you a perspective. I have a different way of looking at things.”

His first foray into politics came when former Gov. Matt Blunt appointed him to the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission, which led to him running successfully for the state Senate in 2010. He eventually rose to become Senate majority leader, and when Mike Parson took over as governor following Eric Greitens’ 2018 resignation, he appointed Kehoe to serve as lieutenant governor. 

Kehoe won a full term as lieutenant governor in 2020. 

In the run up to the Aug. 6 primary, The Independent asked Kehoe a series of questions with one theme – what would Missouri be like if he becomes governor? Here’s what he said:

Crime prevention

If Kehoe is sworn in as Missouri’s next governor, his focus will be on crime. 

“When my hand comes off the Bible,” Kehoe said, “the first thing we’re going to do is activate a day one crime plan.”

No other priority matters, he said, “unless we get crime under control.”

Overall crime trends in St. Louis are the lowest they’ve been in a decade, according to a 2023 crime report released by the mayor’s office earlier this year. But those encouraging numbers come after years of the city having one of the highest homicide rates in the country. 

Kansas City recorded its deadliest year on record in 2023, with 185 homicides, according to data maintained by The Kansas City Star. Statewide, Missouri State Highway Patrol statistics show that both violent crimes and property crimes declined in 2023 compared to 2022. 

Law enforcement agencies at every level — local police, sheriff’s offices and the highway patrol — are struggling to hire and retain people, Kehoe said. The state can play a role in turning that around, including directly appropriating money to improve pay. 

“Law enforcement people are woefully underpaid based on the risk they take for our community,” he said. “I want to make Missouri the friendliest law enforcement state in the union.”

Other details of his crime plan are more fluid, but Kehoe said he will bring together local leaders and law enforcement groups to come up with a game plan to tackle violent crime in Missouri.

“None of the other stuff matters unless you have safe communities,” he said. “Businesses aren’t going to expand here or move here if they see us on the front page in the New York Times every week. Folks aren’t going to want to stay living here if they don’t feel safe.”

Part of Kehoe’s message on crime involves border security, namely the idea that Chinese fentanyl is coming into the country through Mexico and ravaging Missouri communities. 

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported over 2,000 drug-related overdose deaths occurred in the state in 2021, and around 70% were caused by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Drug overdose is the leading cause of death among adults aged 18-44 in Missouri.

A U.S. House committee reported earlier this year that China is fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. by directly subsidizing the manufacturing of materials that are used by traffickers to make the drug outside the country. However, a study by the libertarian Cato Institute found 89% of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers were U.S. citizens and 93% of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points not on illegal migration routes.

One statistic that bolsters Kehoe’s point: St. Louis County police say that between January 2021 and September 2023, fentanyl was found in more than 1,000 drug seizures, with much of it connected to Mexico and China. 

“Missourians want to know how we’re going to stop it or slow it down,” Keho said. 

But whenever Kehoe mentions China, it opens up criticism of his 2013 vote while serving in the state Senate to lift  Missouri’s ban on foreign ownership of agricultural land. That vote opened the door for China’s largest pork producer to acquire Smithfield Foods and its more than 40,000 acres of Missouri farmland. 

It’s become a huge issue in Missouri politics, and in the governor’s race. And the criticism of Kehoe was amplified this week when The Independent reported his campaign bus is owned by Smithfield’s only Missouri lobbyist. 

Kehoe doesn’t regret his 2013 vote, he said, because the situation in at the time was vastly different than it is today. Now, he favors reinstating that ban. 

“That (vote) happened 11 years ago,” Kehoe 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.”

Tax cuts

Another plank in Kehoe’s pitch to be Missouri governor is to eliminate Missouri’s income tax. 

“Since I’ve been in state government, we’ve cut the income tax from 6% to 4.7%,” Kehoe said. “I have backed $2.4 billion in tax cuts since I’ve been in office. But now, we need to take that to zero. That’s a key to our economic development strategy.”

In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the personal income tax accounted for 65% of Missouri’s general revenue. 

Kehoe knows the state still has to fund essential services, but he doesn’t believe eliminating the income tax will hurt Missouri’s ability to pay its bills.

“Putting real money back into people’s pockets and letting them spend it themselves will boost our economy,” he contends. “When the economy grows, the budget will grow with it.”

Kehoe differentiates himself from Ashcroft and Eigel in his support of economic development incentives to lure — and retain — businesses in the state. The difference was on full display after Kansas signed off on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of incentives earlier this year designed to lure the Chiefs and Royals out of Kansas City and across the state line.

Ashcroft and Eigel flatly rejected any notion that Missouri should intervene. 

Taking that stance is foolish, Kehoe said. 

“The economic development business is very competitive, and if you want to have zero economic development, and I mean nothing in the toolbox, that’s fine,” Kehoe said. “You’re gonna get your butt kicked.”

He doesn’t support state funding to build new stadiums, he said, but it makes no sense not to try to keep a large employer in the state — even if that employer is a sports franchise. 

“If somebody said Joe’s Widget Factory — who has been in Kansas City for 60 years, employs lots of people and has a huge economic impact on the community — wants to move to another state, we’d have 800 people saying, ‘whoa, we have to stop this. We can’t let Joe’s Widget Factory move.’ So that’s my point.”

During the campaign, Kehoe has taken criticism for championing a hike in the state gas tax in order to fund road and bridge repairs. Missouri roads were crumbling, Kehoe said, and something had to be done.

A gas tax — “I’d call it a user fee, by the way” — was the way Missouri could ensure it took care of its infrastructure, Kehoe said. 

“Governing is not always popular,” he said. “We were 49th in funding for our roads. Our farm to market roads, what people call the letter routes, they’re in some of the worst shape they’ve ever been. That hurts our number one industry, agriculture. We have to make sure we have bridges that school buses and ambulances and your family can drive across, much less goods that are on tractor trailers that support our economy.”

Education

Over the last two years, Missouri lawmakers have created and expanded a tax-credit scholarship program to help offset the cost of attending private and religious schools. 

Kehoe supports that initiative, saying competition is the best thing that can happen for public education. 

“If a parent is in a school district where their child is not receiving the proper education or the curriculum does not fit their values, they should have an option to be able to look at other districts,” he said. 

There are “550-ish school districts in Missouri,” Kehoe said, “and some districts are hitting it out of the park and some are really struggling. I’m not a reformer who says throw out the bathwater and the baby. Let’s target where we need to have the best fixes and let’s give people some choice.”

While one of his opponents favors completely eliminating Missouri’s department of education, Kehoe believes the department has a bright future. One reason for that, he said, is the state’s new education commissioner, Karla Eslinger. 

A former Republican state senator who was considered friendly to public school advocates, Eslinger was chosen by the State Board of Education to take over following the retirement of Margie Vandeven.

Her experience in education ranges from beginning as an elementary-school teacher in a rural Ozark County school, through the ranks of administration in a couple Missouri schools and a three-year stint as the assistant commissioner in the office of educator quality.

In 2017, then-Gov. Eric Greitens pushed for the board to oust Vandeven in the hopes he could install a commissioner of his choice. Kehoe has no intention of following that path.

“Karla Eslinger is really going to be special,” he said. “ I’m really excited about what Karla will bring to this conversation. I’m a huge fan, and I can’t believe she said yes, quite frankly. She’s a really good person, and I think we’re gonna see some great things out of her.”

The Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA)'s Columbia operating center, as photographed Feb. 28 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A federal lawsuit filed Monday accuses a quasi-governmental organization based in Missouri of illegally overcharging and actively misleading student loan borrowers.

The American Federation of Teachers filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. against the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, better known as MOHELA. The lawsuit claims the student loan servicer illegally deducted payments from borrowers’ bank accounts without consent, misinformed borrowers about paperwork deadlines, failed to timely process application for loan relief and a litany of other allegedly unlawful activity. 

Similar accusations have been made against MOHELA in lawsuits filed in Missouri, as well as in a report released in February by the teacher’s union.

“MOHELA was hired by the federal government to help borrowers pay down debt, but instead it hung them out to dry to line its own pockets,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “Rather than fulfill its responsibilities, MOHELA has abdicated and deflected them — and it’s well past time it’s held to account.”

MOHELA faces accusations it mismanaged federal student loan forgiveness program

A spokesperson for the Chesterfield-based company said providing support to student loan borrowers is “the utmost priority to MOHELA, and any claims to the contrary are false. MOHELA will vigorously defend the allegations in the complaint.”

In May, a group of advocates and progressive Democratic lawmakers called on the U.S. Department of Education to end its contract with MOHELA, accusing it of being a predatory loan service and failing student borrowers.

Monday’s lawsuit claims that “individually, any one of MOHELA’s failings would be sufficient to cause financial, mental and emotional distress.”

“Collectively, they result in a Kafkaesque experience and make it practically impossible for borrowers to correct account errors, make important decisions to protect their economic well-being, or even confirm basic information about their student loans.”

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his hush-money trial before speaking on the Middle East at the White House on May 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. Biden said Trump had a fair trial and an impartial jury found him guilty on all 34 counts and added it is dangerous for anyone to say the trial was rigged (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images).

Missouri Democratic leaders and delegates to the party’s national convention next month heaped praise on President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for re-election — with a few prominent Democrats quickly lining up behind Vice President Kamala Harris. 

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, who is facing a tough primary fight for her St. Louis-based seat, thanked the president for “prioritizing our nation’s needs, a decision that I am sure was a difficult one.”

She also formally endorsed Harris, who Bush said had the “vision to carry this legacy forward” and “defeat Donald Trump.”

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones also endorsed Harris, saying on social media that Biden has been the most “consequential leader of our lifetime” and she looks forward to supporting Harris as the Democratic nominee. 

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, did not directly announce an endorsement of Harris, but he did post on social media that he donated to her campaign for president, calling her “brilliant, experienced, personable, relatable.”

State Rep. Keri Ingle of Lee’s Summit, a delegate to the convention, retweeted Harris thanking Biden for his endorsement. 

Several other Missouri delegates to the convention also pledged support for Harris, but not all. 

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City praised Biden but stopped short of endorsing Harris.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page took the same tack, as did House Minority Leader Crystal Quade of Springfield, a candidate for governor. 

State Sen. Doug Beck of Affton, a Democratic delegate, said he would be taking the “next few weeks to hear from as many voters as possible about how and with whom they would like to move forward.”

A new TV ad paid for by Defend Missouri accuses Attorney General Andrew Bailey of being too lenient on a repeat offender during his time in a local prosecutor's office (screenshot).

A new ad targeting Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey from a group backing his rival in the GOP primary places the blame for the shooting death of a police officer last year on Bailey’s tenure as a local prosecutor. 

To deliver the message, the Defend Missouri PAC enlisted Ray County Sheriff Scott Childers, who Bailey is seeking to oust from office on allegations he allowed prisoners to leave jail and smuggle in drugs and alcohol on their return.

The ad garnered a sharp rebuke Friday from a pair of law enforcement organizations, who said it was exploitative of the officer’s death. 

At the heart of the issue is Bailey’s time working in the Warren County prosecutor’s office, where in the fall of 2017 he filed criminal charges against a man named Kenneth Lee Simpson. 

Simpson was no stranger to local law enforcement, having spent the better part of the previous decade in and out of jail on myriad felony and misdemeanor charges.

He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges filed by Bailey, with a different assistant prosecutor handling the case in 2018 when Simpson received six month sentences for fourth-degree assault and unlawful possession of a weapon.

Nearly seven years later, Bailey is Missouri’s attorney general and once again prosecuting Simpson. This time, it’s for the shooting death of Hermann Police Det. Sgt. Mason Griffith, who was killed last year while trying to arrest Simpson for outstanding warrants outside of a Casey’s General Store. 

Another officer was injured in the shooting.

The 30-second TV ad launched this week by Defend Missouri — a PAC formed to support the man challenging Bailey in the Aug. 6 primary, Will Scharf — focuses on those misdemeanor charges from 2017 and accuses Bailey of going easy on a “violent career felon.”

“The same felon Bailey slapped on the wrist allegedly used that wrist to shoot two cops,” Childers says in the ad. 

The Missouri Fraternal Order of Police and the Law Enforcement Legislative Coalition denounced the ad in similar statements released to the media on Friday, arguing it politicizes Griffith’s death and jeopardizes Bailey’s prosecution of Simpson.

“The ad demonstrates a complete and utter disregard for Dt. Sgt. Griffith’s family, including his wife and two young sons,” the FOP, which endorsed Bailey last year, said in its statement. “They have been through enough pain and trauma over the past year and should not be subjected to images of their loved one’s murderer on television.”

Both groups are calling for the ad to be taken off the air and for Scharf to apologize. 

Scharf, who is prohibited from coordinating with Defend Missouri on messaging or strategy, declined comment Friday afternoon. Kristen Sanocki, president of Defend Missouri, did not respond to a request for comment.

Bailey’s campaign called the ad a “last-ditch attempt to score cheap political points” that “demonstrates a complete disregard for the victims.”

“If Will Scharf truly supports law enforcement, he would demand the ad be taken down immediately and issue a personal apology to the families traumatized by these events,” said Michael Hafner, a spokesman for Bailey’s campaign. 

Long criminal history

Missouri’s online court records system shows Simpson has faced criminal charges at least 20 times since 2004, when he turned 17. 

That year, Simpson faced 11 felonies after he drove a truck down while a friend shot a BB gun at car windows, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He received probation that was revoked months later when he shot out the window of Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputy’s vehicle as it drove down the highway.

After Simpson’s 2023 arrest, the Post-Dispatch interviewed his neighbors, who were not surprised to find out about his involvement in the Hermann shooting. One told the newspaper: “He’s always had problems. That officer should not be dead.”

Kelly King, who served as Warren County prosecuting attorney starting in 2014, told the Post-Dispatch last year that Simpson even threatened to blow up her car.

King now serves as deputy attorney general under Bailey, overseeing the day-to-day management of the office and serving as senior advisor. 

After his 2023 arrest, Simpson told the police he was on the run for several warrants. When officers arrived at the Casey’s, Simpson said he believed he was going to die and decided to commit “suicide by cop,” according to the probable cause statement filed after his arrest. 

Simpson said he didn’t originally intend to kill anyone but himself. 

Ray County Sheriff

The anti-Bailey ad, which is airing on television around the state and was pushed out Friday evening through text message by Defend Missouri, is narrated by Childers. 

In March, Bailey filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Childers from office, alleging he unlawfully allowed prisoners to leave jail, perform work for friends and smuggle drugs, alcohol and other contraband into the jail. 

Childers is on paid administrative leave while the suit works through the courts. He has denied any wrongdoing, alleging in a court filing last month that Bailey’s efforts to oust him are retaliation for Childers threatening to go to the media with accusations the attorney general refused to take action on a sexual assault case.

There’s no mention of Childers’ legal tussle with Bailey in the ad, though he opens it by saying, “as Ray County sheriff, I worked with Andrew Bailey. I can tell you he’s no friend of law enforcement.”

Will Scharf at his campaign kickoff event on Jan. 31, 2023, in St. Louis (photo submitted).

It was late August last year when Will Scharf got a call from a South Florida number he didn’t recognize. 

“It was a 561 number, and my parents are in that area code,” Scharf said. “So I assumed it was my dad calling me from a landline or something.”

As it turns out, it was Donald Trump.

Scharf had become close with a number of attorneys in Trump’s orbit, and had been making regular media appearances defending the former president as he faced a litany of criminal charges. 

“I’d spoken to him before, but never, you know, him calling me from his cell phone. I picked up, and it was just him,” Scharf recalled in an interview with The Independent. “His legal team was looking to bring on a dedicated appellate team, and the president just called me and asked me if that was something that I was interested in.”

Scharf and a pair of other Missouri lawyers — John Sauer and Michael Talent — “pitched the (Trump) campaign the way you would pitch any client, and a couple days later, they hired us. And we’ve been working for the president ever since.”

His role as one of Trump’s lawyers has become a key selling point as he seeks to oust incumbent Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey in the Aug. 6 Republican primary. During a recent campaign event in Springfield, his work for Trump — and his full-throated defense of the former president’s record — made up the lion’s share of Scharf’s speech. 

His campaign mailers feature Trump’s image and news reports about Scharf’s role helping win the presidential immunity case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Scharf is also running against Jefferson City itself, painting state government as hopelessly corrupt and in the thrall of special interests. And Bailey, who was appointed to the job by Gov. Mike Parson in 2022, is front and center of the corruption, Scharf contends. 

“Jefferson City is an abysmal failure, and if we keep putting the same people back in charge, we’re going to keep getting more of the same,” Scharf said.

To his critics, however, Scharf’s rhetoric is pure hypocrisy.

His bid for attorney general is being bankrolled by out of state billionaires, most notably groups associated with Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society. And Scharf’s only foray into state government thus far, critics note, was working for former Gov. Eric Greitens, who was forced to resign from office in 2018 to avoid impeachment and settle a felony charge.

Bailey and his supporters have also pilloried Scharf over the fact that he was born in New York and is an Ivy League alumni of Princeton and Harvard.

“Wall Street Willie is backed by D.C., dark money groups and a Wall Street billionaire, and (he) has no real ties to the State of Missouri,” Bailey said in an interview with The Independent. 

Scharf said Bailey’s attacks are a sign of desperation. 

“The crux of the issue is that they can’t attack my record as a conservative,” he said. “They can’t attack my courtroom successes, and they can’t attack my experience. So they basically attack me for where I was born, which I obviously had no control over. And they think that’ll stick. I don’t think it’s going to fool Missouri voters. I’m proud to be a Missourian by choice.”

Journey to Missouri

Scharf was indeed born in New York, eventually attending the Phillips Academy preparatory school in Andover, Massachusetts, where he graduated in 2004. He went on to graduate from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. 

At Harvard, Scharf became president of the university’s chapter of the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal advocacy group involved in almost every high-profile conservative judicial appointment of recent decades.

He moved to Missouri after law school in 2011 to clerk for Appeals Court Judge Raymond Gruender, who was appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush and would later be included on Trump’s short list for the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“Within a few months of moving here, I just liked Missouri a lot better than any place I’ve lived before,” he said. “And I decided pretty quickly that this is where I wanted to make my own home.”

It didn’t hurt, Scharf notes, that his arrival in the fall of 2011 coincided with the St. Louis Cardinals’ run to a World Series. 

“I was working downtown, and they were, like, 11 games back in the NL Central. So I’d walk over after work and get a cheap seat in the bleachers,” he said. “That was really my introduction to St. Louis and the culture. It drew me in almost immediately.”

He eventually settled into private practice, but was lured into politics when Catherine Hawnaway decided to run for governor in 2016. He volunteered for the campaign, and ended up joining full time. When she lost in the GOP primary, the man that won the nomination — Eric Greitens — asked him to join his team. 

“I’d been a thorn in his side during the primary,” Scharf said, “and he thought I could do as good a job for him as I had done against him.”

Greitens would go on to win that fall, and Scharf was named policy director in the governor’s office.

John Lamping, a former Republican state senator who became close with Scharf over the years, said regardless of the scandals that marred Greitens’ personal life and led to his downfall, the policy wins for conservatives during his time as governor can’t be denied.  

Greitens signed a right to work law, though it was ultimately overturned by a union-organized referendum campaign. He convened a special session to pass anti-abortion legislation. And he derailed the state’s low-income housing tax credit program that he believed was a giveaway to wealthy developers. 

And Scharf, Lamping said, was a key reason why. 

“His influence on Gov. Greitens was specific to policy and the possibility of achieving the legislative successes that Greitens wanted to achieve,” Lamping said. “And on that note, especially with primary voters, his grade would be A+.”

After Greitens’ resignation, Scharf moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the advocacy organization Judicial Crisis Network, focused on judicial confirmations and nominations, most notably Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

In 2020, he jumped at the chance to return to Missouri to work as an assistant U.S. attorney in St. Louis. 

“I wanted to get back to Missouri,” he said. “And I always wanted to be a prosecutor.”

Two years later, when then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt was getting ready to resign to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, Scharf was among the Republicans quietly working behind the scenes to convince the governor to appoint him as a replacement. 

Parson tapped Bailey instead, and Scharf says he began being approached by friends to run for the office. 

“I thought about it, I prayed on it, I talked to friends about it,” Scharf said, then formally launched his challenge of Bailey in January 2023. 

Culture of corruption

There is a “deep dissatisfaction with Jefferson City,” Scharf said. 

“Everywhere we’ve gone in the state during the campaign,” he said, “people are ready for a change.”

One of Scharf’s main lines of attack has been Bailey taking donations from lobbyists and companies whose interests intersect with the attorney general’s office. 

For example, last year the attorney general had to recuse his office from litigation filed by companies accused of operating illegal gambling devices, forcing the state to hire private counsel. The recusal came after Bailey received thousands in contributions from PACs connected to the chief lobbyist for the companies suing the state.

Bailey also drew fire over accepting a $50,000 donation from a St. Louis company shortly after filing an amicus brief backing its efforts to move a lead-poisoning lawsuit it was facing  out of Missouri.

“When you look at Jefferson City today,” Scharf said, “you see a political culture that’s deeply in hock to a very narrow set of special interests and lobbyists and political insiders.”

Scharf vows to use the power of attorney general’s office to root out corruption in state government. 

“The power brokers that control most of the elected offices in Jeff City, he’s not part of that,” Lamping said of Scharf. “The people that run Jeff City, they better be very careful, because I think that they’ll have somebody paying a lot of attention to them if Will Scharf is elected.”

Bailey vehemently denies any wrongdoing, arguing Scharf’s entire message is undercut by his association with Greitens. 

Greitens’ successful 2016 campaign was, like Scharf’s, also pegged on the notion that Jefferson City was hopelessly corrupt and could only be fixed by electing a political outsider. 

But his administration was plagued with accusations of impropriety, mostly stemming from the fountain of anonymous campaign contributions that fueled his political rise. Greitens’ campaign committee would eventually be hit with one of the largest fines in the history of the Missouri Ethics Commission. 

Adding to the drama were the scandals emanating from Greitens’ personal life, including allegations of violent sexual assault that fueled the push for a GOP-dominated General Assembly to impeach him. 

He avoided being removed from office when he resigned in June 2018 to settle a felony charge in St. Louis surrounding his alleged theft of a donor list from a veterans charity he founded. 

“It shows a real lack of integrity on his part,” Bailey said of Scharf’s work with Greitens.  

Scharf said he was only involved in policy during his time with Greitens, “and I’m proud of our policy accomplishments.” 

“Eric Greitens was not the first person to note that our political culture in Jefferson City is broken,” Scharf said, “and he’s obviously not the last.”

Bailey has also panned the millions in donations that have poured into the PAC supporting Scharf from groups tied to Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society. So far, Scharf has benefited from $3.5 million in donations connected to Leo. 

According to The New York Times, Leo has helped marshal half a billion dollars in resources over the last decade to bankroll legal, policy and political fights around the country over issues ranging from critical race theory to transgender rights to election law.

Scharf has publicly called Leo “a dear friend and mentor.” 

Lamping said taking money from someone who has “helped create the most conservative Supreme Court in our lifetimes is a pro, not a con.” 

Break from the past

In addition to focusing on government corruption, Scharf vows to go after companies behind games that resemble slot machines that have sprung up in convenience stores, truck stops and other locations across the state in recent years. 

The Missouri Gaming Commission has deemed the machines gambling devices, which are prohibited outside of licensed casinos, and the state highway patrol considers them illegal.

Bailey has said the issue should be handled at the local level. Scharf vehemently disagrees. 

“The AGs office has broad authority to enforce Missouri gaming law,” Scharf contends, “and I think they’re not currently exercising that authority. The machines are illegal. The law needs to be enforced. It’s as simple as that.”

He also promises to stabilize an office he says has suffered massive staff turnover since Bailey took over — a problem he argues has led to “cases, including low level cases that should be handled easily by the office being farmed out to private counsel.”

Just this week, for example, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the attorney general’s office against a solar company accused of ripping off customers by knowingly using defective components and refusing to repair or properly install their systems. The reason for the dismissal was that no one from the attorney general’s office showed up at a hearing on Tuesday.

“They’ve missed deadlines in numerous cases around the state,” Scharf said of Bailey’s office. “They’ve even been called to task for that by judges in any number of cases. It’s a real problem, the basic functioning of that office has been compromised by poor management.”

With Scharf’s background and ties to national conservative legal circles, Lamping expects Missouri’s attorney general’s office to be a hot landing spot for some of the nation’s best lawyers. 

“You will see extraordinary legal minds from all around the country come in,” he said, “and spend some time working under a Scharf attorney general’s office.”

Ultimately, Scharf’s pitch for the job comes down to what voters think about their state government.

“If you’re really happy with the Jefferson City establishment, our campaign is probably not right for you,” he said. “If you want a break from the past, if you want a government in Jefferson City that’s actually focused on representing the interests of the people of Missouri, I think you should give us a strong look.”

And to avoid any more confusion when the former president calls him, Scharf came up with a solution. 

“Now I have a special ring that goes off when he calls me,” Scharf said. “The only number in my phone that results in an audible ring is President Trump. Everyone else, I just have the buzzer.”

(Getty Images).

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s decision to forgo a third term in order to run for governor set off a mad dash of Republicans hoping to replace him. 

Early entrants included online personality Valentina Gomez, Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller and state Rep. Adam Schwadron. They were eventually joined by longtime GOP strategist Jamie Corley, House Speaker Dean Plocher, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and Judge Mike Carter. 

The winner of the crowded Aug. 6 GOP primary will take on one of three Democrats: Monique Williams, Barbara Phifer or Haley Jacobson.

Valentina Gomez

Gomez’s campaign for secretary of state exists nearly entirely online

She’s raised virtually no money, and doesn’t appear to have much of a campaign apparatus. What she does have, though, is the ability to draw attention from national news organizations with social media posts that are equal parts homophobia and feats of strength. 

In an interview with “Wake Up Mid-Missouri,” Gomez said she plans to be the first successful candidate to win office “without holding a single fundraiser… we’re gonna win this with votes, not money.”

Gomez describes herself on her campaign website as “a real estate investor, financier, strategist, former NCAA Division I swimmer, relentless achiever, and a fierce advocate for the principle values we hold dear as Americans battling for a better future.”

Born in Colombia, but “made in the United States,” Gomez’s campaign says she’s “a testament of perseverance. Her success was not inherited, it has and continues to be earned through discipline and determination.”

Shane Schoeller 

After serving three terms in the Missouri House, Schoeller won a competitive primary in 2012 to be the GOP nominee for secretary of state. 

He went on to lose in the general election, but two years later won his current job as Greene County clerk — the top elections official in one of Missouri’s largest counties. 

Schoeller says he’s the only candidate in the primary with the experience to be secretary of state. 

“I come ready on day one,” he said. “It’s really important that we have a secretary of state who understands the duties and responsibilities of the office in terms of elections, voter registration and record retention.”

Voters continue to have concerns about the integrity of elections, Schoeller said, and one way to alleviate that would be to revamp Missouri’s central voter registration program, which he said is “dated in terms of its function and capacity.”

“When you work with that system, day in and day out, through voter registration and the administration of elections,” he said, “we need to have a program that is more up to date, more user friendly and that can also be better at providing information for the public.”

Denny Hoskins

Hoskins served in the Army National Guard before becoming a certified public accountant. He has represented Warrensburg in the state House and Senate, leaving the legislature after this year because of term limits. 

His statehouse career is defined in recent years by his membership in the Senate Freedom Caucus, where Hoskins and his cohorts clashed with the chamber’s GOP leadership — creating years of gridlock in a battle over the party’s priorities. 

Those rumbles with Republican leaders are also a key part of Hoskins’ campaign message, which he insists is proof he’s a fighter who will stand up for the values of his party.

“I’m a conservative fighter who believes our rights come from God, not state government,” Hoskins recently told supporters, noting he is the only candidate in the race for secretary of state that was endorsed by Missouri Right to Life.

If elected, Hoskins says he’d push for the hand counting of ballots, eliminating absentee voting except for the military and disabled and making Election Day a holiday to make it easier for Missourians to vote. 

“We want to make sure our elections are free and fair and people trust the election process,” Hoskins told the Politically Speaking podcast. “That was the thing that got me interested in this race, that we could trust our elections and one person has one vote and only legal U.S. citizens vote.” 

Adam Schwadron

Schwadron is the owner and operator of Clean Carpet Company in St. Charles County, and was elected to the state House in 2020.

The secretary of state oversees elections and business registration, and Schwadron believes his experience as small business owner and four-year member of the House Elections Committee give him insight into how the job should be done. 

“Someone competent needs to be in this office,” he said. “And so I felt my professionalism, the way I’ve worked in the legislature with character and integrity, that’s what’s needed in elected office these days. And so that’s why I’m running.”

His biggest concern related to the secretary of state’s office, Schwadron said, is the “attempt by Democrats at the federal level to take over our elections.” He believes his rivals in the GOP primary don’t take the threat seriously enough.  

He has sponsored legislation creating the “Missouri Elections Sovereignty Act,” which Schwadron says declares “our elections are ours, and any attempt by the federal government to come in here and tell us how to run our elections will be met with resistance.”

Jamie Corley 

Corley is a veteran GOP political operative from St. Louis who has worked for three members of Congress, including as national press secretary for former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Most recently, she spearheaded a campaign seeking to place a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot adding exceptions to the state’s abortion ban for rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormalities and the health and safety of the mother.

Her position on abortion, she notes, lines up with former President Donald Trump’s.

She decided to run for secretary of state, she said, when she looked at the crop of candidates in the race and realized there was no one she could vote for. 

“We interact as citizens at the Secretary of State’s office more than we probably think,” she said. “Voting. Registering LLCs. Initiative petitions. It’s an important office.”

Though she’s never held public office before, Corley says she’s not short of experience in government. She’s worked in the U.S. Senate and House, and at a conservative think tank, so “I’m not new to public policy by any means.” 

What she does lack is experience “in the absolute nonsense that has been the Missouri legislature for the past two years,” she said. “It’s a hard sell that the people who were responsible for that nonsense are all the sudden going to be competent leaders when they have to manage a statewide office.” 

Dean Plocher

Plocher is an attorney who grew up in St. Louis and served as a municipal judge before winning a seat in the Missouri House. 

During his time in the Capitol, Plocher rose to become speaker of the Missouri House and championed legislation aimed at making it harder to amend the state constitution. He also sponsored the constitutional amendment repealing the nonpartisan redistricting plan.

But for the last year Plocher has been engulfed in scandal over an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a lucrative software contract and revelations he filed false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign. He currently faces a whistleblower lawsuit alleging he harassed and intimidated nonpartisan legislative staff. 

Plocher denies any wrongdoing, and has tried to use his trevails to his advantage by morphing his public persona from a St. Louis moderate to an embattled MAGA warrior in the mold of former President Donald Trump. In a recent interview just before the anniversary of D-Day, he compared his struggles to the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy. 

“Democracy is not free,” Plocher said in an interview with one of his supporters. “You have to fight for it. And just as soldiers went out and gave their lives for our country, the politicians are out there, and they’re elected and answerable to the people. And right now, it’s unelected bureaucrats who are trying to run this country. It’s unelected bureaucrats who are trying to run the state of Missouri.”

Mary Elizabeth Coleman 

Coleman is an attorney from Arnold currently serving her first term in the Missouri Senate after six years in the Missouri House. 

Asked about her time in the legislature, she is unequivocal about her proudest achievement.

“There’s no more important thing that we have done,” she said, “than to end abortion in the state of Missouri.” 

Coleman was one of the architects of legislation that included a trigger allowing Missouri to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturned Roe v. Wade. When that happened in 2022, Missouri became the first state to outlaw the procedure. 

“I’ll forever be proud of that,” she said. “I’m a conservative who delivers results. People want not just a fighter, but a fighter who can deliver. And my conservative record speaks for itself.”

Like much of the GOP primary field, Coleman talks about election integrity and ensuring only U.S. citizens can cast a ballot. But she also emphasizes ways she believes she can improve how the secretary of state interacts with Missouri businesses. 

“We have got to do everything we can to make sure that every business owner’s experience is as positive and as minimal as possible,” she said. “We want the government to get out of people’s lives and when they have to be involved to be as effective and painless as possible.”

Mike Carter

Carter is an attorney and Wentzville municipal judge who ran in the GOP primary for lieutenant governor in 2020 and state Senate in 2022, falling short both times. 

He told the Politically Speaking podcast that he decided to run for secretary of state because it was the race with the “least amount of competition, the least amount of dollars dedicated to it and the largest opening for me to repeat what I did in the past and ascend to the position.”

In his 2020 statewide race, Carter won nearly 27% of the vote in a four-way GOP primary. With a much more crowded field this year, he said replicating that success would likely mean victory. 

He’s different from others seeking the office, Carter contends, because he won’t be beholden to donors or special interests. 

“If I get in there,” he said, “I’ll have to answer just to the folks in the voting booth.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey, right, testifies to the House Budget Committee on Feb. 6, where he predicted his office would complete work on 2023 records requests by May (Rudi Keller/MIssouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has nearly completed work on a backlog of requests for records submitted to his office by the public last year. 

That means work can finally begin processing requests submitted this year. 

The 2023 requests were initially supposed to be completed by May. But a spokeswoman for the attorney general said staff turnover, coupled with a huge spike last year in the number of requests for the office’s records, meant the process took longer than anticipated. 

As of last week, there were 15 pending requests left from 2023, said Madeline Sieren, Bailey’s spokeswoman.

Bailey was sworn in as attorney general in January 2023, taking over the office after his predecessor was elected to the U.S. Senate. And from the early months of his tenure, Bailey faced criticism over how his office has handled public requests for records.

Those concerns were amplified by the fact that the attorney general’s office enforces Missouri’s Sunshine Law, as well as Bailey’s involvement in crafting a failed proposal to weaken public records laws while working for Gov. Mike Parson.

There were 224 unfinished records requests still pending when Bailey took over, and last year the number of requests submitted to his office ballooned from 468 in 2022 to 784. 

Five staffers were assigned to work through the backlog, but Bailey’s policy of handling requests on a first come, first serve basis has created massive delays. Newer inquiries that are small and easily dispensed with sit in limbo for months, even up to a year, as staff works on older and more expansive requests.

For example, a request by The Independent in August for three days of Bailey’s official calendar — typically turned around in a matter of days by other government agencies — wasn’t completed for 10 months.

Sieren said the attorney general’s office is currently projecting new requests will take 60 days to complete. She has also noted the office does not charge for any public records requests, a practice that differs from nearly every other state agencies. 

But that’s done little to soothe criticism. 

By allowing requests to pile up, and forcing the public to wait months for records that could be quickly provided, the attorney general is not abiding by the Sunshine Law, said Bernie Rhodes, a First Amendment attorney who has represented numerous media outlets, including The Independent.

“Complying with the Sunshine Law is not optional,” he said. “The law states that, ‘each public governmental body shall make available for inspection and copying by the public of that body’s public records.’ The word ‘shall’ is mandatory.”

If government transparency were actually important to Bailey, Rhodes said, he would dedicate the resources needed to ensure his office is complying with the law. 

“Choosing to file papers with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Donald Trump is optional, not mandatory,” he said, referencing Bailey asking the court to delay the former president’s sentencing for 34 felonies until after the November election. 

“Every lawyer working on that matter,” Rhodes said, “could be working on complying with the Sunshine Law.”

Rhodes notes he’s still waiting on a request he made in March for a copy of the office’s sunshine log — a list or spreadsheet that most government offices maintain that documents pending records requests.

This sort of narrow request historically can be turned around in a matter of days.

 Rhodes is still waiting. 

Meanwhile, an identical request was filed in August by Jeff Basinger, a Columbia attorney running as a Democrat for the Missouri House. While Rhodes hasn’t received his records, Basinger got a copy of the attorney general’s sunshine log late last month.

Why didn’t Rhodes get a copy of the same records? 

“Good question,” Rhodes said. “I have no idea why.”

The sunshine log obtained by Basinger and provided to The Independent documents years of requests — from individuals, reporters, political operatives and organizations. 

A frequent inquiry that shows up on the log involves records about companies accused of ripping off customers. The attorney general’s office enforces the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which protects consumers from deceptive, unethical or illegal actions by businesses.

“Sunshine requests are used by Missourians to investigate problems and fix them,” Basinger said. “Denying prompt access to information negates the opportunity for citizens, journalists and public interest groups to effectively address the subject of their concern.”

Marcellus Williams, photographed in prison (photo submitted).

A Missouri man scheduled to be executed in September will get a chance to present a court with DNA evidence he believes will exonerate him.

Marcellus Williams will get a hearing on Aug. 21, at the request of St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell. The prosecutor’s office has filed a motion to vacate the conviction after reviewing the case and discovering “clear and convincing evidence” that Williams is innocent.

Williams was convicted in the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle.

In his motion to vacate the conviction, Bell noted that Williams was not the source of DNA found on the weapon used to kill Gayle. Other forensic evidence also excluded Williams as the killer, Bell argues. 

Opposing Bell’s motion is Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whose office has argued that Williams was found guilty by a jury of his peers.  The Attorney General’s Office has opposed every innocence case for the last 30 years, including every attempt made by a local prosecutor to overturn a conviction on the basis of innocence.

“The attorney general should not be trying to block the court’s review, and the Missouri Supreme Court should stay Mr. Williams’s execution,” said Tricia Bushnell, Williams’ attorney.

In 2015, the Missouri Supreme 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. 

Gov. Mike 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.

GOP candidates for governor, from left, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel (official photos).

After months of polls showing Bill Eigel in a distant third place in the GOP primary for Missouri governor, a new survey suggests he may be within striking distance of the frontrunners. 

And the poll giving Eigel a boost was paid for by one of his campaign rivals, though it doesn’t appear to be intended for public consumption. 

American Dream PAC, the political action committee supporting Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, commissioned the June poll but has not released it to the public. The Independent found it and the accompanying analysis on an obscure page of the PACs website last week before it was taken down. 

Similar to a series of polls released in recent weeks, the American Dream PAC survey found a dead heat between Kehoe and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft for the lead in the GOP primary.

But it is the first poll suggesting Eigel, a Republican state senator, may be gaining ground.

The poll found Kehoe and Ashcroft tied at 27%, with Eigel in third place with 16%. Roughly a quarter of respondents were undecided. 

Other recent polls put Eigel in single digits. 

“If Eigel is able to attract additional resources, this could become a true three-way contest,” according to analysis of the June survey provided to American Dream PAC by its pollster, American Viewpoint. 

Missouri Republicans build cash advantage over Democrats as primary races heat up

The poll was conducted in early June, before Eigel’s campaign took in $415,000 in donations last week from trial attorneys and before either Ashcroft or Eigel were on the air with TV ads. 

Eigel’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Kehoe’s campaign did not address questions about Eigel’s poll numbers. 

But Jason Cabel Roe, Ashcroft’s spokesman, said he’s skeptical Eigel could be in double-digits before his campaign had launched any TV ads. 

“There have been about 15 public polls released in the last year, and 13 of them have had Eigel somewhere between 4-8 points,” Roe said. “He just hasn’t done anything to move numbers, so I don’t see how he could’ve doubled his vote share without spending money.”

The 800 people who participated in the survey were reached by cell phone, landline and text message, with a margin of error of 3.5%. According to the most recent campaign disclosures, American Viewpoint in January was paid $79,500 by American Dream PAC and $64,300 by Kehoe’s campaign. 

In addition to acting as a possible barometer for the race, the polling documents also shed some light on Kehoe’s potential strategy in the campaign’s final weeks. 

Ashcroft has led the GOP primary from the start, benefitting from two terms as secretary of state and a last name with a long history in Missouri politics. His dad, John Ashcroft, served as state auditor, state attorney general, governor, U.S. Senator and U.S. attorney general.

Kehoe has managed to erase Ashcroft’s lead in recent months because his campaign has used its massive fundraising advantage to monopolize TV airwaves, the polling firm concluded in its analysis. 

Ashcroft and Eigel only recently launched their first TV ads

“Kehoe now leads in the two markets where there has been advertising,” the analysis concluded, later adding: “Kehoe’s reach is fairly consistent across groups, and geographically it lines up with advertising.”

Outside of the two markets where Kehoe’s ads have been airing — St. Louis and Springfield — the race remains a function of name ID. 

Kehoe leads in mid-Missouri, where he previously served as a state senator, and Ashcroft has an advantage in Kansas City and smaller markets. This means, the polling firm concluded, that Kehoe’s campaign needs to dedicate resources to those markets where he trails Ashcroft. 

“This race is more about geography at this point than any one key demographic group,” the polling firm concluded. 

Kehoe is strongest with “more centrist and traditional GOP voters,” the analysis found, while Ashcroft leads with “very conservative and Trump movement voters.” 

Eigel, meanwhile, “cannot be ignored as a factor in this race,” the polling firm concluded, with “ideology and Trump movement affiliation” as the driving factor on his vote share. 

Of the quarter of poll respondents who were undecided, liberal and moderate primary voters are more likely to be undecided than conservatives.

Illegal immigration and border security are the top issues in the race, the polling firm found, particularly among very conservative primary voters. Ashcroft leads with those citing border security, while Kehoe is stronger among those focused on the economy.

For months, American Dream PAC has hammered Ashcroft in TV ads over his support of legislation to reduce Missouri’s current 1% cap on foreign-owned agricultural land to 0.5%, arguing he should have supported a complete ban.  

Ashcroft’s campaign has noted that foreign ownership of Missouri farmland was banned until 2013, when the legislature enacted the 1% cap. Kehoe voted in favor of that legislation while serving in the state Senate, and it opened the door for a Chinese company to purchase Smithfield Foods and its 40,000 acres of Missouri farmland.

While the polling firm concluded that American Dream’s China ads have been effective, it suggests there could be diminishing returns in markets where they’ve been on the air for months. So the campaign should consider switching to ads focused on critical race theory. 

Gabby Picard, spokeswoman for Kehoe’s campaign, said the poll shows that Ashcroft’s once commanding lead in the GOP primary “has evaporated into thin air.” Kehoe, she said, has the momentum.

“Missourians are not buying the charade from Bill Eigel and Jay Ashcroft,” she said, “and the manure their campaigns have been shoveling.”

Roe, the spokesman for Ashcroft’s campaign, said it isn’t surprising that the race has tightened since Kehoe has spent millions of dollars and had the TV airwaves to himself for months.

“Frankly,” Roe said, “given the amount spent, he should be in much better shape than he is.”

Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit, talks with Stephen K. Bannon while appearing on an episode of Brietbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot at Quicken Loans Arena on July 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio (Ben Jackson/Getty Images for SiriusXM).

The right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit is accused of abusing the bankruptcy process to escape accountability in defamation lawsuits stemming from its false claims about the 2020 election. 

Gateway Pundit, founded in St. Louis by brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, filed for bankruptcy in April as it was facing defamation lawsuits in Missouri and Colorado.

In 2021, Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss sued Gateway Pundit in St. Louis after the site published debunked stories accusing them of election fraud that resulted in threats of violence, many tinged with racial slurs. Former Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer sued the site in Colorado in 2020 after it falsely accused him of being part of an effort to overturn the presidential election.

Lawyers for Freeman, Moss and Coomer this week asked a Florida judge to dismiss the bankruptcy filing, calling it a “pure litigation tactic” designed to derail their lawsuits. 

Hoft has previously been accused of purposely delaying discovery in the Missouri case to impede a jury trial. That, Freeman and Moss’ attorney contends, is the true purpose of the bankruptcy.

“To date, the defendants’ strategy in the Missouri litigation has had one goal: delay,” wrote David Blanksy, Freeman and Moss’ attorney. “This chapter 11 filing is just the newest effort — in a long line of failed tactics — to prevent (plaintiffs) from proving their claims in a court of law.”

Rudy Giuliani lawyer shifts blame to St. Louis-based Gateway Pundit in defamation case

Vincent Alexander, Coomer’s attorney, wrote that the bankruptcy filing came just as the Hoft brothers were served with deposition notices in Missouri and soon after their motion to dismiss the Colorado lawsuit was denied. 

Hoft announced in April that his company was filing for bankruptcy because of “the progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet.” His attorney, Bart Houston, argues in court filings that the benefit of bankruptcy is “to consolidate disparate claims into a single forum for equality of treatment and distribution.”

Gateway Pundit’s insurance policy, Houston wrote, isn’t large enough to cover all the expenses needed for two defamation cases.

“In this case, whichever one of the two pending litigations that reaches trial first will likely have depleted the policy and will get first shot at the remaining assets of the debtor,” Houston wrote. “The second place litigation will be left with nothing but a pyrrhic victory.”

If the plaintiffs in the defamation lawsuits are “dead set on depletion of the insurance policy, destruction of the debtors business operations and zero payment on account of their claims, then such a result will certainly occur in a dismissal or stay relief,” Houston wrote. 

The legal wrangling over bankruptcy echoes the fight between Infowars host Alex Jones and the families of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

A Texas judge ruled last year that Jones can’t use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1 billion to families who sued over his repeated lies that the school massacre was a hoax. But the bankruptcy filings continue to forestall efforts to get damages, with one family trying to collect assets from Jones’ company in a way that other families argue could leave them with next to nothing.

Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy plan for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin, cannot move forward because it shields members of the Sackler family, which principally owns the company, from liability for opioid-related claims.

‘Patient zero’

According to Business Insider, Jim Hoft admitted at a June 17 hearing in the bankruptcy case that he used the company to give himself an $800,000 loan to purchase a condo in 2021 in Jensen Beach, Florida. 

According to court filings, none of that loan has been repaid. 

Gateway Pundit, doing business as TGP Communications LLC, also owns a 2021 Porsche Cayenne worth about $54,000. Hoft said during the hearing he has used it as a “company car.” 

Hoft receives a salary from the company of $17,000 a month.

In the nearly two decades since its founding, Gateway Pundit has spread false conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Sandy Hook school shooting to former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. 

After years of existing largely in the fringes of the right-wing media ecosphere, its profile exploded under Trump, who granted the site White House press credentials. 

Hoft was allowed in 2022 to join a lawsuit filed by the Missouri attorney general’s office that argued the federal government violated the First Amendment in its efforts to combat false, misleading and dangerous information online. Then Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who now serves in the U.S. Senate, argued at the time that Hoft was “one of the most influential online voices in the country” who suffered “extensive government-induced censorship” over issues like COVID-19 and election security.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the lawsuit’s claims, concluding that neither Hoft nor any of the other plaintiffs were able to prove that social media platforms acted due to government coercion.  They also failed to demonstrate any harm, the court determined, or substantial risk that they will suffer an injury in the future.

In addition to their defamation lawsuit against Hoft, Freeman and Moss sued former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani over false allegations of fraud tied to the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani’s attorney tried to distance his client from the violent threats against the Georgia election workers by arguing Gateway Pundit was more responsible, calling the site “patient zero” in spreading the conspiracy theory.

In December, Giuliani was ordered to pay Freeman and Moss more than $148 million in damages.

A lawsuit filed by attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana alleged the federal government pressured social media companies to target conservative speech across a range of topics, from the efficacy of vaccines to the integrity of the 2020 presidential election (Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images).

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected arguments by Missouri and Louisiana that the federal government violated the First Amendment in its efforts to combat false, misleading and dangerous information online.

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court held that neither the states nor seven individuals who were co-plaintiffs in the case were able to demonstrate any harm or substantial risk that they will suffer an injury in the future.

Therefore, they do not have legal standing to bring a case against the federal government.

Plaintiffs failed to prove that social media platforms acted due to government coercion, Barrett wrote, rather than their own judgment and policies. In fact, she wrote, social media platforms “began to suppress the plaintiffs’ COVID–19 content before the defendants’ challenged communications started.”

Plaintiffs cannot “manufacture standing,” Barrett wrote, “merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.”

The ruling overturns a lower court decision that concluded officials under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump unlawfully coerced social media companies to remove deceptive or inaccurate content out of fears it would fuel vaccine hesitancy or upend elections.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who inherited the lawsuit from his predecessor, has called the federal government’s actions “the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation’s history.”

Suit alleging suppression of free speech met with skepticism at U.S. Supreme Court

But those arguments were greeted with skepticism by the court in March, with justices from across the ideological spectrum punching holes in the lawsuit and raising concerns about the consequences for public safety and national security.

In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the government’s actions in this case were not ” ham-handed censorship” that the court has routinely rejected, but they were coercive and illegal all the same.

“It was blatantly unconstitutional,” he wrote, “and the country may come to regret the court’s failure to say so… If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this court should send.”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill released a statement on social media calling Wednesday’s ruling “unfortunate and disappointing.”

“A majority of the Supreme Court gives a free pass to the federal government to threaten tech platforms into censorship and suppression of speech that is indisputably protected by the First Amendment,” Murril said. “The majority waves off the worst government coercion scheme in history.”

In an emailed statement, Bailey made no mention of the court’s decision to dismiss the case, instead declaring that his office will continue to pursue evidence of social media censorship by the federal government.

“Missouri is not done,” Bailey said. “We are going back to the district court to obtain more discovery in order to root out Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise once and for all.”

The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Missouri and Louisiana, along with seven people who either were banned from a platform or whose posts were not prominently featured on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and X, then known as Twitter.

Among the co-plaintiffs is Jim Hoft, founder of the St. Louis-based right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. Hoft has built a career on promulgating false conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Parkland school shooting to former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

His company recently filed for bankruptcy as it faces defamation lawsuits in Missouri and Colorado filed by people who say they faced threats after being vilified by Gateway Pundit in false stories.

During appeals court arguments last year, the attorneys general specifically cited Hoft, claiming that he is “currently subjected to an ongoing campaign by federal officials to target the content on his website.”

Hoft claims claims that Twitter, in December 2020, censored content about the Hunter Biden laptop story at the urging of the federal government. But Barrett wrote that Twitter acted according to its own rules against posting or sharing “privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.”

There is no evidence, Barrett wrote, that Twitter adopted its policy in response to pressure from the federal government.

Benjamin Aguiñaga, the solicitor general for the Louisiana attorney general, argued before the court in March that the government has no right to try to persuade social media platforms to violate Americans’ constitutional rights, “and pressuring platforms in back rooms shielded from public view is not using the bully pulpit at all. That is just being a bully.”

Emails obtained as part of the lawsuit, Aguiñaga argued, show the government badgered platforms behind closed doors, abused them with profanity and “ominously says that the White House is considering its options… all to get the platforms to censor more speech.”

“Under this onslaught,” he said, “the platforms routinely cave.”

The federal government, represented by Brian Fletcher, principal deputy solicitor general, argued Aguiñaga’s accusations simply don’t hold water. 

There is no evidence that decisions by social media companies to remove or deprioritize content can be attributed to the government. Instead, Fletcher argued, the companies made their own decisions relying on their own content moderation policies.

There was no coercion or attempted intimidation, Fletcher said, and the best proof is that social media companies “routinely said ‘no’ to the government.”

The three major-party candidates for Missouri attorney general, from left, Will Scharf, Andrew Bailey and Elad Gross (campaign photos).

Republican Will Scharf and Democrat Elad Gross disagreed on almost every issue Monday night during a forum of attorney general candidates in St. Louis. 

They aren’t on the same page on dealing with violent crime or protecting speech on campus. They crossed swords over abortion rights and access to contraception. And they couldn’t agree on the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. 

But Scharf and Gross were in lock step on one issue: They believe state government is being manipulated by special interests, to the detriment of Missouri taxpayers. And both point the finger directly at the incumbent attorney general, Andrew Bailey. 

“Elad and I agree that Jefferson City is viciously corrupt,” Scharf said, adding: “The political class in this state has fundamentally failed the people of Missouri.”

Gross quipped during the forum that, “I told you we’re going to agree on a lot of stuff today,” going on to declare that the Missouri attorney general’s office needs to create a public corruption unit. 

The idea drew applause from the audience — and from Scharf.

“We need to have serious enforcement against corruption in Missouri,” Gross said. 

The pair are hoping to replace Bailey, a Republican running for a full term in office after being appointed  to the job by Gov. Mike Parson in 2022. 

Bailey did not attend Monday’s forum, citing scheduling conflicts. The event was sponsored by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal advocacy group whose leadership has largely backed Scharf and has been involved in almost every high-profile conservative judicial appointment of recent decades.

Gross is running unopposed in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, while Scharf and Bailey are engaged in a heated GOP contest, with the massive fundraising hauls translating into a nasty TV ad war across the state. 

One of Scharf’s main lines of attack has been Bailey taking donations from lobbyists and companies whose interests intersect with the attorney general’s office. 

For example, last year the attorney general had to recuse his office from litigation filed by companies accused of operating illegal gambling devices, forcing the state to hire private counsel. The recusal came after Bailey received thousands in contributions from PACs connected to the chief lobbyist for the companies suing the state.

Bailey also drew fire over accepting a $50,000 donation from a St. Louis company shortly after filing an amicus brief backing its efforts to move a lead-poisoning lawsuit it was facing  out of Missouri.

“When you look at Jefferson City today,” Scharf said Monday, “you see a political culture that’s deeply in hock to a very narrow set of special interests and lobbyists and political insiders.”

Bailey has denied any wrongdoing, and his campaign has noted that Scharf’s bid for attorney general is being bankrolled by out-of-state interests, namely conservative activist Leonard Leo. 

On Tuesday, an organization connected with Leo donated $2 million to support Scharf’s candidacy. Since joining the race for attorney general, Scharf has benefited from $3.5 million in donations from the organization, making up a majority of the money he’s received in the race. 

Gross is a former assistant attorney general who currently runs his own law firm in St. Louis. His legal practice focuses on the Sunshine Law. In 2021, he won a landmark ruling from the Missouri Supreme Court that public agencies could not charge for time attorneys spend reviewing public records that are requested under the state’s Sunshine Law.

Bailey served a general counsel for Parson before taking over as attorney general when his predecessor, Eric Schmitt, won a seat in the U.S. Senate. He previously worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Warren County, an assistant attorney general and general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Scharf is a former assistant U.S. attorney who worked as policy director in Gov. Eric Greitens’ brief administration. He left state government when Greitens was forced to resign in disgrace in 2018. He is currently part of a the team of lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in various legal matters pertaining to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Will Scharf, a GOP candidate for Missouri Attorney General, tells reporters about his campaign (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Will Scharf’s hopes of winning the GOP nomination for Missouri attorney general got a massive financial boost on Tuesday, when a group connected to influential conservative activist Leonard Leo donated $2 million to the effort. 

Tuesday’s check came from the Concord Fund, an organization bankrolled by groups connected to Leo — a prolific fundraiser credited as one of the main architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system.

The money went to Club for Growth Action Missouri, a PAC supporting Scharf in his campaign to unseat incumbent Attorney General Andrew Bailey in the Aug. 6 GOP primary. 

Since the beginning of 2023, the Concord Fund has donated $3.5 million to help Scharf. In April, Club for Growth also received $1.4 million from Paul Singer, one of the nation’s richest hedge fund managers.

Club for Growth Action Missouri reported having $2 million cash on hand as of April 1. Since then, the PAC has received more than $4 million in large donations, including the checks from Singer and the Concord Fund. 

Scharf’s campaign committee reported having $824,000 cash on hand as of April 1. 

Bailey, who was appointed attorney general by Gov. Mike Parson in 2022, reported his campaign committee had  $565,000 cash on hand as of April 1. The PAC supporting his candidacy — called Liberty and Justice PAC — reported $1.9 million cash on hand as of April 1. 

Since then, Liberty and Justice PAC has reported receiving $1.5 million in large donations. 

Leonard Leo

Leo is a lawyer and activist who is a longtime leader at the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal advocacy group involved in almost every high-profile conservative judicial appointment of recent decades.

He has quietly built a sprawling political network fueled by millions in anonymous dollars. He was the beneficiary of the largest known political donation in U.S. history, when industrialist Barre Seid seeded a nonprofit run by Leo with $1.6 billion in 2022. 

According to The New York Times, Leo has helped marshal half a billion dollars in resources over the last decade to bankroll legal, policy and political fights around the country over issues ranging from critical race theory to transgender rights to election law.

Scharf has been active in The Federalist Society for years, and worked on the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. 

He has publicly called Leo “a dear friend and mentor.” 

Cash swap

The seven-figure donation to Club for Growth came soon after the group began shuffling money to another PAC that is currently running attack ads across the state against Bailey. 

Defend Missouri was initially organized as the main PAC raising money to support Scharf’s campaign. 

Under Missouri campaign finance laws, candidates face contribution limits while independent PACs do not. The trade off for the ability to raise unlimited cash is that while PACs can coordinate with candidates to raise money, it is illegal to coordinate on spending or strategy. 

Last summer, Defend Missouri donated nearly all of its money — around $533,000 — to Club for Growth. And for the next year, it remained dormant. 

Then last week, Club for Growth donated $465,000 back to Defend Missouri. It sent Defend Missouri another $540,000 on Monday. 

As the money was rolling in, Defend Missouri began running ads accusing Bailey of capitulating to Planned Parenthood, an accusation the Republican attorney general firmly denies. 

Michael Hafner, Bailey’s campaign spokesman, said in an email to The Independent that Scharf’s campaign is “throwing Hail Marys and wasting millions of dollars of Wall Street money to purchase the attorney general’s office.”

Neither Kristen Sanocki, president of Defend Missouri, nor Justin Smith, treasurer of Club for Growth Missouri, responded to requests for comment on why the money is being transferred back and forth. 

Defend Missouri and Club for Growth share much of the same infrastructure. Until it donated all of its money to Club for Growth last year, for example, Defend Missouri was paying consulting fees to Smith’s company. 

And both have used a similar slate of vendors, most of which are tied to the Missouri consulting firm Axiom Strategies, which is owned by longtime strategist Jeff Roe. 

Scharf’s candidate committee is also paying Axiom Strategies to serve as its general consultant.

Six PACs — MO Majority PAC, Missouri Growth PAC, Missouri C PAC, Missouri Senior PAC, Missouri AG PAC and Conservative Leaders of Missouri — are connected to Steve Tilley, a longtime Jefferson City lobbyist and former Republican speaker of the Missouri House (Getty Images).

A constellation of political action committees tied to a Jefferson City lobbyist raked in $530,000 in contributions this month from a pair of companies.

The six PACs — MO Majority PAC, Missouri Growth PAC, Missouri C PAC, Missouri Senior PAC, Missouri AG PAC and Conservative Leaders of Missouri — are connected to Steve Tilley, a lobbyist and former Republican speaker of the Missouri House. 

And both of the donors — Torch Electronics and New Day Healthcare — are Tilley clients. 

It’s a familiar pattern. Tilley’s clients for years have spread donations among the six PACs, drawing criticism from those who see it as a way to skirt limits on how much a candidate can accept from an individual or PAC, as well as a ban on direct corporate contribution to candidates.  

A spokeswoman for Tilley’s firm declined to comment on the donations. 

Torch, which owns games that operate like slot machines that state gambling regulars argue are illegal, cut checks last week for $55,000 to each of the six PACs. Since 2022, the company has given the PACs $750,000. 

New Day owns Missouri-based Phoenix Home Care and Hospice. It gave $40,000 checks to each PAC, adding to the $400,000 Phoenix has directly donated to the PACs since 2022. 

The haul comes a little over a month before voters head to the polls for the statewide primary on Aug. 6. 

None of the PACs made any donations this year until Monday, when all six dropped $20,000 each into the campaign committee supporting state Sen. Lincoln Hough’s campaign for lieutenant governor, for a one-day total of $120,000. 

Before Hough, the largest beneficiary of the PACs largesse was House Speaker Dean Plocher. The committee supporting his candidacy for secretary of state has received $50,000 in combined donations since 2021 from Conservative Leaders of Missouri, Missouri Senior PAC and MO Majority PAC.

In addition to its donations to Tilley’s PACs, Torch also gave $15,000 this month to Uniting Missouri, a committee set up in 2018 by supporters of Republican Gov. Mike Parson.

Tilley is a longtime friend and advisor to the governor. And though Parson has made it clear that he has no intention of ever running for office again, Uniting Missouri keeps raising and spending money. 

On the same day as the Torch donation, Uniting Missouri received $50,000 from the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, which is also a Tilley client.  

Tom Burcham, an attorney who serves as spokesman for Uniting Missouri, did not respond to a request for comment on the future of the PAC or its ongoing purpose with Parson’s political career nearly over. 

Andrew Mullins, executive director of the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, said in an emailed statement that second-term governors “always raise funds to support causes and to promote the great State of Missouri. We are happy to help this effort.”

Parson took over as governor in June 2018 when his predecessor — Eric Greitens — resigned to avoid impeachment and settle a felony charge in St. Louis. 

He won a full term in 2020. But because Greitens had more than two years left on his term when he resigned, Parson is prohibited from running again because of term limits. 

After his 2020 victory, Uniting Missouri spent much of its money on campaign advisers and advertising —  $69,000 on consultants in 2022, along with, $150,000 on ads.

Spending patterns changed the last two years, focused mostly on Parson’s travel. 

Uniting Missouri spent $58,000 in 2023 and $65,000 for Parson’s trip to watch the Super Bowl. The PAC also spent $52,000 in 2023 in payments to an aviation company owned by Tilley.

This story was updated to reflect donations made to the PAC supporting Lincoln Hough for lieutenant governor. 

Unlike other state boards, members of the ethics commission cannot continue to serve after their terms expire. Three commissioners’ terms expired March 15 (Getty Images).

Gov. Mike Parson on Wednesday appointed a fourth person to serve on the six-member Missouri Ethics Commission, providing the board with a quorum for the first time since March. 

But because one member has been unable to attend meetings since last fall, the commission is still one person short of being able to hold a meeting or take action on any campaign finance complaints.

“We do have a quorum, but we don’t have four commissioners who can meet,” said Elizabeth Ziegler, director of the ethics commission.

Ziegler declined to comment any further on the situation, but meeting minutes of the commission show Republican Kathie Conway has not attended any public hearings since at least last October. 

Conway could not be reached for comment.  

The timing couldn’t be worse for the enforcement of Missouri’s campaign finance and ethics laws. 

As of Friday, it is only 60 days until the Aug. 6 statewide primary. Because of that, the commission is only granted 15 days to deal with any complaints that are filed before the primary against candidates. 

Without a quorum, the commission can’t meet and can’t hand down any decisions. 

And at the end of July, Ziegler’s term as director also expires. Without four members able to attend a meeting the commission can’t name a replacement. 

Unlike other state boards, members of the ethics commission cannot continue to serve after their terms expire. Three commissioners’ terms expired March 15. Directors are limited to one six-year term.

Legislation filed in both the House and Senate this year sought to do away with term limits for the commission’s director. The bill was approved by a Senate committee, but House Speaker Dean Plocher sat on his chamber’s version of bill and didn’t refer it to committee until the session’s final day. 

On Wednesday, Parson appointed Whitney Smith, of Des Peres. The commission is split between the two major parties and the two open seats would go to Democrats.

In April, Parson’s office told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it is struggling to find people willing to serve on the commission. 

As a result, since the beginning of April the commission has been unable to take action on 15 different complaints before the deadline for completion of an inquiry. 

“Because there were not four commissioners able to consider the investigation within the statutory timeframe,” a recent dismissal read, “the commission could take no action on these complaints.”

Julie Allen, a former executive director of the Missouri Ethics Commission, said state campaign finance law has no teeth if the commission is hobbled by the lack of a quorum. 

“Enforcement of existing laws prevents Missouri from becoming the Wild West of campaign finance and ethics,” she said, “as it once was.”

Patrick Mahomes throws pass against the Buffalo Bills during the third quarter in the AFC Divisional Playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium on January 23, 2022 (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

The leading candidates to be Missouri’s next governor disagree on whether the state should offer incentives to keep the Kansas City Chiefs from relocating to Kansas. 

On Tuesday, the top Republican lawmakers in Kansas announced that they had reached out to the Chiefs organization to urge the team to consider moving across the state line. To sweeten the deal, the state could consider issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds to finance construction of a new stadium.

Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican and Chiefs superfan, has said he will “do what he can to keep the Chiefs in Missouri.”

But he’s leaving office this year due to term limits. So with the Chiefs’ current lease at Arrowhead set to expire in January 2031, the issue could ultimately fall into the lap of whoever is elected to replace him in November.

And there is a deep divide among the candidates about what, if anything, to do.

Kansas legislative leaders draw up play to lure Kansas City Chiefs away from Missouri

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the leading Republican candidate for governor, said he is “opposed to providing taxpayer subsidies to keep sports teams.”

Instead, Ashcroft said, if elected he would focus on public safety, education and lowering taxes “so that Missouri will be a destination state for teams, their players and all economic freedom loving Americans.”

State Sen. Bill Eigel, also a Republican candidate, said he’s confident that “the Chiefs will make the right decision and remain in Missouri, but it won’t be because of taxpayer handouts for sports teams or stadiums on my watch.”

Government, Eigel said, “shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. I’m going to ensure Missouri is a place where all people can thrive.”

On the other side of the issue in the GOP primary is Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe. His campaign manager, Derek Coats, said Missouri deserves a governor “who will fight for jobs and economic growth.”

“Mike Kehoe will not watch passively as other states poach our businesses,” Coats said. “As governor, he will use every tool at his disposal to ensure Missouri is a state that welcomes investment, creates jobs and spurs economic growth.”

State Rep. Crystal Quade, a Democrat running for governor, said that any candidate who “claims they don’t care about the Arrowhead-sized hole losing the Chiefs would create is lying. 

“We need to elect leaders who will work with the Chiefs,” she said, “to make sure all sides get a fair deal and keep our Super Bowl Champs playing football in Missouri for decades to come.”

Springfield businessman Mike Hamra, who is also a candidate in the Democratic primary, said Missourians take pride in being the home to the Chiefs.

“State leaders,” he said, “should explore every reasonable option to keep the Chiefs in Missouri.”

Kansas City Chiefs Chairman Clark Hunt has previously expressed interest in remaining in the Truman Sports Complex, which is where the Chiefs and Royals have had venues since 1973. 

But Hunt made it clear that all options were on the table moving forward after Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax measure earlier this year that would have helped fund renovations to Arrowhead Stadium and build a new downtown ballpark for the Kansas City Royals. 

Missouri currently spends $3 million annually on the Truman Sports Complex, part of a deal cut in 1989 to secure financing for construction of the St. Louis stadium now referred to as The Dome at America’s Center.

That 1989 bill was signed into law by Ashcroft’s father, former Republican Gov. John Ashcroft. Those payments would end if the current leaseholders  — the Chiefs and Royals — are not using the facilities.

Missouri’s current fiscal year budget also includes $50 million from general revenue for “stadium and ground modifications, transportation, marketing, and additional event support” around Arrowhead for the FIFA World Cup.

The Kansas Legislature will be in Topeka for a special session starting June 18. The focus is tax legislation, but there is no limit on topics lawmakers might consider, which opens the door for discussing an incentives package for the Chiefs. 

Near the end of the regular legislative session, Kansas lawmakers briefly considered a proposal to use bonds with 30-year terms to pay up to 100% of the cost of building a new stadium.

The proposal never came up for a vote. 

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, has said she would welcome the chance to lure the Chiefs out of Missouri but that she doesn’t think the state is in a financial position to successfully recruit them.

Missouri legislative leaders told the Kansas City Star Wednesday that they are in no rush to put together a counter offer or reconvene in a special session to discuss the issue.

In 2019, Kelly and Parson both signed off on a truce to the longstanding economic border war between the two states, pledging to end the use of tax incentives to lure companies across the state line that do not create new jobs for the region. 

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story.

A national database run by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, shows that there have been fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud tied to noncitizens since 2002 (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

Missouri’s Constitution has banned noncitizens from voting since 1924. And state law requires individuals to verify they are a U.S. citizen in order to register to vote. 

But GOP lawmakers contend the constitutional and statutory language isn’t strong enough. Instead of saying that “all citizens” can vote, Republicans argue the state constitution should be changed to make it clear that “only citizens” can vote. 

So on the final day of the 2024 legislative session last month, the GOP pushed through a proposal that would, among other things, ask voters to change “all” to “only.” 

“If they become a citizen, then absolutely I would welcome their engagement in our electoral process,” state Sen. Ben Brown, a Republican from Washington, said while presenting the bill to a House committee. “However, what I aim to do is to prevent the dilution of the voice of U.S. citizens.”

Critics painted the proposal as nothing more than “ballot candy” designed to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment and trick voters into signing off on the amendment’s other provision — a ban on ranked-choice voting. 

Marilyn McLeod, president of the League of Women Voters of Missouri, called the proposal a “red herring” at a legislative hearing last month.  

“It’s already against the law,” she said. 

Missouri initiative petition bill, a top GOP priority, dies on final day of session

The idea that noncitizens could be illegally voting has become an election-year talking point for Republicans across the country, often echoing the baseless conspiracy theory spread by former President Donald Trump that millions of undocumented immigrants voted in the 2016 election. 

A nationwide survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found the number of noncitizens suspected to have voted in the 2016 election was only around 30. A national database run by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, shows that there have been fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud tied to noncitizens since 2002, according to a recent count by The Washington Post.

The Ohio Secretary of State’s Office this year announced only 137 suspected noncitizens were discovered to be on that state’s rolls out of roughly 8 million voters. And the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office found that 1,634 noncitizens attempted to register to vote over a 25 year period, but all had been blocked by local election officials. 

Yet in some states, even though noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections, they have been permitted to cast a ballot for local candidates. 

In 16 cities and towns in California, Maryland and Vermont, noncitizens are allowed to vote in some local elections, such as for school board or city council. In 2022, New York’s State Supreme Court struck down New York City’s 2021 ordinance that allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, ruling it violated the state constitution.

State Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican and a candidate for governor, said the language in the Missouri Constitution designed to prohibit noncitizen voting is similar to other states where the practice is taking place locally. 

He believes Democrats in Missouri could follow suit.

“So do I think that if (St. Louis) Mayor Tishaura Jones thought that there was an opportunity to start engaging noncitizens to vote in local St. Louis city municipal elections, would she do it using the same procedure that’s happened to these other states?” he said. “I absolutely think she would. So for me, it’s important to put these additional protections in the constitution.” 

Already illegal? 

In 1865, Missouri voters approved a new constitution abolishing slavery. The 1865 “Drake Constitution,” written by what were called Radical Republicans, took the vote away from former Confederates and extended it to immigrants who were not yet citizens but who had declared their intent to become one.

The provision rewarded the largest immigrant group in Missouri at the time, Germans, who were among the most anti-slavery, and therefore Radical Republican voters. 

The franchise was taken away from noncitizens in 1924, when newcomers were more likely to come from eastern and southern Europe, in an amendment proposed by a state Constitutional Convention passed with 53.5% of the vote.

In addition to the century-old constitutional prohibition, state law also requires Missourians to declare whether they are a U.S. citizen when registering to vote. And Missouri Secretary of State Jay Aschroft, a Republican and candidate for governor, has repeatedly clarified over the years that state law says “you have to be a citizen to register to vote.”

Much of Missouri’s debate this year about noncitizen voting took place as part of a session-long fight over a Republican push to make it harder to amend the state constitution through the initiative petition process. 

A campaign to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability submitted more than 380,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, paving the way for the proposed constitutional amendment to potentially land on the November ballot.

In response, Republicans hoped to raise the threshold for amending the constitution from a simple majority statewide to both a majority of votes statewide and a majority of votes in five of the state’s eight congressional districts.

Under that proposal, approximately 23% of voters could theoretically control the outcome, where a vote against an amendment in four districts would be enough to defeat it statewide.

Many Republican proponents of raising the bar for amending the constitution acknowledged its chances of winning voter approval was slim. 

“Raising the threshold is a loser and various states have proven that’s a loser,” Tim Jones, state director of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, said earlier this year. 

So to bolster the amendment’s chances, Republicans added the noncitizen voting provision. 

Senate Democrats refused to allow the proposal to go to the ballot with the noncitizen language, arguing it was deceptive. They staged a 50-hour filibuster that ultimately killed the proposal amid Republican infighting. 

“It’s in there to deceive voters,” state Sen. Karla May, a St. Louis Democrat, said during the filibuster about the noncitizen voting ban. “It’s already law, but they want to trick voters into thinking it’s not law. It’s deceiving language added to the bill.”

Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, seemed to agree, telling a reporter from Nextar Media Group that “it’s already illegal for an illegal to vote in the state of Missouri. We’ve already got that part.”

With the Senate mired in gridlock, the House picked up and passed the rank-choice voting amendment that included noncitizen provision. After months of heated debate over the issue, it was barely mentioned when the rank-choice voting ban was sent to the ballot on the session’s final day.

“It seems like we’ve been wringing our hands for about a week or two on this particular issue,” state Rep. Brad Banderman, a St. Clair Republican, said during the House debate, “but on this day, on this Senate Joint Resolution, the other side of the aisle doesn’t seem to be standing at mics complaining.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson speaks to the media from his office in the state Capitol (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has given no indication his name will ever appear on a ballot again after he leaves office at the end of this year. 

But the political action committee set up by his supporters to bankroll his political career continues raising and spending money. 

During the first three months of 2024, the PAC — called Uniting Missouri — reported raising $307,000. The biggest chunk of that money came in a $250,000 check from a St. Louis-based law firm.

The law firm’s founding partner, Eric Holland, also gave the PAC $50,000 in December. 

Uniting Missouri also received $25,000 this year from a committee connected to his longtime friend and adviser, lobbyist Steve Tilley. 

The PAC spent $73,000 during the first quarter. Of that, around $64,000 went to credit card payments. The charges appear to be for an early February “fundraising event,” which includes a $56,000 payment to the Kansas City Chiefs; $8,400 to Ticketmaster; and $650 to the NFL Experience. 

The governor attended this year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas, where the Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers. 

Uniting Missouri reported having roughly $320,000 cash on hand. 

During that same period, Parson’s campaign committee — Parson for Missouri — reported only raising $304. But it has $241,000 cash on hand. 

The spending by Uniting Missouri around a Chiefs Super Bowl is similar to last year’s game, which Parson also attended. The PAC paid $56,000 in February 2023 to the Chiefs for a “fundraising event.” It also paid more than $110,000 during the first three months of 2023 to an aviation company connected to Tilley.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson prior to the State of the State address on Jan. 24, 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri taxpayers will not cover the costs of damages that may result from defamation lawsuits filed against three state senators who incorrectly identified a Kansas man as the shooter at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade, Gov. Mike Parson said Monday.

In a letter to the commissioner of the Office of Administration, the state agency that certifies payments from Missouri’s legal expense fund, Parson wrote that no payments related to the lawsuits should be certified “without my approval or a court order.”

“I cannot justify money spent in this way,” Parson wrote.

A spokesman for the Office of Administration said the agency will “comply with the governor’s directive and Missouri law.”

Last month, Denton Loudermill filed a federal lawsuit against GOP state Sens. Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Nick Schroer over posts they made on social media accusing him of being an undocumented immigrant and the shooter at the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade. 

Loudermill was born in Kansas and was not involved in the shooting. 

The three senators are being represented by Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whose office argues they were acting in their official capacity when they made their posts on social media.

Parson, who appointed Bailey attorney general in 2022, decried Bailey’s decision to use taxpayer resources to defend the senators, telling reporters last week that “ you don’t get a free pass just because you’re a politician.”

In his Monday letter, Parson hammered that point home, writing that the senators “falsely accused an American citizen of a heinous act and related it to his immigration status.” 

Missourians, Parson wrote, “should not be held liable for legal expenses on judgments due to state senators falsely attacking a private citizen on social media.”

Madeline Sieren, Bailey’s spokesperson, said in an email to The Independent: “Attorney General Bailey is following the law as written. Ultimately, the court will decide this issue.”

Parson’s refusal to pay any potential damages awarded to Loudermill would not be the first time the Office of Administration has blocked payment of a controversial legal expense.  

In 2018, shortly after then-Gov. Eric Greitens resigned from office, the agency refused to pay the $180,000 in fees to private attorneys who represented him during impeachment proceedings. The state argued the primary beneficiary of the lawyers’ work was Greitens individually and that the attorneys weren’t needed for the governor’s office itself.

The latest legal saga began when an anonymous account on Twitter accused Loudermill of being the shooter at the Chiefs parade and in the country illegally  That post, with a seated photo of Loudermill in handcuffs, incorrectly identified him with a name associated with misinformation posted after other shootings, including an October mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that left 18 dead. 

In reality, Loudermill was only detained briefly by police when violence broke out during the parade because he was too slow to leave the area.

Soon after that initial post, the Missouri Freedom Caucus, Hoskins, Brattin and Schroer posted their own versions on Twitter.

“These are 3 people arrested at the parade…at least one of those arrested is an illegal immigrant. CLOSE OUR BORDERS!” the Missouri Freedom Caucus posted. 

The post has since been deleted. The Missouri Freedom Caucus also sought to retract its mistake, linking to a KMBC post about Loudermill’s effort to clear his name.

“Denton is an Olathe native, a father of three & a proud @Chiefs fan,” the post states. “He’s not a mass shooter. Images of him being detained for being intoxicated & not moving away from the crime scene at the Chiefs rally have spread online. He just wants to clear his name.”

Hoskins’ version shared a screenshot of the initial anonymous post and blamed President Joe Biden and political leaders of Kansas City for making the shooting possible.

“Fact – President Biden’s open border policies & cities who promote themselves as Sanctuary Cities like #Kansas City invite illegal violent immigrants into the U.S.,” Hoskins posted.

That post has been deleted, but in a Feb. 14 post without a photo, Hoskins wrote that “information I’ve seen” states “at least one of the alleged shooters is an illegal immigrant and all 3 arrested are repeat violent offenders.”

Hoskins hedged it with “IF THIS IS ACCURATE” and repetition of conservative rhetoric to stop immigration and restrain cities that help immigrants, blaming crime on “catch and release policies of liberal cities.” 

Brattin’s first post linking Loudermill to the shooting, since deleted, demanded “#POTUS CLOSE THE BORDER” and incorporated the deleted anonymous post that kicked everything off.

Schroer was the least certain post about the immigration and arrest status of Loudermill among the three now being sued.

Schroer’s post included a link to one from Burchett stating, over Loudermill’s photo, that “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

“Can we get any confirmation or denial of this from local officials or law enforcement?” Schroer wrote. “I’ve been sent videos or stills showing at least 6 different people arrested from yesterday but officially told only 3 still in custody. The people deserve answers.”

The Missouri House of Representatives commemorates the end of the 2024 legislative session by tossing hard copies of bills into the air upon adjournment (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The final day of the 2024 legislative session lasted less than 10 minutes in the Missouri Senate. 

The lightning-quick adjournment was aimed at avoiding bitter flare ups that plagued the previous day, when a member of the Freedom Caucus tried to amend the Senate Journal to say a “stampeding herd of rhinoceroses” had rumbled through the chamber while another offered an amendment admonishing the attorney general for using taxpayer money to represent Freedom Caucus members in a defamation lawsuit. 

It was a fitting end to a session that included one Republican publicly musing about expelling a colleague from the Senate and another essentially expelling a fellow Senator from their shared Jefferson City apartment. 

The infighting — along with the more typical disagreements between the House and Senate and between Democrats and Republicans — caused lawmakers to head home with a new record for futility, passing fewer bills than the previous low set during the COVID-shortened session of 2020. 

So who were the big winners and losers of the legislative session? 

Winners

John Rizzo 

The Independence Democrat exuded relief on the final day of the legislative session. 

Part of it was that he’s heading home after eight years in the chamber and four as the leader of his caucus. Part of it was that after orchestrating a 50-hour filibuster of changes to the initiative petition process, the bill was finally dead. 

But mostly, Rizzo’s relief stemmed from optimism about the Senate’s future. 

Rizzo built a reputation as a good-faith negotiator who respected the Senate’s traditions and the limitations of his party’s power in a building with GOP super majorities. And for years, as ever-intensifying factional fights within the GOP left the Senate mired in gridlock, he publicly pleaded with Republican leaders to stand up to dissidents he argued weren’t interested in governing. 

He got his wish in the final week of the session, when leadership rebuffed the Freedom Caucus push to cut off debate and kill the Democratic filibuster. 

“There has to be follow up next year,” Rizzo told reporters Friday. “Don’t regress. Keep moving forward. Don’t let the bullies win. I’ve been waiting for it for four or five years. I think they finally did it.” 

Cody Smith 

For the first time in six years as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Smith got what he most wanted this session — a final budget that spends less than the one the governor  proposed in January.

In each of the past two years, as the state surplus built up and a flood of federal COVID-19 relief cash was spent, Smith guided the House to spending plans below the governor’s.

But a familiar pattern would always play out, where the Senate would largely ignore Smith’s efforts, restore the money and add a few million dollars of spending of their own into the kitty. Then, House Democrats and a unified Senate would leave Smith on the outside looking in as the budget was shipped off to the governor. 

It was looking like deja vu all over again this year before the Freedom Caucus hijacked the Senate for 41 hours to demand action on a bill changing the initiative petition process. 

That filibuster kept the Senate from taking up the budget until just before the constitutional deadline. With no time to go to conference to work out differences, the House played hardball and won concessions that trimmed $1 billion from the spending plan. 

Despite Smith’s success, state agencies, the governor and Senate leaders are already questioning whether ongoing programs have enough cash to make it through the fiscal year. 

Parson leaves office in January and has said he would not leave it to his successor to fill in the gaps, making it a near certainty that a special session will be convened at some point this fall to debate a supplemental budget.

Scott Fitzpatrick

In a legislative session where nothing came easy and even bills with wide bipartisan support struggled to get traction, it’s telling that a bill expanding the powers of the Missouri auditor sailed to the governor’s desk with unanimous support.

Rather than having to wait for permission from cities, counties and other local governments in order to launch an audit, the bill will let Fitzpatrick move in if he believes “improper activities” are taking place.

The legislation, and its overwhelming support from lawmakers, is a huge vote of confidence for the first-term auditor. And at 36 years old, with no term limits and every other statewide office occupied by one of his fellow Republicans, the bill expands Fitzpatrick’s authority in an office he seems likely to hold for many years to come. 

‘School choice’ advocates

Two years ago, proponents of “school choice” policies scored historic wins by convincing skeptical lawmakers to create a voucher-like scholarship program for private schools and to boost funding for charter schools. 

They returned this year facing long odds and a buzzsaw of opposition from all sides in their efforts to build on those wins. 

Public school advocates feared taxpayer resources being drained away to benefit private, often religious, institutions. And homeschool families voiced fears about overbearing state regulations.

In the end, in exchange for committing the state to hundreds of millions of dollars of additional spending on public schools, the legislature signed off on expanding the private school scholarship program statewide and allowing charter schools in Boone County for the first time.

Losers

Freedom Caucus

On one hand, the Freedom Caucus got exactly what it wanted this year. 

Despite holding only five of 34 seats in the Missouri Senate, the caucus dominated the legislative session, repeatedly holding up the chamber with procedural hijinks and largely dictating whether bills could find their way to the governor’s desk.

The caucus’ leader, GOP state Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring, referred to the group as the goalie of a hockey team that forgoes the glory of scoring points in favor of stopping the other team. 

“…a lot of the bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the folks you see standing behind me,” Eigel said of his caucus’ work this year. 

Yet those tactics galvanized critics, sinking the group’s top legislative priority — an initiative petition making it harder to amend the constitution — and making life easier for backers of an abortion-rights amendment likely to end up on the November ballot. 

Much of the group’s other legislative priorities didn’t fare much better, with Republicans growing weary of the caucus and unwilling to grant them even small victories. 

Whether or not the 2024 session was a win or a loss for the Freedom Caucus will ultimately be determined by the outcome of the August GOP primaries. Three members are seeking statewide office. Another is being challenged for his seat by a pair of House Republicans. Open Senate seats are shaping up as a showdown over the idea of the Freedom Caucus itself. 

Dean Plocher

The embattled Republican from Des Peres spent most of this final year as speaker under investigation for a litany of alleged misconduct. 

Even when that inquiry was finally dropped, Plocher’s celebration was muted. None of his leadership team showed up to his celebratory press conference, and he continued to be hounded by allegations he obstructed the committee’s work and threatened potential witnesses and legislative staff. 

As the session wore on, Plocher stalled or killed bills carried by his critics and often refused to recognize them to speak during floor debate. He stormed out of press conferences when faced with questions he didn’t like, and endured criticism, and a fair amount of mockery, over a $60,000 remodel of his office that included converting another lawmaker’s office into a makeshift liquor pantry. 

And after raising $1.3 million last year between his candidate committee and PAC, his political fundraising dried up. He took in just $15,000 during the first quarter of 2024. 

Throughout it all, Plocher denied any wrongdoing. And he still has a larger campaign war chest than any of his eight GOP rivals for secretary of state. His exuberance was on display the night the ethics inquiry was dismissed, when he made the same joke over and over again. 

“If the glove doesn’t fit,” he proclaimed to anyone in his proximity, quoting O.J. Simpson’s former lawyer, “you must acquit.”

The process

The 2024 legislative session will be remembered for its futility, with fewer bills finding success than any other year in living memory. 

But that’s not the only remarkable thing about the session that ended Friday. 

An entire session came and went without a single conference committee, the sometimes pro-forma joint House and Senate panels assigned to work out the differences on particular bills. And on the session’s final day, the Senate refused to accept messages from the House, a breach of legislative decorum that contributed to the death of the initiative petition bill. 

But just because legislation didn’t pass doesn’t mean legislative staff could sit around on their hands.

Just to start the session, staff had to prepare hundreds of bills for pre-filing, and hundreds more after it started. In all, a record 3,494 proposals to change state laws or the Missouri Constitution were filed this year, along with unknown thousands of amendments that never came up for debate.

When the Senate was kept up all night by filibusters, staff had to be there, ready to draft amendments and substitute bills. Long hours preparing bills and amendments that weren’t used specifically hard on appropriations staff, especially in the House, where lawmakers had staff draft myriad changes to the budget that they were never allowed to offer. 

On top of the workload, the ethics investigation of the speaker revealed many staffers fearful for their futures. 

“In my over 21 years of state government service, I have never witnessed or even been involved in such a hostile work environment that is so horrible that I am living in fear every day of losing my job,” House Director of Administration Lori Hughes wrote in a March 5 email to the Ethics Committee Chair Hannah Kelly.

Mary Elizabeth Coleman

Senate leadership gave Coleman the job of shepherding two major priorities for the GOP and the anti-abortion movement through to passage this year — a bill banning Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood and another raising the threshold for passing constitutional amendments by initiative petition. 

It was a huge vote of confidence for a first-term senator.

The Planned Parenthood bill made its way to the governor’s desk with only minor turbulence along the way.

By March, with the initiative petition bill out of the Senate and in the hands of the House — and its success looking promising — Coleman jumped into the secretary of state’s race, saying there is “no more important job than protecting the integrity of our elections and our founding documents.”

But around the time Coleman decided to run for secretary of state, she managed to enrage her Democratic colleagues in the Senate by publicly asking the House to restore “ballot candy” to the initiative petition bill, a move seen as a betrayal of the deal cut to get the bill out of the Senate in the first place. 

When it finally returned to the Senate, she was accused of betrayal again — this time from the other side of the ideological spectrum, when the Freedom Caucus decried her decision to send the legislation back to the House for further negotiation.

Coleman noted that the bill was dead either way if Republicans couldn’t muster the votes to end the 50-hour Democratic filibuster. Sending it back to the House, she argued, at least left the door open.

But the House slammed that door shut the next day, and the loudest proponents of the bill heaped much of their scorn onto Coleman.

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, speaks after adjournment Friday morning. He said changes to initiative petition could be passed if the House acts (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The least productive — and most chaotic — legislative session in living memory came to a close Friday, when the Missouri Senate, mired in factional infighting, threw in the towel eight hours early and the House scrambled to get whatever bills it could salvage across the finish line before the 6 p.m. deadline for adjournment. 

In the end, only 28 non-budget bills found success this year. That’s fewer than the previous low-water mark in 2020, when only 31 bills passed because the legislative session was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It wasn’t a good session or a bad session,” said Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independent Democrat. “But it was definitely a bizarre session.” 

To be sure, some significant legislation found success. 

A massive education bill signed by Gov. Mike Parson expands a tax-credit program for private school tuition and allows charter schools to open for the first time in Boone County. It also pumps millions into raising teacher pay, among other provisions, and is estimated to cost taxpayers $468 million when fully implemented.

A public safety bill cleared the legislature Friday that would make changes to the juvenile court system and allow the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services to establish a conviction review unit to investigate claims of actual innocence of any defendant, including those who plead guilty.

The bill also includes “Blair’s Law,” which would ban celebratory gunfire within the limits of a municipality. The law is named after Blair Shanahan Lane, an 11-year-old Kansas City girl killed during Fourth of July celebrations in 2011 by a stray bullet shot into the sky.

After years of unsuccessful efforts to make Planned Parenthood ineligible to receive reimbursements from the state’s Medicaid program, the governor signed the bill into law earlier this month. 

“For me, the good far outweighs the bad,” said Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, “and I’m walking out of here with my head held high.” 

But the legacy of the 2024 legislative session will be the long list of bills that died — and the open GOP warfare that killed many of them. 

The first day of the session in January saw a resumption of years of GOP infighting, with the Freedom Caucus holding court for more than an hour to vent frustrations with the chamber’s Republican leadership.

That dynamic played out again and again through the session, culminating with a 41-hour filibuster earlier this month by Freedom Caucus members that stalled — but did not block — a bill renewing a tax crucial to funding Missouri’s Medicaid program. 

The bad blood between the Freedom Caucus and Republicans loyal to Senate leadership boiled over in the session’s final days. Despite holding 24 of 34 seats in the Senate, Republicans could not muster 18 votes to kill a Democratic filibuster of legislation making it harder to amend the Missouri Constitution through the initiative petition process. 

Thanks to the impasse, the initiative petition bill — a top GOP priority, seen as a method to undercut a likely November ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in the Constitution — died on the session’s final day.

“It is a uniparty,” said Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and Freedom Caucus member. “That’s what people are fed up and frustrated with, Republicans giving in and caving in. Accepting defeat in the hands of victory, that seems to be the mantra of the Republican Party and brand.”

Rowden said a lot of good work got done this year despite efforts by the Freedom Caucus. 

“I make decisions not based on what people are gonna say about those decisions on Twitter,” he said, “but about what is in the best interest of the state and what’s in the best interest of this institution.”

As the House stripped amendments off of Senate bills in order to send them to the governor, Republicans complained about the gridlock that upended the Senate. 

Every legislative session is unusual, said House Speaker Dean Plocher, but “this has been a less productive year on the other side of the building.”

But contributing to the chaotic session was Plocher, who spent much of the year under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over a litany of allegations of misconduct. The investigation was ultimately dropped, but not before Plocher was accused of obstructing the committee’s work and intimidating potential witnesses. 

But the drama in the House paled in comparison to the Senate. 

State Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican, had no remorse about his role in killing a large swath of bills. Out of every 100 bills filed every year, Eigel said, “probably 90 of them need not pass.”

“So a lot of the bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the folks you see standing behind me,” he told reporters at the Freedom Caucus press conference, adding: “How many tax increases and fee increases didn’t happen because some folks were willing to get more aggressive with the folks that are giving up on their principles?”

Time ran out on a lot of bills with wide support from both parties, including an expansion of child care tax credits that was a big priority of the governor. The legislature also failed to ban child marriage or end Missouri’s practice of taking millions of dollars in Social Security benefits owed to foster kids. 

A wide-ranging women’s health bill — which includes provisions allowing women on private insurance to pick up an annual supply of contraceptives rather than going to the pharmacy every few months — was also a victim of Senate gridlock. 

But the biggest impact of the GOP infighting was likely how much it delayed the state budget process, ultimately resulting in a spending plan most everyone concedes will require lawmakers to return later this year to ensure state agencies don’t run out of money. 

Lawmakers cut hundreds of millions of dollars requested by Parson for the three major public welfare agencies, the departments of Social Services, Mental Health and Health and Senior Services. And Charlie Shields, president of the State Board of Education and a former Senate president pro tem, this week said he expects “the mother of all supplemental budgets, probably in a special session.”

“We’ll be back when the department’s run out of money,” Rizzo said, “because they will.”

Eigel seemed to predict the drama could resume if the legislature returns to allocate more money. 

“We spent billions of dollars in earmarks and the budget that we did just pass. Billions,” he said. “If there was such a need for the basic services of these departments to be funded, maybe we should have cut out some of the fat.”

Three of the five Freedom Caucus members are leaving the Senate after this year due to term limits, and August primaries in those and a handful of other districts will ultimately decide whether the dynamic in the chamber changes. 

Rowden, who is also leaving office this year, said he hopes the departures “provides an opportunity for this chamber to kind of recalibrate.”

In the end, the Senate returned for the final day of the legislative session Friday for only 10 minutes before adjourning for the year. 

For all intents and purposes, the Senate was done the day before, Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin conceded to reporters. But she didn’t want to end on a sour note — with lawmakers taking verbal shots at each other on the chamber’s floor. 

“I like all of my colleagues,” she said. “They are all very bright, though difficult to handle sometimes.” 

And when the Senate adjourned Friday, “everyone hugged each,” O’Laughlin said. “Bill (Eigel) and I hugged each other.” 

Eigel, listening in from the back of the room as O’Laughlin spoke to reporters, shouted out, “Love you, Cindy.”

She didn’t miss a beat.

“Love you, Bill.” 

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story.

The three major-party candidates for Missouri attorney general, from left, Will Scharf, Andrew Bailey and Elad Gross (campaign photos).

The two Republican candidates running for Missouri attorney general agreed this week that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, parroting claims spread by Donald Trump and his allies that have been widely debunked.

Appearing at a candidate forum in Springfield on Tuesday, Attorney General Andrew Bailey and former federal prosecutor Will Scharf laid out their reasoning for why they believe Trump’s defeat in 2020 was illegitimate. 

Bailey said the presidential election was “absolutely stolen.”

“The left stole that election by changing the rules of the game at the 11th hour,” he said. “They’re going to try to steal this one by silencing our voices on big tech social media platforms, by stifling us in the mainstream media and by packing the polling places with criminal illegal aliens that shouldn’t be here in the first place.” 

Scharf agreed, saying “it was stolen. It was rigged. Call it whatever you will.” 

“In the 2020 election, out of 159 million ballots cast, over 100 (million) were early or absentee,” he said. “It’s absolutely unprecedented in American history. Many of those ballots were cast totally extra legally, whether it was a lack of signature verification, whether it was the late submission in Pennsylvania, you can go on and on and on.” 

Democrat Elad Gross, who also participated in the forum, answered the question of whether the 2020 election was stolen with one word. 

“No,” he said. 

Numerous independent studies and government reviews of the 2020 election found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The former president’s allegations of voting fraud were debunked by his former attorney general, William Barr, dismissed by a litany of judges and refuted by state election officials. Studies have also concluded that there is little evidence that mail-in ballots help one party over another. 

A six-month review of ballots in the largest county in Arizona commissioned by Republican state legislators found that President Joe Biden not only won the state but should have been awarded 306 more votes. 

Nevada’s Republican secretary of state reviewed tens of thousands of allegations of voter fraud identified by the state Republican Party, determining that the majority were baseless or inaccurately interpreted.

A review of the 2020 election ordered by the Republican leader of the Wisconsin legislature found “absolutely no evidence of election fraud.” That confirmed an earlier finding by a nonpartisan audit. 

A committee led by Republican state lawmakers in Michigan concluded after a months-long investigation that there was no widespread or systematic fraud in the state in 2020.

And in Georgia, the Republican governor and secretary of state recertified Biden’s win after conducting three statewide counts. Trump allies who made claims of election fraud in the state have recanted, and one — former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — lost a defamation lawsuit over the allegations filed by former Georgia election workers. 

Despite all this, surveys have found that two-thirds of Republican voters continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden was not lawfully elected.

Other issues

The Springfield forum is the first event where all three major candidates in the Missouri attorney general race appeared together. 

Bailey is a first-time candidate appointed to the job by Gov. Mike Parson in 2022, after his predecessor won a seat in the U.S. Senate. He’s an Army veteran and former assistant prosecuting attorney in Warren County and assistant attorney general who was Parson’s top attorney when he won the appointment. 

Scharf is also a first-time candidate who entered politics in 2015 when he worked as policy director for Catherine Hanaway’s bid campaign for governor. After she lost in the primary, he took a similar job with Eric Greitens and joined the administration when Greitens became governor. He left state government after Greitens resigned in disgrace, eventually becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in St. Louis prosecuting violent crimes.

Gross is a former assistant attorney general who runs his own law firm in St. Louis with a major focus on Missouri’s Sunshine Law. In 2021, he won a unanimous ruling from the Missouri Supreme Court that public agencies could not charge for time attorneys spend reviewing public records that are requested under the Sunshine Law. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for attorney general in 2020. 

Each candidate answered questions on a wide variety of topics, including transgender rights, affirmative action and the role of the attorney general’s office. 

Bailey painted himself as a “conservative warrior” who would fight against the “woke left.” He repeatedly mentioned his roots in Missouri as his motivation for seeking public office. 

“I’m a Christian. I’m a father. I’m a veteran. Those three things… guide everything that I do in a leadership role in the State of Missouri.”

Scharf hammered what he believes to be a “culture of corruption” in Jefferson City that needs to be rooted out and held accountable. He also highlighted his work as an attorney for Trump in various legal cases, including the former president’s federal election interference case. 

“Currently I have one client. His name is Donald J. Trump,” Scharf said. “I’ve fought for him in courtrooms across America, all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”

Gross said he’s running to ensure “we can have a Missouri that serves all of us once again.”

“When we start to leave some of us behind, we’re leaving all of us behind,” he said. “We owe it to the people of Missouri to bring good, strong, thoughtful leadership back to Jefferson City.”

One point of agreement for three candidates was that unregulated slot machines offering cash prizes to players that proliferate in Missouri are illegal, though they appear to differ on who should enforce that.

Missouri has legal, regulated gambling in the form of a state lottery, 13 casinos, charity bingo and raffles. The unregulated, or “gray market” machines, are considered legal by their backers because they reveal the outcome of the next wager on request or mimic a raffle.

Bailey, who has accepted campaign contributions from the companies that operate the devices, said the entire situation is “a failure of the status quo in Jefferson City.” He said local prosecutors could take up those cases when they are referred to them by police. 

“As police investigate those criminal offenses and refer them, you prosecute the criminals,” Bailey said. “The police sees the evidence and you destroy pursuant to a court order. Prosecute crimes and enforce the rule of law.”

Scharf dismissed any argument that the machines could be considered legal and vowed to prosecute cases himself if elected. 

“They are blatantly illegal. I’ve read Missouri law,” he said. “They’re illegal. They shouldn’t be there and yet they’re in almost every gas station you’ll go into. They’re all over the place.”

Gross said the machines are illegal and “we should get rid of them.” And after that, he said changes to state law should be enacted to “make sure that companies that are running these illegal operations are not then trying to buy those offices that have enforcement authority.”

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a member of the Freedom Caucus, shouts at his Republican colleagues Wednesday during debate on initiative petition changes (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

A 50-hour Democratic filibuster forced the Senate’s divided GOP majority to finally yield Wednesday evening, stalling a vote on a bill seeking to make it more difficult to amend Missouri’s constitution.

Democrats have blocked all action in the Senate since Monday afternoon, demanding that the legislation be stripped of “ballot candy” that would bar non-citizens from voting and ban foreign entities from contributing to or sponsoring constitutional amendments, both of which are already illegal. 

The Senate passed the bill without ballot candy in February. The House added it back last month.

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, on Tuesday said the situation presented an existential crisis for the Senate, as Republicans openly considered a rarely-used maneuver to kill the filibuster and force a vote on the bill. 

“Are the bullies going to win?” Rizzo asked. “Or is the rest of the Senate finally going to stand up for itself and say ‘no more.’” 

He got an answer just before 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, when state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican and the bill’s sponsor, surprised many of her colleagues by asking that the Senate send the bill back to the House for more negotiations on whether to include “ballot candy.” 

Republicans simply didn’t have the votes to kill the filibuster, she said, and Democrats showed no signs of relenting before session ends at 6 p.m. Friday. 

“These policies are too important to play political games with,” Coleman said, adding that going to conference to work out a deal with the House was the only way to keep it alive in the face of unrelenting Democratic opposition. “In a perfect world, we would not be between a rock and a hard place.”

The sudden change in tactics was not well-taken by members of the Freedom Caucus, who argued sending the bill back to the House with only two days left before adjournment puts its chances at risk. 

Tim Jones, a former Missouri House speaker and current director of the state’s Freedom Caucus, wrote on social media Thursday evening that Coleman “effectively killed her own bill today.”

Ultimately, the Senate voted 18-13 to send the bill to conference, with nine Republicans joining nine Democrats in support of the move.

If the bill passes, Missourians would have the opportunity to vote later this year on whether or not to require constitutional amendments be approved by both a majority of votes statewide and a majority of votes in five of the state’s eight congressional districts. 

Right now, amendments pass with a simple majority.

A possible vote on abortion in November is a catalyst behind the battle over the bill, as a campaign to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability is on the path to the statewide ballot. 

Republicans have said that without raising the threshold for changing the state’s constitution, a constitutional right to abortion will likely become the law of the land in Missouri. 

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and a member of the Freedom Caucus, tipped his hat to the Democrats’ “wherewithal” before scorning some of his Republican colleagues. 

“Unfortunately, this Republican Party has no backbone to fight for what is right for life,” he shouted from the Senate floor. “ … They will have the blood of the innocent on their heads. Shame on this party.”

Coleman’s move also came as a surprise to state Rep. Alex Riley, a Republican from Springfield who sponsored the initiative petition bill in the House. 

“We’re going to have to have some conversations tonight to figure out what exactly it is they have in mind,” he said. “We will be having many conversations over the next few hours.”

House Speaker Dean Plocher said he was pleased to see the impasse broken, adding that the House is ready to work on a final version that can be passed. 

He didn’t promise to remove the “ballot candy” added by the House. 

Fate of ‘game changer’ women’s health care bill in hands of Missouri Senate

Asked if Coleman made a tactical mistake in telling the House to restore the items removed during the first Democratic filibuster, Plocher said he hadn’t spoken to Coleman and declined to speculate on whether the outcome would have been different had she not.

Democrats left the Senate Wednesday evening hopeful they will ultimately get their way.

“This body by and large is a staunch supporter of democracy. That doesn’t just go for one side of the aisle. That goes for both sides,” Rizzo said. “This is not protecting the ballot for Democrats or Republicans or one issue or the other issue that you might like or dislike. This protects the ballot box for Republicans and Democrats alike for the future.”

Rizzo maintained that removing the ballot candy is still the only way Democrats will allow the bill to get through the Senate if it returns from the House. 

“If you haven’t figured that out in the last three or four days, I don’t know where you’ve been,” Rizzo said, adding: “Hopefully sleeping.” 

As the Senate prepared to vote, state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican and Freedom Caucus member, warned his colleagues not to be optimistic that the Senate will come back Thursday and pass other bills waiting in the pipeline.

“If the hope is that this process is going to somehow lead us back to a place of engaging more legislation besides this, I’m gonna say this very clearly,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

State Rep. Hannah Kelly, R-Mountain View, speaks during Missouri House debate on May 13, 2022 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The Missouri House Ethics Committee voted unanimously Thursday to dismiss a complaint filed against the Republican lawmaker who led the investigation of Speaker Dean Plocher. 

State Rep. Hannah Kelly of Mountain View was appointed to lead the ethics committee by Plocher last year. 

But the speaker soured on Kelly as she oversaw the panel’s months-long investigation into Plocher’s unsuccessful push for the House to sign an $800,000 contract with a private software company outside the normal bidding process; alleged threats of retaliation against nonpartisan legislative staff who raised red flags about that contract; purported firing a potential whistleblower; and years of false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.

The committee dropped its inquiry last week, after Kelly alleged it was unable to complete its work due to obstruction by Plocher — including intimidation of potential witnesses and legislative staff. 

The allegations of obstruction were contained in a draft report recommending Plocher receive a letter of disapproval for his actions. That report was voted down by the committee, but it became public because Kelly did not close the hearing before the vote.

Plocher has vehemently denied any allegations of wrongdoing or obstruction. 

Republican who led inquiry of Dean Plocher may be subject of new ethics complaint

Days after the investigation ended, a new ethics complaint was filed. While details of the complaint are considered confidential under House rules, it was believed to be focused on Kelly because she quickly recused herself from the committee. She was replaced as chair by Rep. Rick Francis, a Perryville Republican. 

On Monday, the committee voted unanimously to dismiss the complaint. But it returned Thursday to reconsider that vote, Francis said, and ultimately voted once again to dismiss.

“We wanted to be thorough,” Francis said, “and wanted to look not only into ethics rules, but also statutes and the constitution. We wanted to get it right.” 

Alongside the dismissal, which was printed in Thursday’s House Journal, the committee issued a report stating that it disagreed with Kelly’s decision to release the draft report on Plocher. 

“There is no evidence that Rep. Kelly acted in bad faith,” the committee stated in the report. “Notwithstanding Chairwoman Kelly’s disagreements, it is the committee’s conclusion that the draft report should not have been distributed in a public forum without the committee’s prior approval and that this distribution violated this committee’s procedural rules.”

Who filed the complaint, and what it alleged, was not made public on Thursday.

As the committee was admonishing Kelly, Francis appeared to potentially run afoul of the panel’s confidentiality rules himself.

Speaking to a reporter from Missourinet on Monday, Francis was asked to identify the respondent in the ethics complaint. In a recording of the exchange, Francis can be heard saying “the former chair” — seemingly naming Kelly before the committee’s findings were public. 

On Thursday, Francis attempted to walk back that comment, insisting to reporters that he had actually said “a former chair.” He declined to answer follow up questions seeking clarification. 

House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, R-Lee's Summit, speaks during floor debate in March 2021 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Commuincations).

Any talk of changes to how the Missouri House functions following allegations of staff intimidation during the investigation of Speaker Dean Plocher will have to wait until after the legislative session ends on May 17, Majority Leader Jon Patterson said Monday. 

Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican expected to take over as speaker next year when Plocher’s final term in office expires, told reporters he’s ready to move on from the Plocher ethics inquiry that has hung over nearly the entire legislative session.

“We maintained all along, we were going to let the process play out,” Patterson said. “I believe in the House. I believe in our members. I believe in the committee process. The committee spoke rather decisively, and that’s good enough for me.”

Last week, the House Ethics Committee voted to drop its months-long investigation.

Plocher immediately declared himself fully exonerated, but the chair of the committee — GOP state Rep. Hannah Kelly of Mountain View — said the inquiry was undermined by obstruction from the speaker’s office. 

That includes alleged intimidation of possible witnesses, Kelly said. To illustrate her point, she released a March email from Lori Hughes, director of administration for the Missouri House, detailing numerous incidents she believed were designed to intimidate nonpartisan legislative staff members. 

Patterson said Monday he had not seen the letter. 

“After the session is over, we’re going to look at the rules,” Patterson said. “We’re going to look at how things are functioning, and we really want to make this a great place for people to come and work and serve their state.”

While he says he hasn’t read Hughes’ letter, Patterson said he will “go talk with her, and we’ll do that after session.”

Missouri House ethics panel drops probe of Dean Plocher after blocking push to release evidence

Patterson’s comments came hours before the ethics committee reconvened Monday evening to discuss a new complaint, this one believed to be focused on Kelly because she recused herself from the proceeding.

The interim chair of the committee, GOP Rep. Rick Francis of Perryville, told Missourinet after the hearing that the panel completed its work and would release its findings after speaking to the subject of the complaint. House rules indicate that at the initial hearing for a new complaint, the ethics committee can vote to dismiss or to proceed to a “primary hearing” where testimony can be accepted.

The dismissed Plocher investigation was focused a series of scandals that emerged last fall. The speaker was accused of pushing for the House to enter into an $800,000 contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.  

Last month, the ethics committee rejected a report that recommended a formal letter of disapproval for Plocher, that he hire an accounting professional to manage his expense reports moving forward and that he refrain from retaliation against any legislator or House employee who cooperated with the committee. 

The report included a letter from a private attorney hired by the committee to collect evidence for the investigation, who wrote that she had never encountered “more unwilling witnesses in any investigation in my career.”

“The level of fear expressed by a number of the potential witnesses,” she wrote, “is a daunting factor in completing this investigation.”

The report also detailed how one witness, who was anonymous, feared their employment was at risk for testifying before the committee. Another potential witness was allegedly “highly encouraged” not to testify by a Republican lawmaker close to the speaker.

Hughes’ March 5 letter to Kelly included references to “20 pages of notes I have compiled along with the numerous emails I have received from employees documenting their fear of being retaliated against or even wrongfully terminated. I feel the need to share some things that are most relevant, while attempting to protect staff that do not want me to share details.”

She went on to write that in her more than “21 years of state government service, I have never witnessed or even been involved in such a hostile work environment that is so horrible that I am living in fear every day of losing my job.”

“I cannot continue to idly sit by and hope that the speaker’s office will stop harassing myself and other staff members,” she wrote. “I believe wholeheartedly in my role as director of administration, I have an obligation and duty to bring these horrific actions to your attention.”

Plocher has denied engaging in intimidation or obstruction, telling reporters last week: “I adamantly deny that I obstructed anything.”

“A bipartisan majority of the committee found that there was absolutely no merit in the accusations in the complaint filed against me,” he said. 

In an interview last week, House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat, said Hughes’ allegations were “deeply concerning.”

But with less than two weeks left before the legislative session ends, and a laundry list of unfinished business — including the state budget — she didn’t see any hope of a discussion about changes or fixes taking place this year. 

To see someone with “20 years of experience in human resources chronicle the intimidation, the fear and a hostile environment” taking place in the statehouse was “very troubling and very sad,” said state Rep. Deb Lavender, a Manchester Democrat. 

“If anybody in this building is truly working for the people of our state, it’s our nonpartisan staff,” she said. “And to know that they were working in a hostile environment this year does not speak well of any elected officials in this building.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Republican state senators facing a federal defamation lawsuit over social media posts incorrectly identifying a Kansas man as the shooter at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade will be represented by the Missouri attorney general’s office. 

Jeremiah Morgan, a deputy attorney general, is listed in court documents as the attorney for state Sen. Rick Brattin, who along with two other members of the Missouri Freedom Caucus — Sens. Denny Hoskins and Nick Schroer — were sued last month over posts on social media misidentifying Denton Loudermill of Olathe, Kansas, as an undocumented immigrant and the shooter at the Chief’s parade.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Andrew Bailey confirmed all three senators are being represented by the state.

The attorney general’s role in the lawsuits was first reported Thursday evening by Missouri Scout. 

The defamation lawsuits should be dismissed, the attorney general’s office contends in a motion filed Thursday, because the senators were acting in their official capacity when they made their posts on social media. Therefore, they are protected by “legislative immunity.” The posts falsely claiming Loudermill was an undocumented immigrant were directed at the president, the attorney general’s office argues, and referred to border security. 

State legislators “should not be inhibited by judicial interference or distorted by the fear of personal liability when they publicly speak on issues of national importance,” the motion to dismiss states. 

In an affidavit, Brattin attests that he made the social media posts “while I was engaged in my regular duties as a Missouri State Senator.”

Three Missouri state senators sued for defamation over posts about Chiefs parade shooting

Loudermill was detained briefly when violence broke out during the parade because he was too slow to leave the area.

The first social media account to accuse Loudermill of being the shooter and in the country illegally was on an account on X, formally known as Twitter, with the name Deep Truth Intel. That post, with a seated photo of Loudermill in handcuffs, incorrectly identified him with a name associated with misinformation posted after other shootings, including an October mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that left 18 dead. 

Soon after that initial social media post, the Missouri Freedom Caucus, Hoskins, Brattin and Schroer posted their own versions.

“These are 3 people arrested at the parade…at least one of those arrested is an illegal immigrant. CLOSE OUR BORDERS!” the Missouri Freedom Caucus posted on X. 

The post has since been deleted. The Missouri Freedom Caucus also sought to retract its mistake, linking to a KMBC post about Loudermill’s effort to clear his name.

“Denton is an Olathe native, a father of three & a proud @Chiefs fan,” the post states. “He’s not a mass shooter. Images of him being detained for being intoxicated & not moving away from the crime scene at the Chiefs rally have spread online. He just wants to clear his name.”

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.

“Fact – President Biden’s open border policies & cities who promote themselves as Sanctuary Cities like #Kansas City invite illegal violent immigrants into the U.S.,” Hoskins posted.

That post has been deleted, but in a Feb. 14 post without a photo, Hoskins wrote that “information I’ve seen” states “at least one of the alleged shooters is an illegal immigrant and all 3 arrested are repeat violent offenders.”

Hoskins hedged it with “IF THIS IS ACCURATE” and repetition of conservative rhetoric to stop immigration and restrain cities that help immigrants, blaming crime on “catch and release policies of liberal cities.” 

Brattin’s first post linking Loudermill to the shooting, since deleted, demanded “#POTUS CLOSE THE BORDER” and incorporated the deleted Deep Truth Intel post.

Schroer was the least certain post about the immigration and arrest status of Loudermill among the three now being sued.

Schroer’s post included a link to one from Burchett stating, over Loudermill’s photo, that “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

“Can we get any confirmation or denial of this from local officials or law enforcement?” Schroer wrote on X. “I’ve been sent videos or stills showing at least 6 different people arrested from yesterday but officially told only 3 still in custody. The people deserve answers.”

State Rep. Hannah Kelly, R-Mountain View, speaks during House debate in early March (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Days after ending an investigation into Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, the Republican who led that inquiry has recused herself from the committee as it prepares to discuss a new complaint. 

According to a letter to legislative staff from House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson, a member of Plocher’s leadership team, state Rep. Hannah Kelly requested she be temporarily removed from the ethics committee as it looks into a new complaint filed Wednesday. 

Although the complaint itself, as well as who filed it, are confidential under House rules, Kelly’s decision to step away from the committee is an indication she may be the subject. 

Kelly declined comment Thursday morning. 

Plocher also appears to have recused himself, leaving Henderson to appoint state Rep. Rick Francis of Perryville as the committee’s new chair. The committee will hold a hearing about the new complaint Monday evening.  

Plocher declared victory this week after the ethics committee voted to end its months-long investigation in his alleged misconduct without recommending any punishment. 

Yet despite avoiding a formal reprimand, Plocher still faces questions surrounding accusations that he intentionally delayed and obstructed the investigation — including by intimidating potential witnesses. 

To bolster the allegations, Kelly released an email she received in early March from the director of administration for the Missouri House detailing a series of actions by the speaker’s office over several months allegedly designed to intimidate nonpartisan legislative employees. 

“In my over 21 years of state government service, I have never witnessed or even been involved in such a hostile work environment that is so horrible that I am living in fear every day of losing my job,” the March 5 email stated. 

An attorney hired by the ethics committee to collect evidence in the Plocher investigation wrote to the committee that she had never encountered more unwilling witnesses “in any investigation in my career. 

“The level of fear expressed by a number of the potential witnesses,” the attorney wrote, “is a daunting factor in completing this investigation.”

And on three occasions in March and April, Plocher refused to sign off on subpoena requests by the committee.

Plocher has vehemently denied any wrongdoing — including that he obstructed the investigation. 

He noted that the committee admitted it could not find any evidence of wrongdoing in any of the litany of charges against him — his unsuccessful push for the House to sign an $800,000 contract with a private software company outside the normal bidding process; alleged threats of retaliation against nonpartisan legislative staff who raised red flags about that contract; purported firing a potential whistleblower; and years of false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.

“I’m thankful that my family will no longer have to endure the hardships caused by these false allegations and this investigation,” Plocher said, later adding: “I adamantly deny that I obstructed anything.” 

State Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican, said the entire ordeal was “much ado about nothing.” 

“What was once a committee hearing became an inquisition,” he said. “It went from an inquisition to a witch hunt.”

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat running for governor, said she was most troubled by the allegations of staff intimidation, most notably the letter from the House director of administration, calling the situation “deeply concerning.” 

Though she said she’d heard rumblings about staff mistreatment over the last few months, it was all second or third hand. 

“It’s one thing to hear rumors,” Quade said. “It’s another to see an itemized list from a respected, longtime nonpartisan staff member.” 

The allegations are serious enough to warrant action, Quade said. But with only two weeks left before adjournment and a long list of unfinished legislative business, she admits it’s unlikely anything happens this year. It will ultimately be up to the next leadership team that takes over in January when Plocher’s time in office is over.  

“The nonpartisan staff are the skeleton of democracy. I mean, it sounds cheesy to say that, but it is true,” Quade said. “These people are all underpaid and overworked, and the leadership in the building need to recognize all that these folks give to our state as public servants.”

Former state Rep. Wiley Price, D-St. Louis, discusses the effort to censure him during House debate on Jan. 13, 2021 (Ben Peters/Missouri House Communications).

A former Democratic lawmaker filed a lawsuit Wednesday over a $22,000 penalty he incurred as part of his 2021 censure for allegedly lying about a sexual encounter with an intern and retaliating against the House employee who reported it.

Wiley Price, a St. Louis Democrat who lost his bid for re-election in 2022, is demanding the state repay his garnished legislative wages. In his lawsuit filed in Cole County, Price argues the House changed its rules to retroactively allow it to fine him as part of his punishment.

He’s being represented in the case by Richard Callahan, a former judge and U.S. attorney, who writes in the lawsuit that Price is “entitled to the return of all the money that has been unlawfully deducted from his salary,” which he puts at $22,492. 

The lawsuit names Dana Miller, the chief clerk of the House, and Ken Zellers, commissioner of the Office of Administration, as defendants. In a statement, Miller said she is unable to comment on pending litigation but noted her role in the House is to “adhere to the directives and decisions of the Missouri House of Representatives within the scope of my responsibilities.

“Any actions taken,” she said, “were in accordance with established procedures and the House’s official directives.”

In January 2020, the House received a report alleging Price violated a rule prohibiting lawmakers from sexual or romantic relationships with employees or interns. 

The complaint was referred to the House Ethics Committee to investigate. 

In testimony to the committee, Price’s legislative assistant claimed he admitted to her that he had sex with an intern. She alleged that after she informed Price she was required under House rules to report the incident, he threatened to fire her in an attempt to keep her quiet. 

Both Price and the intern deny the sexual encounter took place. Price claims he had already told the legislative assistant he would be replacing her prior to her making the allegations. He admitted lying to a House investigator, but said he told the truth in closed-door testimony to the ethics committee.

In December 2020, the ethics committee — made up of five Republicans and five Democrats — completed its inquiry and voted unanimously to recommend censuring Price. It released a report that concluded he had committed perjury in his testimony, obstructed the legislative investigation and “compromised the ability of the House to provide a respectful, professional work environment.” 

The legislature reconvened the next month, and the House voted 140-3 to censure him. The vote removed him from all committee assignments and required him to reimburse the state for the cost of the investigation, which included hiring an outside law firm to conduct the inquiry. 

But Price’s lawsuit notes that the only punishments allowed under the House’s rules at the time were a letter of reproval, a reprimand, a censure or expulsion. 

It was only after the House voted to censure Price, Callahan writes in the litigation, that the rules were amended to include an option that a legislator could be fined or punished by a dollar amount equal to the cost of an ethics investigation.

Price first threatened litigation over the garnishments in 2022, when he was still serving in the House.

In correspondence with the chamber’s general counsel, Callahan said a lawsuit wouldn’t be necessary if the House stopped garnishing Price’s wages. If the deductions stopped, Callahan said at the time, Price would forgo “his claim to a return of the money already collected.”

Both the House attorney and the deputy commissioner of the Office of Administration, the agency that handles payroll for state government, informed Callahan that the payroll deductions were lawful and would continue until the balance was paid off. 

When Callahan raised the issue of the rule change taking place after the censure, the legislative attorney shared older House journals that reference fines and penalties, as well as a Congressional research brief pertaining to legislative discipline that includes “fine or monetary restitution.”

Callahan writes in the lawsuit that state law demands the House notify Price of his right to appeal before deductions began, which it did not, and says the constitution doesn’t give the House the authority to reduce a lawmaker’s salary. 

House Speaker Dean Plocher holds a press conference on Thursday in the Missouri Capitol (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The saga of Dean Plocher took yet another twist this week, with the House speaker’s leadership team circumventing the chamber’s rules to try to force the ethics committee to hold a hearing.

Plocher has been under investigation by the committee for months, and recently he and his allies have started demanding it convene and dismiss the complaint against him. But because House rules only allow the chair of a committee to schedule a hearing, the meeting scheduled by GOP leadership was quickly scuttled. 

“The reason why I canceled the meeting is because I didn’t notice it up,” said state Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Mountain View Republican appointed last year by Plocher to serve as ethics chair. She ultimately ended up scheduling a meeting for 11 a.m. Monday.

Plocher wouldn’t comment Thursday on what his role was in the push to force a meeting. 

But the unusual maneuver, coming as the speaker is already being accused of obstructing the committee’s work, has added even more fuel to questions about whether the ethics rules in the House need to be reworked in order to deal with the possibility of the chamber’s most powerful member being the focus of an investigation. 

“It is deeply difficult to hold elected officials accountable in the process that we have in this ethics committee, particularly when we’re talking about the speaker, who appoints those members and ultimately has authority over how that committee works. Whether or not subpoenas are issued, you know, and the list goes on,” said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat. 

House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican set to take over as speaker next year when Plocher’s term expires, agreed that changes to the ethics rules in light of everything that’s been going on this year are “worth looking at.”

“There’s always room to look at things,” he said earlier this week, “and see how they can be improved as we go forward.”

Since late last year, the ethics committee has been digging into Plocher’s unsuccessful push for the House to sign an $800,000 contract with a private software company outside the normal bidding process; alleged threats of retaliation against nonpartisan legislative staff who raised red flags about that contract; purported firing a potential whistleblower; and years of false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.

Over the course of the ethics committee’s inquiry, Plocher refused to speak to the private attorney hired to gather evidence and on three occasions over March and April refused to sign off on subpoena requests by the committee.

Kelly and the committee’s vice chair, Democratic state Rep. Robert Sauls of Independence, also accused Plocher of undermining the inquiry by pressuring potential witnesses. 

Last week, the committee voted 6-2 to reject a report recommending a formal letter of disapproval for Plocher, that he hire an accounting professional to manage his expense reports moving forward and that he refrain from retaliation against any legislator or House employee who cooperated with the committee.

The rejected report also includes numerous suggested changes to the rules governing the ethics committee process. Among the changes would be transferring subpoena power automatically to another member of House leadership — the speaker pro tem — if the speaker or anyone on his staff are subjects of an inquiry. 

The report also suggests strengthening the House policy protecting legislative employees from unlawful harassment and clarifying that the committee can investigate any alleged obstruction of one of its investigations. 

Plocher has insisted he can’t say anything while the investigation is ongoing.

“I can’t comment on anything on ethics,” he told reporters Thursday. “I just can’t comment.”

But his attorneys have not been nearly as hesitant to weigh in on the speaker’s behalf.

On Tuesday, one of those attorneys — former member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators David Steelman — said there was nothing at all wrong with the House ethics rules. 

The problem, Steelman contends, was that Kelly and the committee didn’t follow them. 

“The rules work fine if the committee chairman would have applied them,” Steelman told reporters. “It was not the procedure that didn’t work. It was the chairman who ignored the procedure. That didn’t work.”

The committee should have dismissed the complaint at the start of its inquiry in November, Steelman said, and throughout the process the committee seemed to be ignoring its mission and digging for dirt. 

After rejecting the draft report last week, the ethics committee has held no other meetings. Steelman says the committee has no choice but to convene and finish its work. 

“Dean Plocher,” Steelman said, “has a right to a resolution.”

As speaker, Plocher also has the power to approve — or refuse to approve  — subpoenas issued by the committee. And three times, the speaker’s office informed the committee he would not be granting its request.

Steelman said Tuesday that two of the requested subpoenas were for Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton. They both agreed to testify willingly, so no subpoenas were needed. 

As for other requests, after roughly a month of resistance, Plocher eventually recused himself, allowing Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson to sign off on some of the subpoenas. 

When, exactly, Plocher decided to recuse himself remains unclear. 

Asked why Plocher didn’t recuse himself from the start of the investigation, or at least when subpoena requests started showing up to his office, Steelman told reporters the speaker recused himself “when it mattered.”

Steelman did not respond to an email seeking details on when, exactly, Plocher recused himself from the committee’s subpoena process. 

Plocher also has the power to take away Kelly’s position on the ethics committee. He declined to answer whether he was considering that when asked about it at a recent press conference. 

As for this week’s kerfuffle over committee hearings, Marc Powers, chief of staff for the House Democrats, said Sauls was approached by the speaker’s office about convening a hearing and informed them that only Kelly had the authority to do that. 

However, Powers said Sauls doesn’t object to having another hearing in order to close the investigation for good. 

Regardless of how the Plocher saga turns out, any rule changes will have to wait until next year. 

House rules are proposed at the beginning of a General Assembly, which convenes the January after Election Day, and voted on by the entire chamber. They govern the House for two legislative sessions. 

Quade, who is running for governor and in her final term in the House, said the allegations coming out of the ethics committee against Plocher “are deeply concerning.” 

“There are conversations around potential obstruction,” she said. “There are conversations around employee treatment. There’s a lot of concerning pieces in there.”

She hopes those who return next year will make the issue a priority. 

“I do hope that the members who will remain after my time here will look at what is the most effective way to hold folks accountable,” she said, “when they are doing something that violates our code of ethics.”

David Steelman, an ex-member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators hired by House Speaker Dean Plocher as his attorney, speaks to reporters on April 23, 2024 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

Private attorneys hired by the top Republican in the Missouri House demanded on Tuesday that the ethics investigation into their client be formally dismissed. 

House Speaker Dean Plocher has still not publicly commented on the allegations of ethical misconduct that have hung over his final year in the legislature, or the later accusations that he pressured witnesses and obstructed the House Ethics Committee investigation. 

On Tuesday, he dispatched his attorneys — Lowell Pearson and David Steelman — to discredit the inquiry and criticize the Republican lawmaker appointed by Plocher to lead the ethics committee, state Rep. Hannah Kelly of Mountain View. 

In a letter to Kelly, and later at a hastily called press conference in the Capitol basement, Plocher’s defenders argued the investigation should have never occurred in the first place.  The letter included affidavits from some of the key players in the scandals that have swirled around Plocher arguing in his defense. 

“This investigation was mishandled from the start,” Pearson and Steelman’s letter read. 

Since late last year, Plocher has faced an investigation, as well as calls for his resignation, over his unsuccessful push for the House to sign an $800,000 contract with a private software company outside the normal bidding process; alleged threats of retaliation against nonpartisan legislative staff who raised red flags about that contract; purportedly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing years of false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.

Last week, the ethics committee voted 6-2 to reject a report recommending a formal letter of disapproval for Plocher, that he hire an accounting professional to manage his expense reports moving forward and that he refrain from retaliation against any legislator or House employee who cooperated with the committee.

After the report was defeated, it became a public document. 

Kelly has subsequently said the investigation was severely hindered because of Plocher’s efforts to undermine the committee’s work. Specifically, Plocher refused to speak to an attorney hired by the committee to gather evidence and would not sign subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify. 

In addition to the delays, Kelly also accused Plocher of making efforts to “threaten witnesses, block our investigation and prevent this process from reaching its natural conclusion.”

Speaker Dean Plocher accused of ‘absolute obstruction’ in House ethics investigation

On Tuesday, Steelman pushed back on that narrative, claiming the hiring of the attorney was “unlawful” and that it was the committee — not the speaker — who chose to drag out the process. 

“It was a drummed-up exercise trying to get rid of a speaker,” Steelman said of the investigation. 

Steelman, an ex-state lawmaker and former member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators, told reporters the reason Plocher refused to sign subpoenas was because they were designed to compel both him and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, to testify. 

Both were willing to testify without a subpoena, Steelman said. 

That wasn’t the reason cited in rejecting the supboenas in the three letters from the speaker’s office to the committee in March and April. And in one of those letters, Plocher’s general counsel noted the committee initially sought five subpoenas.

Asked Tuesday why Plocher didn’t recuse himself from the start, or at least when subpoena requests started showing up to his office, Steelman said the speaker recused himself “when it mattered.” 

Steelman accused the ethics committee of failing to follow its own rules, including in how it hired an outside attorney. He suggested that it’s possible the speaker’s office could refuse to pay the attorney for her work if she was hired unlawfully.

A spokesman for the speaker’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether the roughly $14,700 in legal fees will be paid. 

Ultimately, Steelman said the ethics committee must reconvene and finish its work — which he believes means dismissing the complaint and declaring Plocher exonerated. 

No ethics committee hearings have been held since the report was released to the public. 

Kelly has not commented publicly, beyond a post on social media declaring that “because of the efforts by the speaker to threaten witnesses, block our investigation and prevent this process from reaching its natural conclusion, there is nothing more that can be done.”

“The report speaks for itself,” Kelly wrote last week, “as do the votes of the committee members.”

Plocher is running for the GOP nomination for Missouri secretary of state. He currently leads his seven Republican opponents by a wide margin in fundraising, with more than $1.3 million cash on hand between his campaign account and allied political action committee.

But nearly all of that was raised before the litany of scandals became public last fall that have dominated his last year as speaker of the Missouri House. 

After taking in nearly $400,000 for his campaign and PAC in 2023, he raised just $15,000 this year. 

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, motions to be recognized to speak during the 2021 legislative session (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The embattled speaker of the Missouri House had little to say over the weekend in his first public comments since being accused of threatening potential witnesses and other stall tactics aimed at obstructing an ethics committee inquiry into his alleged misconduct.

Speaker Dean Plocher sat down for an interview released on Sunday with Scott Faughn, one of his most vocal supporters and the owner of an online compendium of press releases and opinion pieces called the Missouri Times.  

Since late last year, Plocher has faced an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, as well as calls for his resignation, over his unsuccessful push for the House to sign an $800,000 contract with a private software company outside the normal bidding process; alleged threats of retaliation against nonpartisan legislative staff who raised red flags about that contract; purportedly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing years of false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.

Last Monday, a report documenting the investigation was made public that admonished Plocher for “absolute obstruction” that hindered the committee’s efforts to get to the truth.

In his Sunday interview, Plocher said little about the inquiry, as every time he began answering questions about it Faughn would interrupt to lob insults at the committee and the process. Other than thanking his wife for her support as scandals swirl around him, the closest Plocher came to commenting was when he once again declared that he felt the investigation took too long. 

“This committee should have resolved itself in November or December,” Plocher said. 

Speaker Dean Plocher accused of ‘absolute obstruction’ in House ethics investigation

The interview appeared to be recorded Thursday, the same day Plocher stormed out of a press conference after reporters asked him about the ethics committee report.

“I’m shutting this down,” Plocher declared after two questions. “You guys don’t get it.”

While Plocher was staying quiet, his wife — who also previously served as his campaign treasurer — made a lengthy post on Facebook attacking the investigation, the ethics chair and the media. She demanded her husband be exonerated.

“Dean deserves vindication,” she wrote.

Days before abruptly ending the press conference, the ethics committee voted to reject a report recommending a formal letter of disapproval for Plocher, that he hire an accounting professional to manage his expense reports moving forward and that he refrain from retaliation against any legislator or House employee who cooperated with the committee. 

The report also suggested further review by the House into allegations of threats made against legislative employees during the course of the investigation. 

State Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Mountain View Republican who was appointed last year by Plocher as chair of the ethics committee, said the speaker threatened witnesses and created a “culture of fear and retaliation” that undermined the investigation. 

Public records included in the draft report revealed that while Plocher and his allies were condemning the investigation for dragging out too long, behind the scenes the speaker was causing the delays by refusing to speak to an attorney hired to collect evidence and repeatedly refusing to sign subpoenas to compel hesitant witnesses to come forward. 

The speaker wasn’t asked any questions about alleged obstruction during the interview released Sunday.

Plocher is running for the GOP nomination for Missouri secretary of state. He currently leads his seven Republican opponents by a wide margin in fundraising, with more than $1.3 million cash on hand between his campaign account and allied political action committee.

But nearly all of that was raised before the litany of scandals became public last fall that have dominated his last year as speaker of the Missouri House. 

After taking in nearly $400,000 for his campaign and PAC in 2023, he raised just $15,000 this year.  

This story was updated at 7:28 a.m. on April 23 to include comments from Plocher’s wife. 

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, claps as the Missouri House welcomes a guest on the first day of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher and his allies complained for weeks that the ethics investigation into his alleged misconduct was dragging out unnecessarily.

As it turns out, the biggest reason for the delay may have been Dean Plocher himself. 

The Republican from Des Peres for three months refused to speak to an attorney hired by the House to collect evidence for the investigation, only agreeing to testify to the ethics committee in mid-March. 

His office three times over the course of March and early April refused to sign off on subpoenas requested by the committee to compel hesitant witnesses to come forward.

While all this was taking place behind the scenes and out of the public view, Plocher was arguing to colleagues and the media that the committee was taking too long. The delays became evidence to his supporters that the investigation was political and illegitimate.

“Not soon enough,” Plocher said, when asked last month about when the committee might finish its work. 

On Monday, after a draft report was released documenting the ethics committee’s findings, Plocher told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he was disappointed in how long the committee took to complete its work.

Yet the report in question lays out myriad ways Plocher’s actions in private were allegedly causing the delays he was publicly decrying. 

“Never did I imagine the biggest impediment to this process would be the speaker’s office,” Republican state Rep. Hannah Kelly, the chair of the ethics committee who Plocher appointed to the job in 2023, posted on social media Tuesday. 

Plocher, who is running for secretary of state, has yet to publicly comment on the contents of the ethics committee’s draft report.

Speaker Dean Plocher accused of ‘absolute obstruction’ in House ethics investigation

The committee began looking into Plocher in October, after an ethics complaint filed by Republican state Rep. Chris Sander of Lone Jack that focused on the speaker’s advocacy for the House to enter into a six-figure software contract with a private company, his firing of a former staffer and his years of false expense reimbursement reports.

The committee retained an outside attorney named Beth Boggs on Dec. 6 to investigate the allegations and provide a written report to the committee. 

Boggs attempted to speak to Plocher for months, she wrote in a March 1 letter to the committee. But each of her requests were ignored. Additionally, Boggs wrote that numerous witnesses refused to cooperate out of fear of retaliation from the speaker’s office. 

Those roadblocks, Boggs wrote, delayed the committee’s efforts. 

“The level of fear expressed by a number of the potential witnesses is a daunting factor in completing this investigation,” Boggs wrote.

Some witnesses who refused to willingly testify to the committee indicated they would comply with a subpoena, the report stated. Yet records included in the report show that on three occasions, Plocher’s general counsel wrote to the committee stating that the speaker’s office would not sign off on those subpoenas.

“The inability to compel witness testimony and the production of documents in a timely fashion caused unnecessary delay and has hindered the committee’s investigation,” the report stated. 

The report ultimately concluded the committee lacked direct evidence of ethical misconduct by Plocher, but that his actions “substantially impair public confidence in the General Assembly.” It recommended a formal letter of disapproval for Plocher, that he hire an accounting professional to manage his expense reports moving forward and that he refrain from retaliation against any legislator or House employee who cooperated with the committee. 

The report also recommended further review by the House into allegations of threats made against legislative employees during the course of the investigation.

But after Kelly refused to allow the committee to go into closed session to debate the report, which she said was the result of hours of debate last week, four Democrats and two Republicans voted to reject it. 

Only Kelly and the committee’s vice chair, Democratic state Rep. Robert Sauls of Independence, voted in support. 

“Unfortunately, because of the efforts by the speaker to threaten witnesses, block our investigation and prevent this process from reaching its natural conclusion, there is nothing more that can be done,” Kelly posted on social media Tuesday. “The report speaks for itself, as do the votes of the committee members.”

One member of the committee, Republican state Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway of Festus, voted “present” on Monday. 

The next day, she posted on social media arguing that the report “did not accurately reflect the record of the committee investigation.” 

She voted “present” out of respect for Kelly, Buchheit-Courtway wrote, but wanted more debate before a report was released to the public. The committee majority, she argues, should write, debate and adopt a final report before a public release. 

“This process has gone on too long,” she wrote, “and needs to come to an end.”

Buchheit-Courtway may get her wish for an end to the investigation. 

Kelly adjourned Monday’s hearing immediately after the committee rejected the report. Two other hearings scheduled for this week have been canceled. There is no indication of whether the committee’s work might resume.

The legislative session ends May 17 at 6 p.m.

“It breaks my heart,” Kelly wrote, “to think our institution could be a place where victims will be harassed rather than protected, where whistleblowers will be vilified and where the truth will be something that is locked in the darkness rather than brought into the light of day.”

House Speaker Dean Plocher during the 2023 veto session (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher obstructed an investigation of his official acts through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas, bipartisan leaders of the House Ethics Committee alleged Monday. 

Some potential witnesses allegedly refused to speak out of fear Plocher would use his power as speaker to retaliate against them. Others were out of reach because the speaker decided who the committee could compel to testify. And Plocher refused to cooperate with the attorney hired to collect evidence for the committee. 

Details of the alleged obstruction were contained in a report laying out findings from the ethics committee’s months-long investigation that was released Monday night. The report concluded the committee lacked direct evidence of ethical misconduct in Plocher’s advocacy for a six-figure software contract, in his firing of a former staffer or in years of filing false expense reimbursement reports. 

But Republican state Rep. Hannah Kelly of Mountain Grove, the committee’s chair, and Democratic state Rep. Robert Sauls of Independence, the vice chair, said the report demonstrates “absolute obstruction” that hindered the committee’s efforts to get to the truth. 

Kelly took the unusual step of conducting Monday’s committee hearing in open session. All previous hearings had been closed from the public. 

The committee ultimately voted down the draft report, but because the hearing was not closed, the report became a public record. 

Kelly said she decided  to ensure the report would become public after Plocher’s private attorney went on KSSZ-FM’s “Wake Up Mid-Missouri” program on Friday to criticize the fact that all the hearings were being conducted behind closed doors. 

“Secrecy never works,” said David Steelman, an ex-legislator and former member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators who was hired by Plocher to defend him in the ethics probe. 

Steelman’s statements follow weeks of public criticism of the committee’s work by Plocher’s allies. Kelly said releasing the draft report addresses Steelman’s demand for more transparency. 

Kelly also hinted that someone on the committee was leaking confidential information from the investigation, though she declined to elaborate. 

“We have come to the end of this process,” Kelly told reporters after the hearing. “I have done all I can do… you do all you can, and then when you’ve done all you can, put everything on the table.”

Plocher, a candidate for secretary of state, declined comment Monday evening. 

‘Impair public confindence’

The rejected report recommended a formal letter of disapproval for Plocher, that he hire an accounting professional to manage his expense reports moving forward and that he refrain from retaliation against any legislator or House employee who cooperated with the committee. 

The report also recommended further review by the House into allegations of threats made against legislative employees during the course of the investigation. 

Plocher’s actions “substantially impair public confidence in the General Assembly,” the report states.

After the report was defeated by the committee on a 6-2 vote, Kelly said she wasn’t sure what happens next. The committee is scheduled to meet again Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon.

The report presented to the committee Monday was the summation of hours of closed-door debate last week, Kelly said. But six of the nine committee members who were present — two Republicans and four Democrats — voted against it.

Only Kelly and Sauls of Independence voted in favor of the report. State Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway, a Republican from Festus, voted “present.”

Before the vote, Republican Rep. John Black of Marshfield asked the committee to go into closed session to debate the report further. Kelly declined. 

The only member to offer any thoughts after the meeting ended besides Kelly and Sauls was GOP Rep. Rick Francis of Perryville, who said he voted no because he wanted more discussion about what should be included in the report. 

Sauls said the committee had already spent countless hours toiling over the draft report.

“Sunshine would actually help maybe get to the bottom of this,” he said. 

Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of a months-long push outside the normal bidding process to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

As part of that contract push, Plocher allegedly threatened the jobs of nonpartisan staff who raised red flags. 

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

Plocher repaid the illegal reimbursements, but they could have violated at least three state laws. 

Submitting false expense reports could be prosecuted as stealing from the state, a class A misdemeanor. It could also be considered false declaration, a class B misdemeanor that involves knowingly submitting any written false statement. 

Plocher was required to sign a sworn statement with each expense report declaring that he had used “personal funds” to pay the expenses. 

And while it is permissible to use campaign money for official government business, it is a crime for campaign contributions to be converted to personal use.

On the constituent management contract, the report concluded there was no direct evidence to indicate an ethical violation or “quid pro quo” by Plocher. 

As for the threats against nonpartisan staff, there was also no direct evidence implicating the speaker, though the report states that several employees testified under oath about threats and a “negative work environment.”

On the expense reports, Plocher eventually testified to the committee that the multiple false reports over the course of years were an “accounting error” and a “lack of oversight on my part.” 

Plocher testified that he and his wife, who was his campaign treasurer, discovered the illegal reimbursements and decided to take action. 

But he didn’t begin repaying them until weeks after The Independent submitted a request for the expense reports. And the committee discovered someone else had requested the reports a week before The Independent. 

In both instances, Plocher’s legislative staff were made aware of the requests, the report noted, and his office was provided with copies of the records before they were turned over to the requester. 

Plocher was also accused of retaliating against a possible whistleblower when he fired his chief of staff last year. The speaker’s political consultant, David Barklage, testified that he recommended Plocher fire his chief of staff. 

Plocher never mentioned Barklage’s role in the process during his testimony to the committee, the report states, and the former chief of staff refused to testify.

Obstruction and intimidation

The attorney hired to collect evidence for the committee marveled at the overarching fear of retaliation among House staff. 

“I have not encountered more unwilling witnesses in any investigation in my career,” the attorney wrote in a report to the committee in March. “The level of fear expressed by a number of the potential witnesses is a daunting factor in completing this investigation.”

The report detailed how one witness, who was anonymous, feared their employment was at risk for testifying before the committee. It also states that the potential witness was “highly encouraged” not to testify by another Republican lawmaker close to the speaker. 

Plocher also did not respond to at least three interview requests by the attorney. He eventually agreed to testify to the committee in mid-March. 

The committee met in a legislative hearing room, with witness testimony taken under oath by a court reporter who appeared by Webex. Because of this, the report states that House IT staff arranged for every committee member to have a secure laptop that remained in the locked hearing room at all times. 

On March 13, the report states, Plocher’s general counsel in the speaker’s office “used his position of authority to make a House administrative employee unlock” the hearing room so he could “take photographs.” 

Plocher’s general counsel refused to testify about why he went into the closed hearing room. 

The rejected draft report also contains recommendations for improving the House ethics process, including giving the committee the power to look into obstruction of an investigation and a policy protecting House employees from retaliation. 

This story was updated at 8:35 a.m. on April 16 to note David Steelman appeared on KSSZ-FM’s “Wake Up Mid-Missouri” program. 

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, speaks to reporters about the first half of the 2024 legislative session on March 14 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A wide-ranging investigation into allegations of misconduct by the leader of the Missouri House appears to be escalating, with three more hearings scheduled this week.

The House Ethics Committee has already met eight times since the beginning of March as part of its inquiry into the actions of Speaker Dean Plocher. Last week, a six-hour hearing focused on questioning members of Plocher’s inner circle, including his chief of staff, legislative assistant and top political consultant. 

The committee has posted public notice that it intends to meet Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. 

Neither the public nor the media can observe the committee’s work, as House rules require investigations be kept confidential until a final report is issued. That final report could also include recommendations for punishment, if the committee finds it warranted, such as a formal reprimand, censure, fines or even expulsion from the House. 

When that report might be released, however, remains unclear. And the committee’s chair, Republican state Rep. Hannah Kelly of Mountain Grove, is not offering any details.

“The committee’s work is ongoing,” Kelly told reporters last week. “A commitment to upholding the integrity and ethics of the House of Representatives is our charge.”

Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres who is running for secretary of state, has been accused of a litany of wrongdoing, including pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.  

Last week’s hearing appeared focus on Plocher’s efforts to steer the House into an $800,000 contract with a private software company called Fireside to manage constituent information. Plocher was accused by nonpartisan legislative staff of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push for the contract.

Among the witnesses called to testify was John Bardgett, who worked as Fireside’s lobbyist at the same time Plocher was jockeying for the contract. After roughly an hour speaking to the committee Wednesday night, Bardgett left without talking to reporters. 

The ethics panel previously questioned state Rep. Dale Wright, chairman of the committee that handles purchasing for the House, and Dana Rademan Miller, the chief clerk of the House who raised red flags about the Fireside contract. 

Also testifying at last Wednesday’s hearing was David Barklage, a longtime political consultant who is working for Plocher’s secretary of state campaign. 

A fixture in state politics for decades, Barklage was also a key political adviser to John Diehl, the man Plocher replaced in the Missouri House after he was forced to resign in 2015 following revelations he’d been sending sexually inappropriate messages to a 19-year-old House intern.

Barklage chatted briefly with reporters prior to testifying Wednesday, but later left the hearing without commenting.

Plocher’s chief of staff, Rod Jetton, and his legislative assistant, Diana Hennerich, also testified. Both were accompanied to the hearing by one of Plocher’s private attorneys. 

Jetton, who was hired in November, was represented at the hearing by David Steelman, a ex-legislator and former member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators. 

Hennerich was represented by Lowell Pearson, a longtime Jefferson City attorney who has worked for the Missouri Republican Party and House Republican Campaign Committee. 

Republican waiting game

As the committee’s work continues, lawmakers are left to ponder what happens if a report is issued in the legislative session’s final weeks. 

State Rep. Don Mayhew, a Republican from Crocker, said he would like to know what caused the investigation to take so long. 

The committee met three times last year, then did not meet again until March 4. Between the December and March hearings, an attorney hired by the committee conducted interviews and gathered evidence. The investigator reportedly presented their findings to the committee on March 6. After that, hearings were convened to allow testimony, including from Plocher and a handful of legislative staff.

Mayhew knows the committee can’t comment on its investigation, but he would like to hear from its leadership about whether any delays are due to difficulty obtaining records or witness statements.

“At the very least,” Mayhew said, “they can update us on why (they) haven’t come to a decision.”

There are six weeks left in the session, Mayhew noted, and at this point of the year, House members rely on leadership to work with Senate leaders to manage final action on bills.

“It’s critical that we have our leadership intimately involved in the negotiating and the gamesmanship of that legislation bouncing back and forth,” he said.

The ethics committee report will disrupt that, he said.

“There are two possibilities,” Mayhew said, “neither one of which are good.”

The first is a negative report that will be debated at a critical point in session.

The other, he said, is “potentially keeping a speaker with some ethics issues. And so it’s one of those devil’s choices that admittedly, we’re frequently left with in the House of Representatives.”

Within the past week some of Plocher’s supporters have begun saying that the committee has deliberately delayed its work for political reasons, said state Rep. Scott Cupps, a Republican from Shell Knob.

He believes the rumors are intended to undermine the final report when it is issued by the committee. 

“If you start those rumors and get all that going and get people talking,” Cupps said, “then it’s a pretty easy way to, whatever something might say, say that it’s not credible.”

Plocher appointed each of the members of the ethics committee and helped craft the rules governing ethics investigations put in place his first year as speaker. Last week he declined comment, through a spokesman, on the process or any complaints he may have about how it is being handled. 

Cupps said he trusts the committee members and believes the time taken by the investigation shows diligence in finding the truth.

“It’s very, very obvious that they are just doing what they feel like is their responsibility,” Cupps said.  

The hours are long and, unlike other lengthy hearings, members cannot step out to take a phone call or have a side conversation, he said. At the same time, Cupps said members are barred from discussing what they learn, leaving a wide field for speculation and planting rumors.

“You have people that are expecting you to do the work and to take that immense responsibility, while you also very, very clearly have people working behind the scenes to try to discredit everything you’re doing,” Cupps said.

Cupps believes any delays in the investigation actually play to Plocher’s advantage. As the session nears its conclusion, he said, there is more to grab the media’s and public’s attention. 

“I assure you it would have been much more damning in February, than it would be in the next couple of weeks,” Cupps said, “even if it said the same exact thing.”

The first Republican lawmaker to call for Plocher to resign amid the allegations of misconduct was state Rep. Chris Sander, a Republican from Lone Jack. He believes he has faced retaliation from Plocher over his public comments. 

Only one of the 17 bills he filed — to do away with Daylight Savings Time — has been referred to a committee. And last week, he claims Plocher took away a ceremonial job of escorting a visiting dignitary into the House chamber just minutes after he had been assigned.

Two other Republican lawmakers who called for Plocher to resign — Reps. Mazzie Christensen and Adam Schwadron — also saw their bills held up earlier in the year by Plocher, though the speaker has denied retaliating against anyone.   

Sander said he was asked early in the year to retract his call for Plocher to step down but refused. 

“I am confident,” Sander said, “that the members of the ethics committee are feeling a lot of stress.”

Will Scharf, a GOP candidate for Missouri Attorney General, walks downstairs after filing his candidacy on Feb. 27, 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A trio of checks totaling nearly $3 million rolled into a political action committee supporting Republican Will Scharf over the last week, boosting his campaign to unseat Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey in the August GOP primary. 

On Wednesday, Club for Growth Action Missouri — which is supporting Scharf — reported a $1.4 million donation from Paul Singer, one of the nation’s richest hedge fund managers. 

The check comes just days after the PAC received two other massive donations: $500,000 from Club for Growth’s federal PAC and $1 million from the Concord Fund, which was formerly known as Judicial Crisis Network and is bankrolled by groups connected to conservative activist Leonard Leo. 

Leo is considered one of the main architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Another $1 million donation was reported last week coming from Leo directly, but a spokesman for Club for Growth said that was a filing error that is being corrected. 

“Will Scharf is one of America’s leading conservative warriors, his campaign’s momentum is growing and we are proud to support him,” said David McIntosh, president of Club for Growth Action, a national conservative anti-tax nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that endorsed Scharf last year.

A spokesman for Bailey, who was appointed attorney general by Republican Gov. Mike Parson in 2022, hammered the donations as evidence that Scharf’s support isn’t coming from Missouri. 

“Wall Street Willy is raking in millions from the same donors who literally just wasted millions on Nikki Haley’s historically abysmal campaign against President Trump,” said Michael Hafner, Bailey’s spokesman. “They weren’t successful then and they won’t be successful in buying a seat in Missouri this year.”

April marked the end of the first fundraising quarter of 2024, though candidates and committees won’t file the next round of disclosure reports until later this month. 

The two seven-figure checks to Club for Growth are the biggest individual donations to a candidate or affiliated PAC this election cycle. The only donations that are larger went to initiative petition campaigns. 

The three donations in the last week also nearly equal the amount of cash on hand reported in January by the candidates and their affiliated PACs combined. 

In January, Scharf’s campaign reported having roughly $837,000 cash on hand. Club for Growth Action Missouri is an independent spending committee that Scharf can coordinate with to raise money but can’t control. It reported $605,000 cash on hand in January. 

Bailey’s campaign reported $530,000 cash on hand in January, and the independent spending committee supporting his candidacy, Liberty and Justice PAC, reported $1.2 million.

While candidates are bound by campaign contributions limits, independent committees are not. 

Since those January disclosure reports were filed, Liberty and Justice PAC has reported $835,000 in large donations, with the biggest chunk coming from retired Minneapolis couple Mike and Carolyn Rayner, who are part of the Cargill family and gave $500,000. 

The PAC also received $100,000 checks from retired investor Rex Sinquefield of St. Louis and Kansas trial attorney Michael Ketchmark. 

In a statement to Politico after the initial donations were reported last week, Scharf said that, “while my opponent is being supported by liberal trial lawyers, pot dealers and special interests, we’re proud to be supported by conservatives in Missouri and across the country.”

Bailey served a general counsel for Parson before taking over as attorney general when his predecessor, Eric Schmitt, won a seat in the U.S. Senate. He previously worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Warren County, an assistant attorney general and general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections.

An army veteran, Bailey was awarded two Army Achievement Medals, an Army Accommodation Medal, a Combat Action Badge and two Bronze Star Medals for his service.

Scharf is a former assistant U.S. attorney who worked as policy director in Gov. Eric Greitens’ brief administration. He entered politics in 2015 when he was hired to be policy director for Catherine Hanaway as she sought the 2016 GOP nomination for governor.

In October, he announced he had joined the team of lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in various legal issues pertaining to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

If the Court of Appeals ruling had been allowed to stand, the state argued it would have been forced to award marijuana licenses to applicants who might not have even gotten the necessary scores in 2019 (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that state marijuana regulators were within their authority to deny a cultivation business license to a company that failed to include proper paperwork with its application. 

Mo Cann Do Inc. applied for a cultivation license to grow marijuana in 2019. The company was denied when the state said it didn’t include a certification of good standing from the Missouri Secretary of State’s office in its application.

However, the company argues state rules require the Division of Cannabis Regulation to specify what information is lacking in an application in a letter — which the state didn’t do before it denied Mo Cann Do’s license. 

So the company filed an appeal — one of more than 800 appeals filed after the state imposed caps on the number of marijuana business licenses it would award.  After losing at the Administrative Hearing Commission and circuit court levels, Mo Cann Do won in the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District in February 2023.

The court ordered Missouri to award the company a marijuana cultivation facility license. 

The state asked the Missouri Supreme Court to hear the case, in part, because there are dozens of pending cases before the commission and courts “where the particular document deficiency may not have been itemized” in the state’s rejection notice, according to court documents.

On Tuesday, a unanimous ruling written by Judge W. Brent Powell concluded that failing to include a certificate of good standing meant Mo Cann Do did not meet the minimum standards to get a license. 

The state was therefore justified in its denial. Failure to inform the  company of the deficiency in its application, the court ruled, did not preclude the state from denying the application. 

“Even if (the Department of Health and Senior Services) did not provide specific notice to (Mo Cann Do) of the deficiency in its application,” the ruling stated, “the state cannot be thwarted in its effort to enforce public policy and protect the public interest as it pertains to regulating the cultivation and use of marijuana. It is incumbent on DHSS to ensure MCD or other entities entering the marijuana industry follow the laws and regulations related to the industry so the public can remain safe.”

If the Court of Appeals ruling had been allowed to stand, the state argued it would have been forced to award marijuana licenses to applicants who might not have even gotten the necessary scores in 2019.

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman of Arnold, speaks Feb. 29 at the Boone County Republican Lincoln Days dinner in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman has abandoned her run for Congress and instead filed to join the crowded GOP primary for Missouri Secretary of State. 

Coleman, an attorney and first-term Republican from Arnold, said in announcing her candidacy that there is “no more important job than protecting the integrity of our elections and our founding documents.” 

Her announcement comes hours after House Speaker Dean Plocher announced that he, too, was pivoting to the secretary of state race. The scandal-plagued Republican from Des Peres had originally filed to run for lieutenant governor. 

Besides Coleman and Plocher, the other Republicans running for secretary of state are Valentina Gomez, a real estate investor also making her first run for office; Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller; state Sen. Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg; state Rep. Adam Schwadron of St. Charles; Jamie Corley, a longtime GOP Congressional staffer and leader of an abandoned campaign to legalize abortion; and Mike Carter of St. Charles, an attorney who placed second in the 2020 primary for lieutenant governor.

Coleman was one of the first Republicans to jump into the 3rd District congressional race after U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer announced his plans to retire. 

Two former Republican state senators — Kurt Schaefer of Columbia and Bob Onder of Lake St. Louis — are considered the frontrunners for the seat. 

In announcing her decision to run for secretary of state, Coleman made no mention of her now-abandoned congressional bid. 

“We need a conservative fighter who will stand up to the out of state special interests,” she said, “and protect Missourians from the woke ideology infecting our country and communities.”

This article has been updated to complete the list of Republican candidates for secretary of state.

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, fending off an ethics investigation into allegations of misconduct, announced Tuesday he will drop out of the lieutenant governor’s race and instead seek the GOP nomination for secretary of state. 

The announcement comes on the final day candidates can file to run for the August primary. And it also comes the same day as the House Ethics Committee will hold its fifth hearing of the legislative session in its ongoing investigation of Plocher, a Des Peres Republican. 

Plocher has denied any wrongdoing, largely painting his woes as a conspiracy whipped up by “leftist” media, Democrats and disgruntled staff. 

But the switch to the secretary of state race has managed to rekindle more recent criticism over Plocher’s decision to arrange a series of meetings in the state Capitol between GOP legislators and an out-of-state technology vendor that focuses on the initiative petition process. 

The secretary of state’s office oversees the initiative petition process. 

In announcing his new campaign, Plocher made only passing reference to the scandals that have dominated his final year as speaker, saying in a press release that “the liberal press can attack me all they want, but as your speaker and when I am your secretary of state, I will never stop fighting for the people of Missouri.”

Instead, Plocher focused his announcement on “ensuring only American citizens vote in state elections” and touting his legislative record on abortion, gun rights and tax cuts.

“Real leadership takes action,” he said, “and I am going to keep leading.”

Plocher joins an already crowded Republican primary that includes Valentina Gomez, a real estate investor also making her first run for office; Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller; state Sen. Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg; state Rep. Adam Schwadron of St. Charles; and Jamie Corley, a longtime GOP Congressional staffer and leader of an abandoned campaign to legalize abortion.

Plocher joined the Missouri House in 2016, winning a special election for a seat vacated when then-Speaker John Diehl was forced to resign over revelations he had been sending sexually inappropriate text messages to a 19-year-old legislative intern. 

During his time in the legislature, Plocher has championed bills to legalize sports betting, make it harder to amend the state constitution and lower the corporate income tax. He also pushed for legislation allowing the state to take over control of the St. Louis police department and prosecutor’s office.

Prior to becoming a member of the House, Plocher served as a prosecuting attorney and municipal judge in St. Louis County. He is a graduate of Ladue Horton Watkins High School and received a degree in political science with a classical civilizations minor from Middlebury College. He received his law degree from St. Louis University.

Ethics investigation

In September, Plocher was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of a months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information. Nonpartisan staff accused Plocher of threatening their jobs over criticism of the proposed contract. 

A month later, The Independent reported that Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

As those scandals swirled, Plocher fired his chief of staff. According to the Kansas City Star, that got the attention of the House Ethics Committee, which began looking into whether the staffer was protected as a whistleblower when he was fired.

Plocher even garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the constituent management contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, also conducted several interviews about Plocher. 

In December, The Independent reported Plocher spent $60,000 in taxpayer money to renovate his Capitol office, including converting another lawmaker’s office into a makeshift liquor cabinet Plocher referred to as his “butler’s pantry.” 

Most recently, Plocher drew scrutiny when his office arranged Capitol meetings between key Republican lawmakers and the owner of Western Petition Systems LLC. The Oklahoma-based technology firm signed a $300,000 contract with the Oklahoma secretary of state’s office in 2021 to offer technical assistance for signature verification in the initiative petition process. 

Plocher downplayed the significance of the meetings and said he has no position on whether Missouri should follow Oklahoma’s lead.

But the meetings, and the similarity to Plocher’s unsuccessful push outside the normal bidding process to hire a private company to manage constituent data, drew criticism. 

Republican state Rep. Scott Cupps said at the time that acting as an emissary for a potential vendor sounds more like the actions of a lobbyist than a legislator.

Schwadron pointed to the Western Petition meetings in a statement blasting Plocher’s entry into the race.

“He believes that switching races will give him a clean slate,” he said. “Unfortunately for him, there is nowhere for a corrupt, unethical politician to hide his record from Missouri voters in this race either.”

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

Missouri lawmakers return to the Capitol Monday with a long list of policy priorities still in flux and only eight weeks to get it all done before the legislative session ends in May.

Yet despite a host of issues dominating debate during the first half of the session, the two top tasks lawmakers must complete before adjournment aren’t in question: Pass the state’s roughly $50 billion budget and renew $4 billion in medical provider taxes vital to sustaining Missouri’s Medicaid program.

A failure to do either would require a special session this summer. And factional infighting among Senate Republicans likely means neither will be easy. 

Senate leadership and members of the Freedom Caucus have squabbled all session, a continuation of the fissures within the Senate GOP that has mired the chamber in gridlock for much fo the last three years. 

The Freedom Caucus wasn’t impressed with the $52 billion budget proposal laid out by Republican Gov. Mike Parson, and only mildly less dissatisfied with House Budget Chairman Cody Smith’s $50 billion alternative. 

“There’s a real disconnect between the fiscal conservative promises that a lot of Republicans are making in campaign season and what they’re continuing to talk about when we come down to the Senate floor and actually debate policy,” said state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican and member of the Freedom Caucus.

Eigel, who is also a candidate for governor, predicted a long slog through the budget this year. 

“It’s going to take a lot of work,” he said. 

Potential trouble also lurks in the background across the rotunda in the House.

The GOP supermajority in the House is expected to work quickly through the budget this week, with the chamber avoiding the internal dissension that’s plagued the Senate. Yet hovering over the House as it heads into the session’s home stretch is the ongoing ethics investigation of House Speaker Dean Plocher, who is facing a litany of allegations of misconduct. 

The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to hold its fifth closed-door meeting Tuesday, with the timeline for issuing a final report unclear. 

Plocher has already faced calls for his resignation from some Republicans. If the committee concludes he engaged in unethical conduct, the fight over whether Plocher should keep his job could derail the session as lawmakers are trying to finalize the budget. 

Federal reimbursement allowance

Even if a budget compromise can be reached, the Freedom Caucus has also raised concerns about renewing the federal reimbursement allowance, or FRA — the taxes paid by hospitals, nursing homes, ambulance providers and pharmacies as a mechanism for drawing additional federal funds and boosting payments for Medicaid services.

A Senate bill to renew the taxes before they expire later this year has been stalled over Freedom Caucus demands that it include provisions excluding Planned Parenthood from providing Medicaid services.

Including that provision, GOP leaders have argued, could put the entire program at risk of running afoul of federal law. In an effort to tamp down resistance to passing a “clean” FRA, a separate bill blocking Planned Parenthood from being reimbursed by Medicaid was passed by the House earlier this year. 

“It’s a bipartisan belief that we need to pass (the FRA) clean,” Plocher told reporters, later adding:: “I’m an eternal optimist, and I believe we get it done.”

But time is running out, said Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat. The Senate should have taken up FRA legislation at the beginning of the session instead of waiting until the last minute. 

“I don’t understand why it hasn’t been brought up,” Rizzo said. “I don’t understand why it hasn’t had a really good debate. I mean, it seems like there’s a lot of things that have gotten a lot of time on the floor that are way less impactful than the FRA… Everyone in this chamber knows how essential the FRA is to health care, especially in rural Missouri.”

If the legislature is forced to hold a special session this summer to renew the FRA — which is how it was last renewed in 2021 — it will be the Senate’s fault, said Plocher, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. 

“It won’t be because of the House’s actions,” he added. 

‘Ballot candy’

Beyond the budget and FRA, Republicans are determined to make it harder to amend the state constitution through the initiative petition process. 

A version of the proposal cleared the Senate last month when Democrats agreed to end their filibuster in exchange for Republicans stripping out provisions labeled “ballot candy.” 

The bill would require a statewide majority and a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts to pass a constitutional amendment resulting from an initiative petition or a state convention.

In addition to making it harder to enact constitutional amendments, the legislation included “ballot candy” that would bar non-citizens from voting and ban foreign entities from contributing to or sponsoring constitutional amendments. 

Democrats called the immigration and foreign entities provisions a misleading sleight of hand meant to confuse voters from the issue at the heart of the amendment. Republican leadership agreed to remove them, and the bill was sent to the House. 

But state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold who sponsored the initiative petition bill, urged a House committee to restore the “ballot candy.”  And she hinted at the idea that Senate Republicans were going to turn to a rarely used procedural move near the end of session to force the legislation through over Democratic opposition. 

Coleman’s bluster infuriated Democrats, who accused Republicans of going back on their word and undermining the negotiating process in the Senate. In response, Rizzo and his fellow Democrats used the filibuster to shut down Senate business for a day. 

Despite the setback, Rizzo said he hopes cooler heads will ultimately prevail. 

“I don’t harbor any ill will or animosity towards (Sen. Coleman),” Rizzo said. “Obviously, she made some mistakes in the House committee.”

Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughllin, a Shelbina Republican, said Coleman “maybe just didn’t think before she made the comments. I think maybe she just didn’t weigh out what the results of that would be.”

The House intended to restore the ballot candy, said state Rep. Peggy McGaugh, a Republican from Carrollton and chair of the House Elections Committee. But the specter of Senate Democrats upending the legislative session could change those plans. 

“They made it clear they don’t like the plan we’re working toward,” she said. “So there will be a lot of give and take there… and I don’t know exactly where we’ll end up.”

Education and child care

The most expansive bill to clear the Senate so far this year would expand the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program and allow charter schools to open in Boone County. The bill also includes provisions boosting public school funding and teacher retention efforts.

“This is a great package,” said state Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester who is sponsoring the bill. “It’s a great package for parents. It’s a great package for kids.”

Meanwhile the House passed open enrollment legislation that would allow a school district to accept transfer students from outside its boundaries. Its sponsor, Republican state Rep. Brad Pollitt of Sedalia, has argued that open enrollment “offers parents the opportunity to select curriculum options to better align with their personal beliefs.”

How either bill will fare in the other chamber is unclear. 

“The House has focused the last few years on open enrollment,” said Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican. “The things that we’re focusing on are a little more involved or a little deeper or a little more holistic.”

One of the first bills to win House approval this year would create tax credits designed to make child care in Missouri more affordable and accessible.

The state continues to grapple with a child care crisis, with about 200,000 children living in parts of Missouri considered “child care deserts” because there are one or fewer child care slots available for every three children.

The bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Brenda Shields of St. Joseph, would create three types of credits: for taxpayers who donate to support child care centers, for employers who make investments in child care needs for their employees and for child care providers. 

It won overwhelming approval in the House, and is a priority for both Parson and Senate Democrats. 

But the Freedom Caucus has poured cold water on the idea.

“What we’re focusing on is cutting the tax burden for everybody, not having targeted giveaways and tax benefits for certain groups of folks,” Eigel said. “I want to lower the tax burden for everybody.”

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, speaks to reporters about the first half of the 2024 legislative session on March 14 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The bipartisan legislative committee investigating Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher over allegations of ethical misconduct will hold another hearing when lawmakers return to the Capitol from spring break next week. 

The House Ethics Committee — made up of five Republicans and five Democrats — will convene on Tuesday at 4 p.m. It is the committee’s fifth hearing since the legislative session began in January. 

Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres who is running for lieutenant governor, has been accused over the last few months of pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.

More recently, Plocher has faced new criticism over his decision to spend $60,000 to remodel his Capitol office — including converting another lawmaker’s office into a liquor cabinet — and arranging meetings between legislators and an out-of-state vendor.

The swirl of scandal led the House Ethics Committee to launch an investigation late last year, and in recent weeks that inquiry has escalated. 

Plocher, who has denied any wrongdoing, testified to the committee earlier this month — though confidentiality rules meant his testimony was not open to the public or the media.

Dean Plocher testifies to the Missouri House ethics panel investigating him

Also testifying recently: state Rep. Dale Wright, the chairman of the legislative committee in charge of purchasing for the House; state Rep. Chris Sander, a Lone Jack Republican who has called for Plocher to resign; and Dana Miller, chief clerk of the House. 

Proceedings of the ethics committee are required to be confidential, with none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered made public until a final report is issued. When its work is complete, the committee is empowered to recommend sanction for misconduct if it chooses, which can range from a reprimand all the way to expulsion from the House.

Asked about the ongoing investigation last week, Plocher said he was eager for the committee to finish its work. 

“I would love to comment,” he said. “I have a whole lot to say.” 

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Democrat from Springfield, called Plocher’s travails an “unfortunate distraction.” 

Missourians deserve to know what happened, Quade said, and whether Plocher should continue to serve as speaker.

“I am grateful for the ethics committee,” she said, “for all the work they are putting into this to find out what happened here.”

Protestors backing a social media case against the U.S. government rallied outside the Supreme Court on March 18, 2024, as arguments in the case were being heard inside. The lawsuit filed in 2022 by attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana alleges the federal government colluded with social media companies to suppress the freedom of speech (Jane Norman/States Newsroom).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court seemed skeptical Monday of a lawsuit alleging the federal government colluded with social media companies to suppress the freedom of speech, with a majority of justices across the ideological spectrum raising issues with the case and its potential consequences.

The Biden administration argued to the court there is no evidence that the government violated the First Amendment in its efforts to combat false, misleading or dangerous information online.

Beyond that, the court should dismiss the litigation because plaintiffs don’t have the right to sue, said Brian Fletcher, principal deputy solicitor general.

Arguments occurred in a packed courtroom, where just outside dozens of protesters held signs accusing the government of infringing on free speech.

The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by two states — Missouri and Louisiana — and five individuals who either were banned from a platform or whose posts were not prominently featured on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter.

Fletcher argued that the plaintiffs have not shown any evidence that decisions by social media companies to remove or deprioritize content can be attributed to the government. Instead, the companies made their own decisions relying on their own content moderation policies.

There was no coercion or attempted intimidation, Fletcher said, and the best proof of that is that social media companies “routinely said ‘no’ to the government.”

“They didn’t hesitate to do it, and when they said ‘no’ to the government, the government never engaged in any sort of retaliation,” Fletcher said. “Instead, (the federal government) engaged in more speech. Ultimately, the president and the press secretary and the surgeon general took to the bully pulpit. We just don’t think that’s coercion.”

Benjamin Aguiñaga, the solicitor general for the Louisiana attorney general, argued that the government has no right to persuade platforms to violate Americans’ constitutional rights, “and pressuring platforms in back rooms shielded from public view is not using the bully pulpit at all. That is just being a bully.”

Emails obtained as part of the lawsuit, Aguiñaga contends, show the government badgered platforms behind closed doors, abused them with profanity and “ominously says that the White House is considering its options… all to get the platforms to censor more speech.”

“Under this onslaught,” he said, “the platforms routinely cave.”

Government agencies have routinely encouraged social media companies to restrict harmful or illegal content for years, including posts involving terrorism and human trafficking.

Aguiñaga argued that speech involving criminal activity is not protected. But the Biden administration, he said, began to push social media companies in 2021 to restrict misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Content was also targeted that involved election disinformation.

In 2022, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a court nominee of President Donald Trump, ruled that officials under both President Joe Biden and Trump coerced social media companies to censor content over concerns it would fuel vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans prohibited the White House, the Surgeon General’s Office, the FBI, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from having practically any contact with the social media companies. It found that the Biden administration most likely overstepped the First Amendment by urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content.

The Supreme Court placed a temporary stay on the order in October until it decides the case.

Standing and traceability

A question at the core of Monday’s arguments was whether any harm to the plaintiffs could be, in fact, traced back to the government’s actions or could be remedied by judicial relief.

Justice Elena Kagan asked Aguiñaga to highlight “the single piece of evidence that most clearly shows the government was responsible for one of your clients having material taken down.”

“How do you decide that it’s government action as opposed to platform action?” Kagan followed.

Aguiñaga pointed to a May 2021 email the Biden administration sent to a social media platform regarding misinformation about COVID-19. Aguiñaga argued that evidence shows two months later content from one of the plaintiffs, Jill Hines of Louisiana, was suppressed.

“A lot of things can happen in two months,” Kagan said. “So that decision two months later could have been caused by the government’s email or that government email might have been long since forgotten because there are a thousand other communications that platform employees have had with each other, a thousand other things that platform employees have read in the newspaper.”

“I mean why would we point to one email two months earlier and say it was that email that made all the difference?” Kagan said.

Justices question consequences for public safety, national security

During Monday’s arguments, the justices focused on whether encouragement by federal officials amounted to illegal coercion, rather than merely informing or persuading social media companies.

“There are lots of contexts where government officials can persuade private parties to do things the officials couldn’t do directly,” Fletcher argued when Justice Clarence Thomas questioned him about coercion versus censorship.

“For example, recently after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, a number of public officials called on colleges and universities to do more about antisemitic hate speech on campus,” Fletcher said.

An ideologically diverse majority of justices raised concerns about the potential consequences of the litigation for things like public safety and national security.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether the government violates the First Amendment when it requests the removal of factually inaccurate posts. He suggested there could be national security concerns if false information was posted online about troops.

Kavanaugh also asked how the federal government’s communications with social media companies were any different than when news organizations are warned that a story they are about to publish could affect national security.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett continued along that line of questions, asking whether the FBI would still be able to warn social media platforms if an individual had been doxxed in a way that might put them at risk.

Aguiñaga countered that he is a free speech purist but in that circumstance, the government would be allowed to issue warnings to social media companies about content.

But when speech is protected, the government has no right to intervene to push for it to be censored, he said.

“When the government is identifying a specific viewpoint and specific content that it wishes to wholly eliminate from public discourse, that’s when the First Amendment problem arises,” he said, later adding that the government has lots of tools at its disposal to combat misinformation.

“Censorship,” he said, “has never been the default remedy for a perceived First Amendment violation.”

That argument didn’t move Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“You have to admit that there are certain circumstances,” she said, “in which the government can provide information and encourage the platforms to take it down.”

The most scathing criticism of the day came from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“I have such a problem with your brief, counselor,” Sotomayor said to Aguiñaga. “You omit information that changes the context of some of your claims. You attribute things to people who it didn’t happen to. I don’t know what to make of all this.”

Aguiñaga apologized if “any aspect of our brief was not as forthcoming as it should have been.”

Justice Samuel Alito, who sat back and rocked his chair with his hands behind his head, seemed most sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ case, reframing the discussion as Aguiñaga was facing a series of difficult questions.

“Coercion doesn’t only apply when the government says ‘do this, and if you don’t do this, there are going to be legal consequences,’” Alito said, adding: “It’s a more flexible standard and… you have to take into account the whole course of the relationship.”

In his rebuttal, Fletcher compared the Biden administration’s communications with social media companies and public comments about misinformation to President George W. Bush’s public condemnation of pornography and President Ronald Reagan’s criticism of media influence of drugs and violence.

A ruling on the case is not expected for several months.

Plaintiff reaction

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said afterward he believes the Supreme Court justices “will make the right decision here.”

“Ultimately that (decision) will continue to build a wall of separation between tech and state using this lawsuit. The court will affirm the district court injunction and we’re excited to get back to the district court level,” Bailey told reporters on the plaza in front of the Supreme Court after arguments concluded.

When asked for his reaction to the justices’ skepticism of Aguiñaga’s argument of government coercion, Bailey said “the evidence clearly establishes coercion.”

Bailey argued that evidence gathered by Missouri, Louisiana and the individual plaintiffs reveals the Biden administration threatened reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which currently shields social media companies from liability for content published on their platforms.

“Those are direct explicit threats against the big tech social media giants,” he said.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

Jason Hancock reported from Columbia, Mo. Ashley Murray reported from Washington, D.C.

This story was updated at 1:45 p.m. to add comments from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. 

A lawsuit filed by attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana alleged the federal government pressured social media companies to target conservative speech across a range of topics, from the efficacy of vaccines to the integrity of the 2020 presidential election (Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images).

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday morning in a potentially landmark case involving the federal government’s efforts to encourage social media companies to remove misinformation from their platforms.

The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana. It alleges the federal government colluded with social media companies such as Twitter, now called X, and Facebook to suppress the freedom of speech.

The government specifically targeted conservative speech, the attorneys general contend, across a range of topics — from the efficacy of vaccines to the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who inherited the lawsuit from his predecessor, called the federal government’s actions “the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation’s history.

“We’re fighting to build a wall of separation between tech and state to preserve our First Amendment right to free, fair and open debate,” Bailey said in an emailed statement. 

In a statement Thursday, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the case has uncovered 20,000 pages of documents that reveal an “extensive censorship campaign” on the part of President Joe Biden.

“George Orwell wrote ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ as a warning against tyranny,” Murrill said. “He never intended it to be used as a how-to guide by the federal government.”

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the Biden administration in the lawsuit, said in a filing asking the Supreme Court to take the case that the government was entitled to express its views and persuade others to take action.

“A central dimension of presidential power,” she wrote, “is the use of the office’s bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans — and American companies — to act in ways that the president believes would advance the public interest.”

Social media companies are private entities, Prelogar wrote, that made independent decisions about what to remove.

Monday’s case will be argued by Benjamin Aguiñaga, the solicitor general for the Louisiana attorney general. Considered a rising star in conservative legal circles, Aguiñaga served as a law clerk for Judge Edith Jones, a conservative Ronald Reagan appointee on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judge Don Willett, then on the Texas Supreme Court. 

Aguiñaga was also a member of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s Senate Judiciary Committee staff and chief of staff in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Trump administration. 

Most notably, Aguiñaga served as a clerk for Justice Samuel Alito during the Supreme Court’s 2018-2019 term. 

‘Immensely important case’

In 2022, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a court nominee of President Donald Trump, ruled that officials under both Biden and Trump coerced social media companies to censor content over concerns it would fuel vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans prohibited the White House, the Surgeon General’s Office, the FBI, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from having practically any contact with the social media companies. It found that the Biden administration most likely overstepped the First Amendment by urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content.

The Supreme Court placed a temporary stay on the order in October until it decides the case.

Three conservative justices — Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — dissented from the decision to block the injunction, with Alito calling the court’s action “highly disturbing” and arguing it threatened to curtail the discussion of unpopular political views online.

Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called the lawsuit an “immensely important case that will determine the power of the government to pressure the social media platforms into suppressing speech.”

“The government has no authority to threaten platforms into censoring protected speech,” Abdo said, “but it must have the ability to participate in public discourse so that it can effectively govern and inform the public of its views.”

Missouri attorney general’s social media lawsuit rallies anti-vaccine activists

The injunction put in place by the lower courts was way too broad, said David Greene, civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“Government co-option of content moderation systems is a serious threat to freedom of speech,” Greene said. “But there are clearly times when it is permissible, appropriate and even good public policy for government agencies and officials to inform, communicate with, attempt to persuade or even criticize sites —free of coercion— about the user speech they publish.”

The federal government must be allowed to share information with social media companies in order to ensure the integrity of elections, said Gowri Ramachandran, deputy director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Having accurate information about elections is critical to American democracy, Ramachandran said, and the proliferation of false information through social media threatens elections and election officials.

“We already had a situation where there was attempted foreign interference during the 2016 election,” she said. “After that, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, said if there’s foreign agents putting propaganda out on his platform, ‘I want to know. Please tell me.’ And so then the government started doing that, and I wouldn’t characterize it as being an instance of even anything close to government censorship.”

Ties to misinformation, conspiracy theories

As the case has meandered through the courts, it has added several co-plaintiffs with long histories of spreading misinformation and debunked conspiracy theories.

That includes Jim Hoft, founder of the right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit, who has built a career on promulgating conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Parkland school shooting to former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

More recently, Hoft has been among the biggest purveyors of election fraud lies. He currently faces a defamation lawsuit in St. Louis circuit court filed by two Georgia election workers who faced death threats following Gateway Pundit’s false stories about a vote-rigging scheme. 

During appeals court arguments in August, the attorneys general specifically cited Hoft, claiming that he is “currently subjected to an ongoing campaign by federal officials to target the content on his website.”

Another named co-plaintiff in the case is Jill Hines. She is co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an anti-vaccine organization that, among other things, advances the theory soundly rejected by medical experts that vaccines are a cause of autism.

Louisiana Illuminator Editor Greg LaRose contributed to this report.

House Speaker Dean Plocher sits with his attorney, Lowell Pearson, during a March 12 hearing of the Missouri House Ethics Committee (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

House Speaker Dean Plocher testified Tuesday evening before a bipartisan committee investigating him over allegations of ethical misconduct. 

Appearing alongside his attorneys — Lowell Pearson and David Steelman — Plocher’s testimony took place behind-closed doors. House rules require proceedings of the ethics committee to be confidential, with none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered made public until a final report is issued.

After an hour and a half testifying, Plocher quickly left out of a side door of the hearing room and ignored questions from reporters as he boarded an elevator. He was late for a dinner he was hosting in the House Lounge with former speakers. 

Plocher has been accused over the last few months of, among other things, pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.  

The allegations sparked a formal investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which hired an outside attorney to lead the inquiry. He’s also faced calls for his resignation by several members of the GOP supermajority.

His attorneys in the ethics investigation are longtime figures in Missouri GOP politics. Pearson has represented the House Republican Campaign Committee, while Steelman is a former lawmaker who also served several terms as a member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators.

Roughly an hour after Plocher left the hearing, state Rep. Dale Wright, a Republican from Farmington, showed up to testify. He is chairman of the House Administration and Accounts Committee, which is in charge of purchasing for the House.

After Wright testified, the committee heard from state Rep. Chris Sander of Lone Jack, a Republican who has called for Plocher to resign.

The ethics committee is scheduled to meet again on Wednesday evening.

Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of a months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

As those scandals swirled, Plocher fired his chief of staff. According to the Kansas City Star, that got the attention of the House Ethics Committee, which began looking into whether the staffer was protected as a whistleblower when he was fired.

Plocher even garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the constituent management contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, also conducted several interviews about Plocher. 

Since the ethics committee began its probe, Plocher has continued facing scrutiny. 

In December, The Independent reported Plocher spent $60,000 in taxpayer money to renovate his Capitol office, including converting another lawmaker’s office into a makeshift liquor cabinet Plocher referred to as his “butler’s pantry.” 

The Kansas City Star reported last month that Plocher was the only legislator in the past three years to be granted exemptions from House travel policies, allowing him to spend more than allowed to upgrade a flight to Utah and get reimbursed for a flight to a conference in Hawaii.

Soon after, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the annual payroll for the speaker’s office ballooned more than $250,000 since Plocher took over. 

And Monday, The Independent reported on bipartisan criticism of Plocher after his office arranged a series of meetings in the state Capitol between GOP legislators and an out-of-state technology vendor.

This story was updated at 9:18 p.m. to add additional details on who testified to the committee. 

House Speaker Dean Plocher during the legislature's annual veto session on Sept. 13, 2023 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher arranged a series of meetings in the state Capitol last month between GOP legislators and an out-of-state technology vendor, inviting renewed bipartisan criticism of the embattled Republican as he remains the focus of an ongoing ethics investigation. 

The unusual arrangement — including a meeting with GOP leadership that took place in the speaker’s Capitol office — is drawing comparisons to Plocher unsuccessfully pushing last year for the House to spend $800,000 outside the normal bidding process to hire a private company to manage constituent data. 

That push, which allegedly included threatening the jobs of nonpartisan staff who criticized the contract, was among the litany of scandals that eventually led to a House Ethics Committee investigation of Plocher. 

Both Plocher and the owner of Oklahoma-based Western Petition Systems LLC said last month’s meetings were informational and not an effort to solicit a change in state law or win a contract. 

But acting as an emissary for a potential vendor and arranging Capitol meetings with key lawmakers sounds more like the actions of a lobbyist than a legislator, said state Rep. Scott Cupps, a Shell Knob Republican.

Especially, Cupps said, when Plocher is already under an ethics investigation.  

“I’d have been surprised if this was any other speaker. It seems 100% par for the course for Dean,” said Cupps, who serves on the House committee that last year voted against privatizing constituent management services despite Plocher’s behind-the-scenes advocacy. 

Republican lawmakers and staff from the Missouri Secretary of State’s office were invited by the speaker’s office to attend meetings with Bill Shapard, founder of Western Petition Systems LLC.

In 2021, Western Petitions signed a $300,000 contract with  the Oklahoma secretary of state’s office to offer technical assistance for signature verification in the initiative petition process. 

To do something similar in Missouri would require a change to state statute. 

Shapard told The Independent he did not make the trip to Jefferson City in order to score a state contract. He was simply there to provide background on what his company has done in Oklahoma. 

“I had no expectations at all that anything was going to come of it or we were going to end up with some work out of this trip,” he said. “That was not my intention, and that was not the intention that was told in coming up to Missouri.”

Plocher downplayed the significance of the meetings in an email to The Independent, saying his office was connected with Shapard by another Republican legislator who wanted Missouri lawmakers to hear about changes that were implemented to the initiative petition process in Oklahoma. 

Shapard said that legislator was state Rep. Chris Lonsdale of Liberty, who didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Even if nothing inappropriate happened at these meetings, Democratic state Rep. Deb Lavender of Manchester questioned the wisdom of the speaker convening them. 

“He’s already got an ethics investigation against him for something similar,” she said. “Why he would be continuing down the same path seems odd.”

What happened in Oklahoma

Shapard is a longtime political pollster in Oklahoma who founded Western Petition in 2020. On the company’s website, it promises to modernize “the way that petitions are created, signed and validated.”

“Our innovative and automated process searches voter records and matches signatures with registered voters, highlighting discrepancies, and providing a detailed report to the Secretary of State,” the company boasts. 

The company insists on its website that the Oklahoma secretary of state remains in control over the signature verification process and it only supplies hardware, software and consulting services to the state. 

Just as in Missouri, the initiative petition process requires those hoping to put an issue on the ballot to collect a certain amount of signatures and submit them to the secretary of state’s office. 

In Missouri, the secretary of state then works with local election officials to verify that the signatures are legitimate.

Western Petition ran into controversy in 2022 when an initiative petition seeking to legalize recreational marijuana was unable to be placed on the November ballot because of delays in the signature verification process. 

Proponents collected more than 164,000 signatures and expected the verification would take roughly four weeks. It ended up taking seven weeks, pushing past a deadline for mailing overseas and absentee ballots and scuttling any chance of making the ballot that year. 

Shapard said the problems actually began when the Oklahoma Supreme Court waited until May of that year to allow the marijuana campaign to begin collecting signatures. Then the campaign turned in twice the number of signature sheets than he anticipated, Shapard said, which caused the verification process to take longer than originally planned. 

In mid February, Plocher’s office organized meetings in the Missouri Capitol so Shapard could discuss his company’s services with lawmakers and the secretary of state’s office. 

“I’m not a registered lobbyist. I don’t have a lobbyist in Missouri,” Shapard said. “I didn’t come to lobby for anything. I came to share our experience in Oklahoma, what Oklahoma’s problem was and how we fixed it with our solution. I think the speaker’s office and various other House and Senate members wanted to learn more about it to see if it’s a fit for Missouri’s current issues or not.”

Plocher said another legislator suggested a meeting be held to discuss changes in how Oklahoma handles the signature verification process. That legislator, who Shapard said was Lonsdale, “recommended Mr. Shapard as an authority on the subject, since he was involved in the legislative effort in Oklahoma,” Plocher said.  

“The speaker, nor his staff, have any connection with Mr. Shapard,” Plocher’s statement read. 

Shapard agreed that “prior to my visit to Missouri, I’d never had any dealings with Dean Plocher.”

Plocher said in his email to The Independent that he has no position on whether Missouri should follow Oklahoma’s lead, and “there is no effort, legislatively or administratively, to solicit or procure private vendors for signature verification that the speaker, or his office, are aware of.”

Meetings in Missouri

Among those invited to attend the meetings was state Rep. Mike Haffner, a Pleasant Hill Republican sponsoring legislation making changes to signature gathering rules for Missouri’s initiative petition process.

Haffner has been working with attorneys in the secretary of state’s office since 2022 on his legislation, he said, trying to identify and fix problems that have emerged in the process.

His bill, which the House approved last month, includes numerous provisions — ranging from a ban on compensating signature gatherers based on the number of signatures collected to a requirement that gatherers reside in Missouri for at least 30 consecutive days prior to the collection of signatures.

Democrats decried Haffner’s legislation as a solution in search of a problem, arguing that it was a continuation of GOP attacks on the initiative petition process. Haffner countered that he was simply trying to ensure out-of-state interests weren’t able to manipulate the system. 

“We have to protect the process,” Haffner said. “Missourians should be in control of the Missouri constitution.”

Haffner said he wasn’t interested in adding any new provisions to his bill to allow private vendors in the process, and felt any discussion of new tools or technology should wait until after the legislature adjourns for the year in May. 

“We talked about some of the technologies that were available,” he said of the meeting he attended. “That may be something that we look at once the legislative session is complete. We deal with those issues in the off session. I prefer just to concentrate on the legislation while we’re in session.”

State Rep. Peggy McGaugh, a Carrollton Republican and chair of the House Elections and Elected Officials Committee, also attended one of the meetings with Shapard. 

She complimented his presentation but said when Shapard mentioned the cost could be more than $300,000, she knew the idea wasn’t going anywhere because it wasn’t already included in the proposed state budget. 

“A lot of the presentation and the handouts were things Missouri already did,” said McGaugh, who previously served 32 years in the Carroll County Clerk’s office.

JoDonn Chaney, a spokesman for Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, said two of Ashcroft’s deputies attended a Capitol meeting with Shapard and others at the request of Plocher’s office. 

The secretary of state already has an in-house system in place to verify signatures, Chaney said, and doesn’t see a need to spend taxpayer money to replace something that they believe is working. Chaney also said there could be privacy concerns with allowing a private entity access to voter data.

Those were the twin concerns raised last year when Plocher began pushing House staff to award a contract to a company called Fireside to manage constituent information. 

Records obtained by The Independent last fall through the Missouri Sunshine Law document allegations that Plocher connected the success of the Fireside contract to the 2024 campaign — in which he is running for lieutenant governor — and engaged in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct.” 

The ordeal even garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, also conducted several interviews about Plocher.

“This all sounds very familiar,” Cupps said of the Western Petition meetings. “If it were me, and I was under an ethics investigation, you better believe I wouldn’t be so brazen as to do this kind of stuff.” 

The House Ethics Committee held two meetings last week as part of its inquiry into Plocher, including one where the speaker’s lawyer attempted to remain in a closed hearing to listen to members discuss the findings of an attorney hired to conduct the investigation. 

Two more ethics hearings are scheduled this week. House rules require proceedings of the ethics committee to be confidential, with none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered made public until a final report is issued.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, motions to be recognized to speak during the 2021 legislative session (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Speaker Dean Plocher’s attorney sought to attend a closed-door hearing of the Missouri House Ethics Committee on Wednesday night, arguing he should be allowed to stay in order to listen to the panel review a report detailing the investigation of his client. 

Lowell Pearson, a veteran Republican attorney, was informed by the committee’s chair — Republican Rep. Hannah Kelly of Mountain Grove — that House rules require proceedings of the ethics committee to be confidential, with none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered made public until a final report is issued.

Kelly asked Pearson if he had received an email from the committee, which he said he had. She then added: “You’ll have your day before this committee.”

Pearson left without drama and declined comment to reporters as he was leaving.

‘Due process takes time’: No timetable for completion of Dean Plocher ethics investigation

After the hearing adjourned following roughly two hours of discussion, Kelly told reporters that the bipartisan committee “stands firm in its commitment to upholding ethical standards and maintaining the integrity of its proceedings.”

The committee also, “unequivocally denounces any efforts by any other parties to engage in political theatrics or disclose confidential information deemed pertinent to our investigations,” Kelly said, though she declined to elaborate on whether she was referring to Pearson. 

“Such actions undermine the impartiality and effectiveness of the committee’s work,” she added, “and will not be tolerated.”

The public demands, Kelly said, “a meticulous and impartial examination of any ethical concerns that may arise but also calls for a fair process that protects all parties involved. We must exercise discretion in our proceedings, ensuring a balanced approach that upholds the principles of justice.”

Plocher has been accused over the last few months of, among other things, pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.  

The House Ethics Committee began looking into Plocher in October, and an outside attorney was eventually hired to assist the investigation. The 10-member committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. 

When it completes its investigation, the committee is empowered to recommend sanction for misconduct if it chooses, which can range from a reprimand all the way to expulsion from the House.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, claps as the Missouri House welcomes a guest on the first day of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Leaders of a bipartisan Missouri House committee investigating Speaker Dean Plocher over allegations of misconduct said Monday that there is no timetable for when the inquiry will conclude. 

State Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Republican from Mountain Grove and chair of the House Ethics Committee, spoke to reporters following a roughly three-hour closed-door meeting of the committee on Monday afternoon. It was the committee’s first meeting since December and the first since outside counsel was hired to help conduct the investigation. 

The committee is scheduled to meet again Wednesday.

But there was little Kelly or the panel’s vice chair, Democratic state Rep. Robert Sauls of Independence, were able to say because they are bound by House rules that require proceedings of the ethics committee to be confidential, with none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered made public until a final report is issued. 

“The ethics rules are very clear in that confidentiality is very, very important,” she said, “as is the honest hard work of making sure that the integrity of the institution is upheld.”

‘Dark cloud’: Ethics investigation of Dean Plocher continues to hang over Missouri House

Plocher has been accused over the last few months of, among other things, pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.  

The House Ethics Committee began looking into Plocher in October, and an outside attorney was eventually hired to assist the investigation. 

The 10-member ethics committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. 

It’s unclear how far along in the process the committee is. If it has held a “primary hearing,” according to House rules, the subject of the inquiry has 21 days to answer the charges in writing. 

At the conclusion of the primary hearing, the committee has the choice of dismissing the complaint, proceeding to a formal hearing or allowing the legislator to accept a sanction for misconduct, which can range from a reprimand all the way to expulsion from the House. 

If the investigation proceeds to a formal hearing, the committee’s investigation is guided by the rules and the committee has 45 days after it finishes taking testimony to deliver a report to the House. 

“Due process takes time,” Sauls said. 

When asked last month if he had spoken to the committee or the attorney conducting the investigation, Plocher told reporters he was prohibited from saying anything about the inquiry.

“I can’t comment on that,” said Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres. “You know that.”

But on Saturday, he told a reporter from Spectrum News that he has not yet been called to testify to the committee — but that he was eager to do so. 

“I welcome the opportunity to present anything I can to the ethics committee and to the people as a whole,” Plocher said. 

Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of a months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

As those scandals swirled, Plocher fired his chief of staff. According to the Kansas City Star, that got the attention of the House Ethics Committee, which began looking into whether the staffer was protected as a whistleblower when he was fired.

Plocher even garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the constituent management contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, also conducted several interviews about Plocher. 

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson prior to the State of the State address on Jan. 24, 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson drew condemnation from across the political spectrum over the weekend after he reduced the sentence of former Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid for a drunken driving crash that permanently injured a 5-year-old girl.

Reid, the son of Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, was drunk in February 2021 when he crashed his truck into two vehicles on the side of an exit ramp along an interstate near the Chiefs’ practice facility. 

Six people were injured, including 5-year-old Ariel Young, who sustained a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for 11 days. According to her family, Young continues to suffer memory loss and issues with speech and movement.

Reid pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison. 

But on Friday, with little explanation and without consulting with local prosecutors or the victims’ family, Parson commuted Reid’s sentence — allowing him to serve under house arrest until October 2025. 

Parson’s decision drew immediate outrage.

“There simply can be no response that explains away the failure to notify victims of the offender,” Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said in a press release. She later added: “I simply say I am saddened by the self-serving political actions of the governor and the resulting harm that it brings to the system of justice.”

Tom Porto, the attorney for Young’s family, told the Daily Beast that the family “is disgusted, I am disgusted and I believe… that the majority of the people in the state of Missouri are disgusted by the governor’s actions.”

State Rep. Keri Ingle, a Lee’s Summit Democrat, posted on social media that she “really cannot imagine any justification for commuting a drunk driver who severely injured a 5 year old.”

Criticism also came from Parson’s fellow Republicans. 

State Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican who chairs the Missouri Senate Judiciary and Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, posted on social media that he “cannot imagine the pain this must cause to the family of the victim, an innocent 5-year-old girl whose life is forever changed. This is not justice.”

Luetkemeyer’s sentiment was echoed by state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold running for Congress.

“This isn’t justice,” she wrote on social media.

A convicted drunk driver “should never have their sentence commuted,” state Rep. Adam Schwadron, a Republican from St. Charles who is running for secretary of state, posted on social media. “A convicted drunk driver that injured a child should never be considered to have their sentence commuted.”

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the GOP frontrunner to replace Parson when he leaves office because of term limits this year, released a statement to the Kansas City Star saying the sentence reduction was “not a good look for the governor and not something I believe I would do.”

“Britt Reid’s reckless decision to drive drunk left Ariel Young with a lifelong traumatic brain injury,” Ashcroft told the Star, “and while the Reid family obviously holds a special place in the hearts of Missourians and Kansas City Chiefs fans, that does not entitle them to special treatment. My heart goes out to the Young family.”

In her statement, Peters Baker noted that Parson refused to use his power to commute the sentences of Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson, who both served long prison sentences and were eventually exonerated and set free despite the governor declining to intervene.

“We are reminded that this governor did not use his political power to commute the sentence of Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson. He used his political power to free a man with status, privilege and connections,” Peters Baker said. “Both Kevin and Lamar are freed today under the rule of law, but only after difficult battles to gain their freedom.”

Parson is a longtime Chiefs season ticket-holder holder who attended Super Bowl this year and celebrated with the team at its victory parade. Reid’s sentencing reprieve was included among three commutations and 36 pardons announced late Friday afternoon by the governor’s office.

A spokesperson for the governor did not respond to a request for comment on the criticism.

Kurt Schaefer, a former state senator who is running for Congress in Missouri's 3rd District (photo submitted).

Kurt Schaefer, a two-term state senator from Columbia who has worked as a lobbyist since leaving the legislature in 2017, on Tuesday officially joined the Republican primary for Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District. 

“This moment in our country’s history demands not only a conservative fighter but a conservative winner,” Schaefer said in a statement announcing his candidacy. “The stakes are too high for more talkers; we need doers, and I promise no one will do more to fight and win for Missouri.”

Schaefer joins a crowded field of Republican candidates hoping to replace U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of St. Elizabeth, who in January announced his retirement after eight terms in the House.

Candidate filing for the August primary opened on Tuesday, and a handful of Republican candidates besides Schaefer made their candidacies official, most notably state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and former state Sen. Bob Onder. 

Taylor Burks of Hartsburg, a former Boone County clerk, announced his intention to run last week but had not yet filed by late Tuesday afternoon. 

Schaefer served in the Missouri Senate from 2009 to 2017. During that time, he became chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, In 2016, he ran against Josh Hawley for Missouri attorney general but was defeated in the Republican primary.

He then went to work as a lobbyist and attorney with Lathrop GPM. According to his campaign, Schaefer and his wife have three adult children and live on their farm in Boone County.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, talks to the media on March 9, 2023 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Dean Plocher’s last year as speaker of the Missouri House wasn’t supposed to go this way.

The Republican from Des Peres was riding high at the end of the 2023 legislative session, able to point to big wins while pinning any disappointments on continued dysfunction in the state Senate. And he had amassed an impressive campaign war chest he hoped would help carry him to the lieutenant governor’s office in the upcoming elections. 

Entering the third month of the 2024 session, things couldn’t get much worse. 

Plocher has been accused over the last few months of, among other things, pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.  

The allegations sparked a formal investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which hired an outside attorney to lead the inquiry. He’s also faced calls for his resignation by several members of the GOP supermajority. 

Missouri Republicans call for investigation of Dean Plocher, raise idea of resignation

Plocher’s hold on his speakership remains tenuous, and his campaign for lieutenant governor is now considered a longshot. His top legislative staff are gone, either fired or resigned in the wake of the scandals. Nearly every week a new story about him seems to emerge, and nearly every press conference he convenes of late ends with him storming out. 

Yet Plocher remains indignant, denying any wrongdoing and vowing to remain speaker. 

“I clearly have no intention to resign,” he told reporters earlier this month. 

But as the ethics probe drags on — the committee’s work is considered confidential until a final report is issued — it casts a foreboding shadow over the session and colors the perception of Plocher’s every move. 

“It’s definitely a dark cloud that’s overhanging everything that we do here,” said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat.

Scrutiny and suspicion

The ethics investigation continues behind the scenes, but its day-to-day impact is playing out in more subtle ways. 

Plocher’s decision to wait more than a month to refer to a committee any bills filed by two Republicans who called for him to step down a speaker drew accusations that he was using his office to retaliate against critics. 

State Rep. Mazzie Christensen, a Republican from Bethany, previously told The Independent that she was “absolutely being punished” for her public criticism of Plocher. 

Questions also swirled after Plocher created a new committee to review House rules and policy, with some fearing it was an attempt by the speaker to give himself more authority over legislative staff. 

Those concerns were fueled, in part, by public statements he and his surrogates made trying to pin the blame for his woes on disgruntled staff working against him and the earlier allegations of retaliating against House employees. 

The fact that the committee meets in the only House hearing room without live streaming capabilities did little to soothe these concerns. 

But state Rep. Paula Brown, a Democrat from Hazelwood who Plocher appointed co-chair of the policy review committee, said the speaker didn’t even talk to her about the committee before she found out she was helping lead it and has provided no direction for how the committee should work or where it should focus.  

In its handful of meetings this year, the policy review committee spent much of its time on things like ambiguity in House rules and discussing possible changes to clear up questions about things like employee leave and the chamber’s discrimination policies. 

Brown, who also serves on the House Ethics Committee, insists there is no cause for concern.

“I don’t anticipate major changes. A lot of this will be clean up,” Brown told The Independent late last month, noting that the panel can only make suggestions that would still have to be approved by the House Administration and Accounts Committee. 

The suspicion surrounding Plocher occasionally even rubs off on others. 

For example, following the revelations about Plocher’s false expense reports, Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig publicly demanded the speaker “resign immediately” because he “violated the same campaign finance rule on nine different occasions and misused taxpayer funds.”

Last week, Koenig seemed to change his tune, posting on social media that he appreciated the way Plocher “addressed the accounting error” and that he was “impressed with how Dean has moved on toward leading the House on important legislation.”

The post drew accusations that Koenig was trying to curry favor with Plocher to avoid having his bills tied up or killed in the House by the speaker’s office. 

Koenig said Monday that’s not the case at all. 

Plocher wanted him to issue a full retraction of his statement, Koenig said, but his social media post was as far as he was willing to go. He cut no deals with the speaker, he said, but does think at this point it’s best to withhold judgment until the ethics committee releases its report. 

“It’s time to move on,” Koenig said.

Swirling scandals

Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of a months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

As those scandals swirled, Plocher fired his chief of staff. According to the Kansas City Star, that got the attention of the House Ethics Committee, which began looking into whether the staffer was protected as a whistleblower when he was fired.

Plocher even garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the constituent management contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, also conducted several interviews about Plocher. 

Since the ethics committee began its probe, Plocher has continued facing scrutiny. 

In December, The Independent reported Plocher spent $60,000 in taxpayer money to renovate his Capitol office, including converting another lawmaker’s office into a makeshift liquor cabinet Plocher referred to as his “butler’s pantry.” 

The Kansas City Star reported earlier this month that Plocher was the only legislator in the past three years to be granted exemptions from House travel policies, allowing him to spend more than allowed to upgrade a flight to Utah and get reimbursed for a flight to a conference in Hawaii.

And last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the annual payroll for the speaker’s office ballooned more than $250,000 since Plocher took over. 

State Rep. Dave Griffith, R-Jefferson City (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A bill requiring the state to expand its efforts to prevent veteran suicide won unanimous approval in the Missouri House this week.

Following an emotional debate that saw lawmakers share personal stories of friends and loved one who took their own lives, the House voted 157-0 on Wednesday in support of a bill sponsored by Rep. Republican Dave Griffith of Jefferson City. It would require the Missouri Veterans Commission to collaborate with the state Department of Mental Health to review policies and establish procedures, programs, treatment options and any other necessary assistance to reduce the veteran suicide rate.

A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs report revealed that 6,392 veterans nationwide lost their lives to suicide in 2021, marking an increase of more than 100 lives from the previous year. In Missouri, 185 military veterans died by suicide that year, with the 2023 federal report indicating a veteran suicide rate in Missouri significantly surpassing the national average.

“It does not really matter what the number is. I don’t care about how Missouri ranks — we have too many veterans taking their lives. Just one is too many,” Griffith said.

The legislation also mandates that the veterans commission provide a detailed report to the legislature by next year on its efforts.

The bill unanimously passed the House last March, and it cleared a Senate committee. But it stalled when the Senate became mired in gridlock in the session’s final weeks.

During the committee hearing on the bill last month, Griffith shared with his colleagues that in the past year “I lost a really, really good friend of mine to suicide.” His friend was a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, and even though he spoke with him shortly before he ended his life “to be honest with you, I had no idea there was something going on with him.”

The bill passed by the House would not a “total solution to the crisis we’re facing right now,” Griffith told his colleagues this week. “But it’s a step in the right direction. If we can prevent one suicide today… we can start turning this into a downward trend.”

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft speaks to reporters Dec. 20, 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is facing criticism from Republican and Democratic rivals over comments he made at a candidate forum this weekend calling into question the fairness of special benefits for veterans. 

During a panel for gubernatorial candidates at the annual Missouri Republican Party Lincoln Days in Kansas City over the weekend, Ashcroft was asked how the state can better support veterans and active duty military personnel. 

Ashcroft said “we need to do what we promised them,” before acknowledging he was about to say something that “probably isn’t what you want for the answer to your question.”

“I don’t think we ought to treat people based on classifications,” he said. “I think we ought to treat everybody equally. And I don’t think we ought to say that if you live here, we’re gonna charge you this, but if you live here, we charge you this. I don’t think we ought to say if you’re in the military, we’ll give you this discount, but everybody else has to pay twice as much. I don’t think that’s good government.”

When someone is a member of the military and moves into the state, Ashcroft said, “it’s harder sometimes to get licensed and make sure you have licensing reciprocity. What I always said was, why don’t we just make that rule for everybody? Why don’t we just say that government is the problem, and let’s get government out of the way, let people make their own decisions and not keep picking and choosing winners and losers.”

He concluded: “I appreciate veterans. I have veterans in my family. I like what they’ve done. But what we ought to do is say, if it’s good for veterans, it’s good to do it for everyone.”

This answer from ⁦@JayAshcroftMO⁩ was the most discussed answer from the ⁦@MissouriGOP⁩ forum yesterday. ⁦

Jay Ashcroft comes out against military discounts for our state’s veterans. Shameful. #MOGOV pic.twitter.com/g1iUBym36a

— West STL Republican (@WestStLouisGOP) February 18, 2024

State Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican who served in the Air Force, responded to Ashcroft’s comments during the forum by saying he was “stunned to hear one of the candidates here say he’s not interested in looking into veteran’s issues or helping them out.”

He continued his criticism Wednesday, as footage of Ashcroft’s comments began to spread on social media.

“I lost friends. I saw the struggle upon returning to the states,” he said. “I disdain the ruling elite who send our men and women to die in their wars, all while doing nothing to ensure their sacrifice is honored when they return home.”

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican from Jefferson City who also participated in the candidate forum, said Wednesday evening that for Jay Ashcroft to “treat our veterans as anything less than heroes is disrespectful to all veterans and their families. Communities across our state value our nation’s heroes and their service and sacrifice to our country, and they would want their governor to do the same.”

Democrats also piled on.

Emma O’Brien, press secretary for the Democratic Governors Association, called Ashcroft an “insider politician who only looks out for himself, but wants to rip away benefits from members of the military and veterans who put their lives on the line to protect our freedom.”

In a statement to The Independent Wednesday evening, Ashcroft did not address the criticism but said it is “shameful that we have failed to fulfill our commitment to our veterans.”

“No Americans make a greater sacrifice for our freedoms and security than the men and women who wear the uniform of our armed forces,” the statement read. “The sacrifices that they and their families make are unimaginable for those of us who have not served. I honor that service and as governor will make our commitment to them a priority, without qualification.”

Ashcroft — a two-term secretary of state whose father served as auditor, attorney general, governor and U.S. Senator of Missouri — has consistently led both Kehoe and Eigel in polls of the GOP gubernatorial primary.

The Missouri House chamber during debate on March 12, 2023 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Republicans and Democrats joined together Monday night to sink a wide-ranging judicial bill that managed to stir up enough policy concerns and internal grudges to keep it from winning anywhere near enough votes to clear the Missouri House.

The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Rudy Veit and backed by the chamber’s GOP leadership, including a litany of provisions that have found success in the House in the past.  But on Monday, the bill ran into a buzzsaw of opposition that resulted in only 57 of 111 Republicans and one Democrat voting in support. 

The vote was a rare defeat for GOP leadership in the Missouri House, where the party has super majorities and typically won’t bring a bill up for debate unless votes have been whipped and victory is assured.

For Republicans, there were myriad reasons for voting no, said state Rep. Ben Baker, a GOP lawmaker from Neosho who opposed the bill Monday. 

There was confusion about language in the bill that some felt was too ambiguous, he said, and others had heartburn about a few of the provisions that they felt hadn’t been vetted thoroughly enough. 

The bill, or some version of it, will likely return later in the session, Baker said. 

Democrats, meanwhile, keyed in on a provision that would exclude grandparents from a required background check when seeking guardianship of a child with a developmental disability.

State Rep. Keri Ingle, a Lee’s Summit Democrat who previously worked as an adoption specialist for the Jackson County Children’s Division, said she’s fought off similar proposals “for six years” out of concern that children could be taken from their parents and put into the custody of someone who might abuse them. 

“There are cycles of abuse and trauma, and it goes by generations,” she said. “The reason why, when I worked at the children’s division, we did background checks on grandparents and relatives was not because we assumed the worst about them. But imagine taking a child out of a parents’ home and putting them with someone who was then going to abuse and neglect them. And no, that’s not most grandparents. But it is some. I have seen it.”

Veit pushed back, noting that the bill would still require background checks if requested by the guardian ad litem for the child or is otherwise ordered by the court.

“The attorney for the child has a right to ask for a background check,” he said. 

There was also some leftover frustration among Democrats with how quickly Republicans forced the 40-page bill through the process the week before, said state Rep. Peter Merideth, a St. Louis Democrat. 

The bill won initial passage after only 10 minutes of debate. 

Meridith said he was denied a chance to ask questions about the bill last week because he had filed an amendment seeking to implement a “red flag law,” which allows for temporary firearm removal from individuals believed to be at risk of harming themselves or others.

“Part of my opposition was them not letting me offer my red flag amendment or even talk about the bill itself,” Meridith said. “That was the day before the Kansas City shooting, and then we come back and they say ‘now’s not the time to talk about this while emotions are running high.’ Well, we tried to talk about this last week and you wouldn’t let us.”

Merideth also raised concerns about a piece of the bill targeting strategic lawsuits against public participation, more commonly referred to as “SLAPP.” 

Anti-SLAPP laws provide defendants a way to quickly dismiss meritless lawsuits, often filed by big companies or wealthy individuals seeking to suppress speech they don’t like. 

Merideth brought up public statements and social media posts by the Missouri Senate Freedom Caucus accusing without evidence an Olathe man of being an undocumented immigrant behind the mass shooting last week in Kansas City. 

“They said defamatory things,” Merideth said. “And here we are debating a provision that would give an extra out for people sued for defamation if it’s a matter of public importance. No, that needs to be vetted.”

There has been a lot of “Republican propaganda of late that has defamed people,” Meredith said, pointing to huge payouts in defamation cases against Fox News and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. 

“I don’t want to be protecting them with this change,” he said, adding that he isn’t positive the bill would apply in those instances but he couldn’t be sure since he couldn’t debate the issue last week. 

Jean Maneke, an attorney for the Missouri Press Association, said the anti-SLAPP law has been a priority of her organization for years.

News organizations and individual journalists, she said, can face financial threat from a groundless defamation case brought by a subject of an enterprise or investigative story.

But Maneke said she has also represented individuals who were not members of the media and were forced to settle frivolous defamation lawsuits simply because they couldn’t afford to take the issue to court. 

Anti-SLAPP laws, she said, provide a quicker process for filing motions to get a timely dismissal. 

According to the conservative nonprofit Institute for Free Speech, there are 15 states with a comprehensive anti-SLAPP law on the books.

“The benefit of an anti-SLAPP statute is you can file this motion,” she said, “and everything stops and the judge has to make a decision about your First Amendment rights.”

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, leads routine business on the first day of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

So far this year, state Rep. Mazzie Christensen has filed 11 bills, ranging from changes to statewide education and public health policy to narrow legislation designed to help a small county in her district. 

State Rep. Adam Schwadron has filed 12 bills, including his top priority to create a state fund to defray costs of security enhancements for nonprofits at elevated risk of terrorist attacks in Missouri.

Up until Thursday, more than a month into the legislative session, Christensen and Schwadron were the only Republican lawmakers who filed legislation this year who had not had any bills referred to committee by House Speaker Dean Plocher. 

The pair also share one other thing in common: They were among the loudest voices within the House Republican caucus calling for Plocher to step down from leadership amid a litany of scandals. 

With Plocher’s future still uncertain as he remains under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, Christensen believes he’s using his power as speaker to retaliate against those who spoke out. 

“I’m absolutely being punished,” Christensen said in an interview last week. “And I think it’s really petty and childish.”

Plocher finally referred one bill each from Christensen and Schwadron to committee on Thursday, as word spread The Independent was asking questions about the the situation. 

Schwadron wasn’t interested in speculating about why his bills have been stuck in limbo, saying only that he remains hopeful he can get his legislation across the finish line. 

“I’m just happy that we’re moving through the process,” he said. 

House rules require the speaker to refer “all bills and resolutions” to a committee, but impose no requirement that it be done in order or at any particular time during the legislative session. 

Plocher, through a spokesman, denied taking any punitive action against anyone who called for him to resign. 

“While the speaker has referred a record amount of bills to committees at this point in session, not every bill will be referred, and not every referral occurs on the first day of session,” Plocher’s spokesman said in a statement. “Bills will continue to be filed through the end of this month. Bills will continue to be referred throughout the session.”

‘He should resign’

In September, public records obtained by The Independent showed nonpartisan staff raising concerns about Plocher’s push for the House to award a lucrative contract to a private company. 

Plocher allegedly threatened the job of the chief clerk of the House over her criticism of the potential contract. In emails to other staff and a Republican legislator, the clerk expressed “growing concerns of unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” by the speaker.

A month later, The Independent reported that Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign. 

In each instance, Plocher was required to sign a sworn statement declaring that the payments were made with “personal funds, for which I have not been reimbursed.”

Adding to Plocher’s headaches were revelations that the Missouri House spent $60,000 of taxpayer money renovating his office — including $29,000 on new furniture. As part of the renovation, Plocher turned another legislator’s office into what he’s referred to as his “butler’s pantry,” stocked with liquor, beer, wine and soda to complement the supply in his office.

And more recently, the Kansas City Star reported Plocher twice sought and received exemptions from House travel policies, allowing him to spend more than allowed to upgrade a flight to Utah and get reimbursed for a flight to a conference in Hawaii. 

Those are the only two written requests for exemptions or waivers of House policies on travel expenses made over the past three years.

Amid the swirling scandals, Plocher also fired his chief of staff and legislative director. His chief legal counsel resigned in November. 

Christensen was among the first members of the House GOP caucus to speak out, releasing a statement in late October calling on Plocher to step down as speaker over “alleged unethical behavior that is deeply concerning.”

“I believe we need a new leader with integrity,” she said at the time, “to help House Republicans move this state forward.”

In an interview last week, Christensen stood behind her statement. 

“He should resign,” she said. “I still believe that. I didn’t say he should resign from the legislature. But he shouldn’t be in leadership.”

Schwadron, who is running for Missouri secretary of state, wrote a letter to his GOP colleagues in early November highlighting what he called Plocher’s “misuse of taxpayer funds and other potential scandals.”

“I am formally asking that our friend, Speaker Dean Plocher, put aside his pride and personal ambitions and immediately resign his speakership for the good of our Republican caucus and our Missouri Republican Party,” he wrote. 

Schwadron said last week that he still believes Plocher should resign. But the majority of the GOP caucus wants to wait until the ethics committee releases its report before passing judgment, he said, “and I will respect the position of the caucus.”

It’s unclear when the ethics investigation will be complete. The committee has not met since Dec. 6. Proceedings of the committee are confidential, and none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered is public until a report is issued.

‘Different ways of representing my district’

Through his spokesman, Plocher said other representatives who “expressed similar sentiments prior to session commencing have had their bills referred,” noting that 1,330 bills have been filed in the House so far this session and 519 were referred to committees.

The first Republican House member to call for Plocher to resign was state Rep. Chris Sander of Lone Jack. He’s had one bill referred to committee so far this year — legislation that would do away with Daylight Savings Time. 

He couldn’t be reached Friday for comment. 

State Rep. Doug Richey, an Excelsior Springs Republican, also publicly called for Plocher’s resignation. A month into session, Richey finally got three bills referred to committee. 

Richey said he spoke with the speaker’s office about his bills, though neither side made any promises or cut any deals. 

And while Richey stands behind his call for Plocher to resign, like Schwadron, he said he will abide by the will of the GOP caucus and wait for the ethics report before formally deciding the speaker’s fate.

Christensen said she’s not concerned about being in the doghouse with the speaker’s office. She’ll find ways to be effective even if her bills never get any traction, she said, and has found other lawmakers willing to add her ideas to their bills. 

“I’m just gonna have to figure out different ways of representing my district,” she said. “But I know my district didn’t just send me here to pass bills. They sent me here to be honest and truthful and stand up for what I believe in, and I’m not going to back down from that.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey, right, testifies to the House Budget Committee on Feb. 6, 2024 (Rudi Keller/MIssouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told lawmakers Tuesday that his office completed work on the 224 pending records requests that were left unfinished by his predecessor and expects to finalize all requests submitted in the last year by May. 

Questioned by the House Budget Committee on Tuesday about his office’s massive Sunshine Law backlog, Bailey said he has dedicated more resources to processing public records requests than any previous attorney general. 

“For the first time in my knowledge at the Attorney General’s Office, we have a full time employee that all they do is custodial records work,” he said, later adding: “Four other staff members assist in that endeavor.”

When he took over the office in January 2023, Bailey inherited 224 unfinished requests that had been submitted by the public to former Attorney General Eric Schmitt. 

Some of those requests had been pending since 2021.

‘Black hole’: Public faces long delays obtaining records from Missouri attorney general

To tackle the backlog, Bailey implemented a policy to work through requests on a first come, first serve basis. That meant newer inquiries that were small and easily dispensed with sat in limbo as staff worked on older and more expansive requests.

For example, a request in November for two days of Bailey’s official calendar — typically turned around in a matter of days by other government agencies — was projected to take six months to complete. 

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Bailey said Tuesday that the backlog should be a thing of the past by the end of May. 

“I say that as an anticipated date,” he said, “because as you begin reviewing records, the volume of records that are caught in the search, it could be 10 records, it could be 10,000 records.”

Bailey has drawn criticism from transparency advocates over how he’s handled the backlog, especially given the attorney general’s office is the agency that enforces the Sunshine Law in Missouri. 

Madeline Sieren, Bailey’s spokesperson, defended the office’s dedication to upholding open records laws by noting that the attorney general’s office completed 56 separate Sunshine Law trainings last year — double Schmitt’s first year as attorney general in 2019 and up from 51 in 2022 and 42 in 2021. 

She said the attorney general’s office also “significantly improved the efficiency, speed and results in addressing Sunshine Law complaints.”

“Since Jan. 3, 2023,” she said, “we have closed 525 Sunshine Law complaints, which were received both this year and in previous years.”

Former state Sen. Bob Onder, a Republican from Lake St. Louis (photo courtesy of Missouri Senate Communications).

Onder’s exit from the lieutenant governor’s race leaves Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, state Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder, Franklin County Clerk Tim Baker and St. Louis County businessman Paul Berry III. State Sen. Lincoln Hough of Springfield recently said he is also considering joining the lieutenant governor’s race.

House Speaker Dean Plocher during the 2023 veto session (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher bristled Thursday morning at questions about a recently fired legislative staffer and an ongoing ethics investigation he’s facing, cutting off a press conference he convened after only four minutes.

A day after he dismissed his legislative director, who had worked for the House since 2016 and served in the position under two previous speakers, Plocher declined to answer questions about it.

“Those are human resources issues,” he said. “I’m not going to comment on that.”

Embattled Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher dismisses another top staffer

Wednesday’s departure marks the third high-profile staffer to leave Plocher’s office in recent months, as an ethics inquiry into allegations of misconduct by the speaker continues to swirl.

Asked what the trio of departures means for his office, Plocher said: “Just that. I have my staff.”

“I’m excited to move forward,” he said. “We’re moving the state in the right direction. The House is working hard.”

The former staff member, Erica Choinka, was dismissed Wednesday afternoon and was escorted from the Capitol during the busiest day of the legislative work week. The House and Senate adjourn for the week on Thursdays, leaving the statehouse largely empty until Monday.

Shortly after the press conference ended, Plocher released a statement formally announcing his new legislative coordinator — Daris Davis, a former legislative assistant in the House and chief of staff in the state Senate.

Plocher was also asked whether he had been interviewed by the House Ethics Committee as part of its investigation, to which he responded: “Regarding what?”

He then added, after the reporter clarified the question: “I can’t comment on that. You know that.”

Proceedings of the committee are confidential, and none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered is public until a report is issued.

Plocher did say Thursday that he hopes the ethics committee finishes its work soon.

“I would love it to have it be completed today,” he said.

The ethics inquiry was launched late last year after The Independent reported that Plocher had on numerous occasions over the years illegally sought reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

Plocher is also accused of threatening nonpartisan House staff during his unsuccessful push last summer for the chamber to spend nearly $800,000 to hire a private company to manage constituent information.

The revelations led several Republican officials — including members of the House GOP caucus — to call for Plocher to resign.

Asked Thursday morning how he believes the legislative session has been going following those calls for his resignation, Plocher abruptly ended the press conference.

“I clearly have no intention to resign,” he said, interrupting a reporter’s follow-up question by adding: “Is that it? Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.”

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, claps as the Missouri House welcomes a guest on the first day of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher fired his legislative director Wednesday, the latest in a series of departures from his office as he continues to face an ethics investigation into allegations of unlawful conduct. 

Erica Choinka had worked for the Missouri House since 2016, first as a legislative assistant and then as legislative director for former Speakers Elijah Haahr and Rob Vescovo. She continued to serve under Plocher until Wednesday, when she was fired. 

Choinka declined to comment, and a spokesman for Plocher did not immediately respond to an email about the dismissal. 

The staff shakeup follows the firing of Plocher’s chief of staff in October and the resignation of his chief legal counsel in November. And it comes as an ethics inquiry into his alleged misconduct enters its fourth month. 

The investigation was launched late last year after The Independent reported that Plocher on numerous occasions over the years illegally sought reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign. 

In each instance, Plocher was required to sign a sworn statement declaring that the payments were made with “personal funds, for which I have not been reimbursed.”

Ethics investigation into Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher continues

Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres running for lieutenant governor, has flatly denied any wrongdoing, chalking up the years of false expense reports to a “checkbook error.”

Also part of the ethics inquiry are allegations by the chief clerk of the House of potentially illegal and unethical conduct by Plocher in his unsuccessful push for the chamber to spend nearly $800,000 to hire a private company to manage constituent information. Plocher allegedly threatened to fire the clerk when she voiced concerns about the contract. 

The saga has garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, has also interviewed several individuals about Plocher.

Asked Monday by reporters about the ongoing ethics inquiry, House Majority Leader Jon Patterson said he would withhold comment until the committee finishes its work. He said Plocher is “really focused on the job.”

“I think he’s doing the best he can with what he has,” said Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, “and you know, we’re all just waiting on the ethics report to see what it shows.”

The 10-member ethics committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Proceedings of the committee are confidential, and none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered is public until a report is issued. 

Biden administration attorneys have argued federal officials don’t have the authority to order content removed from social media platforms (Chris McGrath/Getty Images).

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on March 18 in Missouri’s lawsuit alleging the federal government colluded with social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to suppress the freedom of speech.

The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana.

Last summer, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ruled that officials under both Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican President Donald Trump coerced social media companies to censor content over concerns it would fuel vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans prohibited the White House, the Surgeon General’s Office, the F.B.I., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from having practically any contact with the social media companies. It found that the Biden administration most likely overstepped the First Amendment by urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content.

The Supreme Court placed a temporary stay on the order in October until it decides the case. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

Biden administration attorneys have argued federal officials don’t have the authority to order content removed from social media platforms, accusing GOP attorneys general of misrepresenting communications with companies about public health disinformation and election conspiracies.

The government has a right to express views in order to persuade others to take action, Biden administration attorneys argued in case filings.

“A central dimension of presidential power,” the administration argues, “is the use of the office’s bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans — and American companies — to act in ways that the president believes would advance the public interest.”

But the bully pulpit, Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general wrote, “is not a pulpit to bully.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson begins the annual State of the State speech to a joint session of the legislature on Wednesday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

In his final address to a joint session of the Missouri General Assembly, Gov. Mike Parson on Wednesday pointed to outlawing abortion, increasing infrastructure spending and appointing five statewide office holders as the legacy of his six years in office.

“I’ll be leaving here with my head held high,” Parson told lawmakers during his annual State of the State address. 

Parson can’t seek re-election because of term limits. After years in the legislature, and 18 months as lieutenant governor, he was elevated to the state’s highest office in 2018 after then-Gov. Eric Greitens was forced to resign in disgrace.

He was elected to a full four-year term in 2020. 

When he took over, Parson said, Missourians were “tired of the turmoil, political infighting and self involved personalities. They were tired of quitters.

“We declared a fresh start and the return of stability,” he said. “We committed to ensuring the next generations have their opportunity at the American Dream. We promised the return of integrity. Above all, we promised to return a people first mentality to state government, and that’s our final commitment to Missourians. Until our final day, we’ll continue putting people first.”

Twice during his speech he noted that abortion is illegal in Missouri, thanks to a bill he signed in 2019 that included a trigger that outlawed the procedure if the U.S. Supreme Court ever struck down Roe v. Wade. 

That Supreme Court ruling eventually came in 2022. Abortion-rights advocates have now launched an initiative petition campaign seeking to overturn the ban. 

“We fought the fight for life,” Parson said in his speech. 

Infrastructure spending has been the main thrust of Parson’s agenda during his time in office. He told lawmakers Wednesday that over the last six years Missouri has rebuilt more than 1,000 bridges and repaired 50% of its entire highway system.

But the infrastructure project that could be his biggest legacy is Interstate 70. 

Parson had hoped to rebuild portions of the interstate as part of his budget proposal last year. Legislative leaders decided the governor’s plan didn’t go far enough, boosting funding to $1.4 billion in general revenue and $1.4 billion in borrowed funds to widen the interstate across the state. 

“The expansion of I-70 has been talked about in this building for decades. Decades of hot air. Decades of passing the buck,” he said. “Under our administration, this General Assembly and the leadership of (Senate Appropriations Chairman Lincoln) Hough, decades of inaction turned to action. This summer, construction on I-70 is set to begin in Columbia.”

Parson also noted the fact that he’s filled vacancies in three statewide offices, appointing Vivek Malek as treasurer, Mike Kehoe as lieutenant governor and Andrew Bailey as attorney general. He previously appointed Eric Schmitt attorney general and Scott Fitzpatrick as treasurer. 

And he said his administration has “reshaped our Supreme Court and judiciary as a whole. We’ve protected Second Amendment rights, focused on law and order and safeguarded Missouri’s landmark castle doctrine.”

Missouri has maintained its AAA bond rating, enacted three tax cuts and “paid down Missouri’s debt by over $600 million,” Parson said.

He also bragged that the clemency backlog he inherited “has been totally cleared for the first time in decades.”

“In less than six years,” he said, “we’ve accomplished more than most governors are able to in eight years.”

Delivering the Democrats response to Parson’s speech, House Minority Leader Crystal Quade of Springfield was asked about the governor’s legacy.

“The legacy of Gov. Parson is riddled with a lot of unfortunate events,” she said. “He talked about a lot of really great things that he accomplished, but we didn’t talk about the (Department of Revenue) director who had to get fired for fumbling the tax tables and charging Missourians too much in their taxes. We didn’t talk about a Department of Health director who tracked women’s periods.”

She added: “There are a lot of things that we could talk about that have not been great within this administration.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson congratulates Andrew Bailey on being appointed attorney general on Nov. 23, 2022 (photo courtesy of the Missouri Governor's Office).

When he appointed Andrew Bailey as attorney general in late 2022, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson vowed he’d have “the full resources of the governor of the State of Missouri” to ensure his success in the new job. 

“On the political side,” Parson added, “I’ll do everything I can.”

During Bailey’s transition into office, Parson dispatched his top staffers to offer assistance. And after numerous high-profile staff departures from the attorney general’s office, two Parson aides — his deputy general counsel and deputy policy director — joined Bailey’s team. 

By September, the governor’s office turned its attention to a national political organization that Parson felt wasn’t properly supporting Bailey’s campaign for a full term. 

In a letter to the executive committee of the Republican Attorneys General Association — written on official letterhead from the governor’s office — Parson chastised the organization for how it was treating Bailey. 

He complained that a member of the organization’s staff was trying to “perpetuate the impression RAGA will not support Attorney General Bailey,” and took umbrage with the staffer making what Parson called a “petty statement” in a Politico article, which was attached to the letter. 

“RAGA not supporting one of their own is quite unprecedented and deeply concerning,” Parson wrote in the letter to 10 attorneys general on RAGA’s executive committee and obtained by The Independent through a public records request.  

He asked if RAGA leadership knew about these behind-the-scenes machinations, then hinted at the possibility that they could hurt support for a pair of attorneys general running for governor last year — David Cameron in Kentucky and Jeff Landry in Louisiana. 

“I think this is important for my fellow governors to know, as we are being asked to support a number of your colleagues as well,” Parson wrote. 

The governor’s office did not respond to several requests for comment. Bailey’s campaign said that while he was alerted to the letter’s existence by another attorney general, he remains unaware of its contents.

Yet Parson’s decision to use his office to pressure RAGA to support Bailey is drawing accusations that the governor may have violated a state law prohibiting the misuse of public resources for campaign purposes. 

“That letter is an example of the governor using official taxpayer resources to advance a campaign agenda,” said Will Scharf, who is running against Bailey in the Republican attorney general primary. “It is egregious and potentially illegal.”

It appears Parson used official letterhead “to convey that the Office of the Governor is behind a certain political candidate,” said Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center. “That’s not appropriate, and it’s not a good use of the public’s trust.”

Donald Sherman, senior vice president and chief counsel for the liberal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the governor’s letter “stinks quite a bit.”

“Governors and other state officials should not use official taxpayer resources and the authority of their government offices for partisan politics,” he said. 

The criticism echoes similar complaints last year when Parson’s department of labor spent $100,000 for a television advertisement that featured Bailey. And it comes after two GOP candidates for governor — state Sen. Bill Eigel and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft — publicly alleged Parson was using his office to boost the gubernatorial prospects of Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe with a press conference and executive order earlier this month pertaining to foreign ownership of Missouri land. 

Parson, who can’t run again because of term limits, appointed Kehoe lieutenant governor in 2018. Kehoe appeared at the press conference but did not participate. 

Eigel called the press conference an “in-kind contribution from Mike Parson’s government office” to Kehoe’s campaign, and Ashcroft’s campaign spokesman alleged the “stunt was designed to protect Kehoe from his record.”

Kehoe was asked to participate, Parson said during the press conference, because there was a chance the governor would not be able to attend due to the recent passing of his mother-in-law. A spokesperson for the lieutenant governor’s office said Kehoe was involved in the discussions of the executive order because of “his agriculture background and relationships with agriculture stakeholders across the state.”

Supporting an incumbent? 

The Republican Attorneys General Association has not endorsed in Missouri’s GOP primary, but its executive director — Peter Bisbee — donated $250 to Scharf’s campaign. 

Politico reported in August that Scharf’s campaign was touting in a memo that “we do not expect RAGA to offer Bailey any support despite his status as a technical incumbent, a testament to the expected weakness of Bailey as a candidate and the expected strength of Scharf’s challenge.”

Scharf, a former assistant U.S. attorney who served as policy director for former Gov. Eric Greitens, also received a $500,000 campaign contribution last year from The Concord Fund, which is funded by groups connected to longtime conservative legal activist and Scharf supporter Leonard Leo.

The Concord Fund is by far the top contributor to the Republican Attorneys General Association.

According to Politico, Bisbee lobbied Parson’s office to appoint Scharf attorney general in 2022, allegedly warning that appointing someone else “is gonna create problems” for the governor’s office. 

The position was being vacated by Eric Schmitt, who won a seat in the U.S. Senate and had long enjoyed support from RAGA. Schmitt previously served as vice chairman of RAGA’s executive committee, and he endorsed Bailey last month while also stating that Scharf is a “personal friend” and “an excellent candidate to hold the office.”

It was the Politico article that appears to have inspired Parson’s letter. 

The story quoted Bisbee telling the governor’s office to “spend less time fueling childish gossip.”

Parson complained about the quote in his letter, and argued Bailey was being treated differently by RAGA than Schmitt despite both being appointed by Parson to the job. And he accused Bisbee of creating confusion “around the organization’s support for an opponent.” 

Bisbee did not respond to requests for comment from The Independent. 

Michael Hafner, Bailey’s campaign spokesperson, said the attorney general has a strong relationship with RAGA, “partnering with his fellow RAGA members on at least 159 issues, demonstrating his strong commitment to our shared conservative values.”

“General Bailey is proud,” Hafner said, “to join his Republican colleagues around the country to take Joe Biden to court, defend Missourians from the left’s attacks on our freedoms, and is proud to lead the charge nationally on many of the conservative legal movement’s most important fights.”

He accused Scharf of trying to “score cheap political points” by criticizing Parson’s letter. 

Concerns about the use of official resources for campaigns have come up sporadically over the years in Missouri. And two of the highest profile examples involve attorneys general. 

In 1993, former Attorney General Bill Webster pleaded guilty to two federal felony charges related to using his state staff and office equipment for political purposes. Employees in Webster’s office laid out and printed campaign material on state time using state equipment.

In 2018, former Attorney General Josh Hawley was investigated by the secretary of state’s office and auditor’s office after it was revealed his campaign consultants helped run his taxpayer-funded office, including leading meetings during work hours in the state Supreme Court building in Jefferson City, where the attorney general’s office is located. Hawley also used a state car for campaign travel. 

The secretary of state found no evidence Hawley violated election law. The auditor concluded that Hawley may have misused state resources, but whether he ultimately broke the law was unclear because the attorney general’s office conducted business off government servers through use of private email and text messaging.

In 2022, a Cole County judge ruled that Hawley’s staff illegally refused to turn over public records out of concern it could have hurt his Senate campaign. The state was ordered to pay $240,000 in legal fees.

This story has been updated since it was first published. 

Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, finishes his speech on the first day of the 2024 Legislative Session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Senate picked up Wednesday afternoon largely where it left off when it adjourned in May, with a group of Republicans holding court for more than an hour to vent frustrations with the chamber’s leadership. 

For the past three years, a group of GOP senators who had previously been aligned under the banner of the “conservative caucus” openly warred with Republican Senate leadership, often turning to procedural maneuvers to mire the chamber in gridlock.

On the opening day of the 2024 legislative session Wednesday, the group — reconstituted this year as the “Freedom Caucus” — argued that its purpose isn’t to impede but rather to advocate for conservative principles that should be the priority of a Republican-dominated General Assembly. 

“It’s not to be obstructionists,” state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, said of the Freedom Caucus’ motivation. “It’s to be an advancer of freedom and liberty. It’s to be an advancer of the Republican ideals that we have to sign up for to run for these offices to get these super majorities.”

State Sen. Nick Schroer, an O’Fallon Republican, said despite GOP super majorities, the legislature has failed to advance party priorities on taxes, education and gun rights. 

“You always hear, year after year after year, every single election season, it seems to be the same thing: ‘We didn’t get anything done this year, but I promise we’ll do it next year.’ I’m tired of talking,” Schoer said. “I’m tired of kicking the can. Let us actually get something done.”

Republican Sens. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring, Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg and Mike Moon of Ash Grove also expressed frustration with how the chamber has operated in recent years, including the propensity to combine multiple bills into one piece of legislation in the session’s final weeks. 

Specifically, they pointed to a recent Missouri Supreme Court ruling striking down a wide-ranging bill it determined was in violation of the state constitution’s single subject requirement.

“We need to be more diligent about making sure that what we pass are really single-subject bills, and really scrutinize any amendments that are offered that would change the original intent of a bill,” Hoskins said. 

For his part, Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden of Columbia used his brief opening remarks Wednesday to get right to the question of whether the 2024 session will follow in the dysfunctional footsteps of previous years. 

“Will we focus on principled progress or political pandemonium?” he said. “Will we care more about Missouri’s future or our own futures?”

Rowden added: “I have faith in each and every one of you to rise to this occasion, to put the needs of our constituents before our own, and to prove that we can indeed govern well.”

In the House, Speaker Dean Plocher urged his colleagues to “put statesmanship and the welfare of the people before playing politics and personal interest.”

“Today marks the formal beginning of this year’s legislative efforts. And I think about all the things over my 8 years that have kept us from achieving our goals of making the welfare of the people the supreme law,” he said. “Things like party influences, regional interest, political self interest or pandering for an election.”

A combination of ongoing Senate Republican infighting, an ongoing ethics investigation into Plocher and election year posturing has dampened expectations for a productive legislative session this year. 

But Plocher said he is confident that no one wants “petty issues to cause bills to die when Missouri’s interests are at stake.”

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story. 

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

Missouri lawmakers return to Jefferson City on Wednesday afternoon for the start of the 2024 legislative session, and expectations aren’t high. 

GOP infighting has mired the Missouri Senate in gridlock the last three years, and the wounds at the center of the turmoil seem to have only gotten worse. Across the Capitol rotunda in the House, an ethics investigation into Speaker Dean Plocher could upend the agenda and cost Plocher his job. 

Election year politics hang over both chambers, with a handful of state representatives facing off in the August primary for Senate seats and five senators vying for statewide office. 

Complicating matters further, medical provider taxes that are vital to sustaining the state’s Medicaid program expire this year. The last time the taxes needed to be renewed, the issue derailed the Senate and required a special legislative session during the summer. 

“I would guess that a sizable amount of the session is going to be spent navigating people making campaign commercials on the House and Senate floor, bickering at each other and trying to force recorded votes that turn into campaign mailers,” said state Rep. Tony Lovasco, R-O’Fallon. 

Democratic state Rep. LaDonna Appelbaum of St. Louis shares Lovasco’s sense of pessimism.

“I am greatly concerned that, because it is a campaign year, it’s going to be a s**tshow,” she said. 

Freedom Caucus

Last year’s legislative session nearly set a record for futility. 

Over the last 30 years, only the COVID-shortened 2020 legislative session saw lawmakers adjourn with fewer bills successfully passed and sent to the governor. 

A group of Republican senators who had previously been aligned under the banner of the “conservative caucus” openly warred with GOP leadership all session in 2023, often turning to procedural maneuvers to mire the chamber in gridlock. 

The drama culminated in the session’s final week, when filibusters by Republican Sens. Mike Moon of Ash Grove and Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring doomed any hopes of a functioning Senate. 

Earlier this month, six Republican senators — most of whom were part of the disbanded conservative caucus — announced the formation of the Freedom Caucus. 

“We’re now a part of a national network, and my hope is that all 24 Republican senators would be part of a Freedom Caucus,” said state Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Republican from Warrensburg who is running for secretary of state. “But unfortunately, as we’ve seen in the past, some Republican senators don’t look too conservative like they promised their constituents.”

The network is designed to provide research and staff support to members. But some expect the caucus to deepen the fissures that have plagued the Senate for years and fuel more dysfunction. 

“It’s going to add another layer of complication every day that we go out there on the Senate floor,” said state Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican and chairman of the Senate appropriations committee.

Factional divides in the Senate are already raising fear of a replay of the 2021 session, when the normally routine process of renewing taxes on hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies and ambulances — known as the federal reimbursement allowance, or FRA — splintered the Senate. 

Renewal of the FRA is crucial for funding Medicaid. When it came up in 2021, the conservative caucus demanded that the FRA include an amendment barring the state from paying for some contraceptive medications and devices, and preventing Planned Parenthood from being a Medicaid provider.

When infighting killed a renewal during the regular session, lawmakers were forced to return over the summer. The FRA was renewed for three years only after 11 of the 23 Republicans present voted with all 10 Democrats to defeat the conservative caucus’ amendment. 

A repeat of that turmoil — especially during an election year — is the doomsday scenario for those hoping for a smooth session. 

“There’s gonna be a whole lot of people that do things for political reasons, as always,” Hough said. “It’s just gotten worse and worse and worse.”

Hoskins argues the issues being advocated by the Freedom Caucus shouldn’t be particularly controversial for Republicans. 

“Some big red Republican priorities have been stymied by what I call campaign conservatives,” he said, “those Republicans that campaign as a conservative then vote as a Democrat once they get to Jefferson City.”

‘We’ll get things done’

Not everyone is feeling as gloomy about the 2024 session. 

“I mean, I think we’ll get things done,” said Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican. “Will we get everything done that we want to do? No, we never do. But I’m an optimist.”

Democrats and Republicans share many of the same goals, O’Laughlin said, and progress can be made if people are willing to sit down and talk about how to reach those goals.

“So all we need to do is figure out how do we get there, which is often the sticking point,” she said. “But it can be done if you want to do it.”

All signs point towards “continued and amplified dysfunction,” said Democratic state Rep. Peter Merideth of St. Louis. But it’s always possible “that the same motivations of needing to get some boxes checked for their campaigns may actually cause them to get things across the finish line.”

But that wouldn’t be great news for Democrats, Merideth said. Republican infighting, he said, has helped sink a lot of GOP priorities in recent years.  

“I’m going to remain hopeful,” Merideth said, “that if the last couple of years are any indication, adding more fuel to the fire this year will only help kill a lot of the things that are really toxic.”

State Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, hopes there are uncontroversial issues that people can rally around “that we can get done and deliver for the people we represent.”

And there are certain things — like passing the budget or extending the FRA — that are core functions of government that need to happen, she said. 

But after that?

 “I hope that the policies I dislike,” she said, “are the ones that fail because of the dysfunction.”

The Independent’s Rudi Keller, Allison Kite, Clara Bates and Anna Spoerre contributed to this story.

State Rep. Sarah Unsicker, D-Shrewsbury, speaks on June 29, 2021, during a House Budget Committee hearing (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

House Democrats voted on Thursday to expel state Rep. Sarah Unsicker from the caucus, saying she has failed to live up to the party’s values of “inclusiveness, tolerance and respect.”

Unsicker, who until recently was running for attorney general, has been under fire from her own party for weeks following a series of social media posts that included a photo of her with a right-wing activist that the Anti-Defamation League lists as a Holocaust denier.

Both Unsicker and the activist in question refute that he is a Holocaust denier, but Unsicker was stripped of her positions on House committees because of the association. 

Her critics grew louder earlier this month after she said on social media that she was forwarding a “criminal complaint” to the Missouri secretary of state’s office alleging a Jewish candidate for attorney general and his family failed to register as foreign agents for Israel.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft released a statement on Monday regarding the complaint, saying his office has not been provided with any evidence “that even remotely relates to Missouri election interference.”

Unsicker also drew criticism for a post published on her Substack that questioned whether former Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich’s death was really a suicide and former state Rep. Cora Faith Walker’s death was really due to a heart condition. 

Democratic state Rep. Keri Ingle of Lee’s Summit said Unsicker’s actions and words “have helped propagate hateful, anti-Semitic and conspiratorial and racist rhetoric which has hurt people and sparked online harassment campaigns.”

In a statement released Thursday, House Minority Leader Crystal Quade of Springfield and six members of the Democratic leadership team said Unsicker is “free to choose her associations, but the caucus enjoys that same freedom.”

“As a result,” the statement read, “House Democrats today voted to end (their) association with Rep. Unsicker by expelling her as a caucus member.”

On her Substack, Unsicker posted her prepared remarks to the caucus in advance of the expulsion proceedings.

“I believe the charges against me are a character assassination from a wing of the party that I want nothing to do with,” she wrote. “I do not believe anyone is being honest about the reasons they want to remove me from the House Democratic Caucus.”

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, speaking during House debate on Sept. 15, 2021 (Tim Bommel/House Communications).

For four years, state Rep. Mike Stephens occupied prime real estate on the third floor of the Missouri Capitol.

His office in room 306B certainly wasn’t the biggest in the space-starved statehouse, where staff often work out of musty, windowless rooms, and many lawmakers are stacked on top of each other in non-ADA compliant mezzanines. 

But Stephens’ office was steps away from the House chamber. And it was the only one besides the speaker’s with direct access to the House Lounge — a room adorned with a Thomas Hart Benton mural where conference committees, leadership meetings and press conferences are often held. 

For decades, it was reserved for the chairman of the House budget committee, but in more recent years was occupied by senior Republicans. Entering into his final term in the House, it was a relatively safe bet that Stephens would finish his legislative career in the coveted office space. 

But in late 2022, he got word he’d be moving down the hall. 

Missouri Republicans call for investigation of Dean Plocher, raise idea of resignation

House Speaker Dean Plocher took over that space and converted it into what has been jokingly referred to as his “butler’s pantry,” a makeshift storage room stocked with liquor, beer, wine and soda to complement the supply in his office.

The move was part of a $60,000 renovation of Plocher’s office in late 2022 and early 2023, paid for with public funds by the House. Half the costs stemmed from expenses resulting from repairs to walls, baseboards and ceilings in the speaker’s office. 

The other half, according to records obtained by The Independent through Missouri’s Sunshine Law, went towards new furnishings — to the tune of about $29,000, including $8,600 for a black leather sofa and armchairs, $2,500 for a new walnut table, $2,500 for a refrigerator with an ice maker, $5,000 for a custom cabinet to hold the refrigerator and $385 for two walnut trash can bins.

Plocher did not answer specific questions about the office conversion. Instead, he released an emailed statement to The Independent defending the overall cost of the renovation. 

He noted that the last major overhaul of the office was completed in 2009. His office was pursuing the vision of the Missouri State Capitol Commission’s 2019 master plan, Plocher wrote, to “restore the speaker’s office and House chamber to its original historical significance.” 

“These new investments were done alongside other interior renovation projects throughout the Capitol as suggested by the Missouri State Capitol Commission,” Plocher wrote, and consisted of “updated technology, furniture and energy-efficient infrastructure. The House chamber and speaker’s office have been, as close as possible, restored to their original historical significance.”  

Stephens declined comment about his old office when reached by phone this week. 

“I don’t think it does me any good to discuss that,” he said. 

But the renovation is not without its critics. 

State Rep. Tony Lovasco, a Republican from O’Fallon, noted that there are legislative offices that are inaccessible to constituents with disabilities. Other offices, he said, are so small they could be considered a closet. 

One lawmaker is working out of a former vault on the second floor. 

“We probably shouldn’t be eliminating offices at this point,” he said. “We shouldn’t be repurposing office space unless it’s absolutely necessary, and while I can’t speak to whether it was in this case, my guess is probably not.” 

Renovation in a century-old building will always be more expensive, Lovasco said, but “$29,000 on furniture sounds like an enormously high number. That certainly doesn’t seem reasonable to me.”

The cost of the furniture in the speaker’s office “does seem excessive,” said Rep. Deb Lavender, a Manchester Democrat. And she would have preferred if the House budget committee was involved in a renovation of that size, instead of using the chamber’s core budget, because the process would have been more transparent. 

But her main concern is the loss of office space for what she called a “questionable use.” 

“We had a member that had an office on the fourth floor that was so small, the legislative assistant can’t get to behind her desk without closing the door of the closet,” Lavender said. “So with such a serious lack of space in the Capitol, I’m not sure we should be spending the public’s money to build a bar across the House Lounge from the speaker’s office.” 

The first principle stated in the Missouri State Capitol Commission long range master plan focuses on the lack of functional space for legislators and staff and the need to “decompress space and remove the mezzanines.” 

‘Substantial price difference’

For nearly two months, the Missouri House Ethics Committee has been investigating Plocher over allegations of misconduct. 

The inquiry was launched after The Independent revealed that Plocher on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign. 

Those illegal payments were documented in expense reports Plocher regularly filed with the House. The reports also detailed any taxpayer funds Plocher used to upgrade his office over the years, going back to when he first entered the legislature in 2016. 

For example, Plocher had hoped to renovate of his previous office while he was serving as majority floor leader. But costs proved too high, with expense records showing Plocher settled for spending around $3,500 of public funds on new countertops, paint, bench covers and upholstery. 

He spent a similar amount the year prior on a new desk and a veneer walnut desktop. 

But those records didn’t include renovation expenses to the speaker’s office since Plocher began moving into the job late last year. That’s because the money for the speaker’s office renovation didn’t come from Plocher’s legislative expense fund. It came from House operating funds. 

The Independent filed a new request seeking those documents on Nov. 10.  

The last time a major remodel of the office had been completed was under then-Speaker Ron Richard in 2009, when new desks were purchased, furniture was reupholstered and hardwood floors were refinished, among other expenses. 

In the years since, speakers have taken an approach that builds upon that work, such as recovering, refinishing and reupholstering chairs and desks as opposed to purchasing entirely new ones. For example, former Speaker Elijah Haahr had desks and credenzas refinished in 2018, though he did buy a new conference table for the office that year. 

As Plocher was preparing to take over as speaker, the need to remove pealing wallpaper ended up requiring the replacement of drop ceiling tiles and baseboards. Energy-efficient lighting was also installed. 

Records show Dean Plocher charged the state for travel already paid for by his campaign

As the office was being remodeled, the decision was made to replace all the furniture — new desks, credenzas, bookcases and a conference table. 

Plocher also wanted a new refrigerator for the office that included an ice maker, which required a custom cabinet to hold it along with a new water line and filtration system to service it. A special wood stain was requested for the cabinets to match the speaker’s gavel. 

The priciest furniture expense was a black leather sofa and armchairs from Ethan Allen.

Originally, records show the House planned to purchase a floor model set in brown leather from Missouri Furniture in Jefferson City. But the speaker preferred black leather, which required a special order.  

The set, which cost roughly $4,200, was manufactured in China, causing months of delays. In March, the order was canceled because the furniture was not expected to be delivered for at least two more months. 

With Plocher wanting the furniture in place sooner, records show Chief Clerk Dana Miller went online and found a black leather set from Ethan Allen, at a cost of $8,366. 

“I’m fine with whatever you want to do, but there’s a substantial price difference and there’s still a 4-6 week wait time for the items to ship,” a House employee wrote in an email to Miller in March regarding the Ethan Allen furniture. 

Miller responded that the cost could be justified “because we are ordering historically appropriate furnishings that will be in permanent use in that office for at least a decade.” 

The cost of refurnishing the office topped $29,000. But there were some requests Plocher had hoped to include that weren’t feasible. 

A dishwasher couldn’t be installed in the office because it would have required the installation of a new drain line. And an inlay of the state seal on the coffee tables in his office was also deemed too costly.  

Repurposing room 306B came with minimal cost, according to records, and it appears Plocher may have paid for the alcohol using his own campaign funds. 

Twice during the legislative session, Plocher’s political action committee paid for “campaign meals” at a Jefferson City liquor store called Macadoodles — spending $194 in February and $350 in April.  And he was seen on several occasions during session pushing a cart stacked with alcohol into room 306B.

Plocher did not respond to a question about the alcohol purchases. Alcohol consumption is prohibited everywhere in the Missouri Capitol unless it is part of a state government function and approved by the Board of Public Buildings. That prohibition does not include legislative offices.

Ethics investigation

In addition to Plocher’s false expense reports, the House ethics committee is also investigating allegations that he threatened the jobs of nonpartisan staff as part of his push to convince his colleagues to spend $800,000 to hire a private company to manage constituent information.

Three closed-door hearings have been held by the ethics committee so far, with the investigation likely to stretch into the new legislative session that starts Jan. 4. 

Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres running for lieutenant governor, has flatly denied any wrongdoing and rejected all calls from his fellow Republicans to step down as speaker. He chalked up the false expense reports to a “checkbook error” and paid back the illegal reimbursements. 

During an event in St. Louis late last month, Plocher told Spectrum News that “his conscience is clear.”

“I sleep well at night,” he said. “I’m not gonna let this sideshow distract me or the legislature from getting good work done for the state of Missouri.”

Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, left, a former Georgia election worker, was comforted by her mother Ruby Freeman as Moss testified during a June 2022 hearing of the U.S. House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images).

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s attorney on Thursday tried to distance his client from the violent threats faced by Georgia election workers he falsely accused of fraud, arguing St. Louis-based Gateway Pundit was more responsible. 

During his closing arguments in the defamation lawsuit against Giuliani, attorney Joseph Sibley tried to convince a Washington, D.C, jury that Giuliani was a minor player in the unfounded election fraud allegations that led to an avalanche of threats against Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.

Others deserve more blame, Sibley contends, specifically pointing to the right-wing website Gateway Pundit over its publication of security camera footage that linked Freeman and Moss to the unfounded allegations of election fraud touted by Giuliani and former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

Sibley argued that Gateway Pundit was “patient zero” in spreading the conspiracy theory.

“More likely than not,” Sibley told the jury, “this is the party that sort of doxed these women.”

Giuliani had already been found to have defamed Freeman and Moss, so Sibley was trying to convince the jury not to award a massive judgement. But his arguments seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as the jury returned Friday and ordered Giuliani to pay more than $148 million in damages for destroying Freeman and Moss’ reputations and causing them extreme emotional distress.

False fraud claims a focus of Rudy Giuliani’s 2020 Missouri testimony, St. Louis defamation suit

The saga is being closely watched in Missouri, where Moss and Freeman are also suing Gateway Pundit in St. Louis Circuit Court for defamation and emotional distress. 

Founded by brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, Gateway Pundit was among the first to identify Freeman as one of the election workers accused by Trump and his allies of ballot fraud in Georgia. 

“What’s Up, Ruby,” the site’s headline read in early December. “BREAKING: Crooked Operative Filmed Pulling Out Suitcases of Ballots in Georgia IS IDENTIFIED.”

Gateway Pundit would go on to publish a litany of stories about Freeman and Moss, with headlines like: “WHERE’S BILL BARR? — We Got Your Voter Fraud AG Barr — It’s On Video and They Attempted to Steal Georgia with It! — HOW ABOUT A FEW ARRESTS?” 

“It’s turned my life upside down,” Moss testified last year to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In the nearly two decades since its founding, The Gateway Pundit has become a major player in the far-right media ecosystem, using its influence to spread debunked conspiracies on a wide range of topics — from the 2018 Parkland school shooting to former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The Hofts are represented by the Las Vegas law firm of Marc Randazza, who in the past has represented numerous far-right figures, including Alex Jones of InfoWars and Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer.

Asked by email Friday morning about the statements by Giuliani’s attorney, Randazza shared facts about domesticated vegetables in Mesoamerica.

The Hofts have argued that any stories published by the Gateway Pundit regarding Freeman and Moss were “either statements of opinion based on disclosed facts or statements of rhetorical hyperbole that no reasonable reader is likely to interpret as a literal statement of fact.”

Rhetorical hyperbole, the Hofts argue, “cannot form the basis of defamation and related tort claims.”

A legal standard set in a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision states that public officials must establish actual malice — or reckless disregard of the truth — before recovering defamation damages. In this case, the Hofts say the plaintiffs are “limited purpose public figures,” and must prove actual malice to claim defamation.

The Giuliani defamation case has another tie to Missouri.

Weeks after Trump lost his bid for a second term, Giuliani was allowed to testify via Zoom to a Missouri House committee, where he touted disproven claims about hacked voting machines and phony mail-in ballots.

Specifically, he told lawmakers that Georgia election officials had surreptitiously counted illegal ballots in order to steal the presidency for Joe Biden, pointing to the video published by Gateway Pundit that he falsely insisted “shows demonstrably the theft of about 40,000 ballots right in front of your eyes.”

Three years after his virtual testimony in Missouri, Giuliani conceded in a carefully worded court filing that his assertions about Georgia election workers committing fraud during the 2020 presidential race were false.

Thanks to the false fraud claims by Giuliani and others, Freeman and Moss were inundated with threats, many tinged with racist language. Freeman told the jury this week that she was bombarded with phone calls, messages and letters accusing and was ultimately forced to flee her home for two months for her own safety.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to reporters outside the Western District Court of Appeals building in Kansas City on Oct. 30, 2023, while Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft waits for his turn the microphones (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wants a Cole County judge to block a subpoena seeking records about how he came up with a $21 million cost estimate for a proposed abortion-rights initiative petition.

Republican political operative Jamie Corley filed an initiative petition earlier this year that seeks to amend the state constitution to add rape and incest exceptions to Missouri’s abortion ban and legalize the procedure through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, among other provisions. 

Bailey argued in October that if the amendment were to be approved by voters next year, he would refuse to defend it and would have to hire outside counsel — which he determined would cost $21 million. 

Corley filed a lawsuit challenging Bailey’s estimate, along with the ballot summary written by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. As part of that litigation, Corley’s attorneys issued a subpoena seeking records from the attorney general’s office explaining the cost estimate and the process for hiring outside counsel. 

In a filing this week with the court, the attorney general moved to quash the subpoena and asked the judge “for a protective order as to this request.”

“The attorney general has told the public that it’s going to cost taxpayers $21 million if this measure passes,” said Chuck Hatfield, the attorney representing Corley. “And I think we’re entitled to understand how he got to that number. Basically, the attorney general has said he will not do the job we elected him to do and the taxpayers are going to have to hire other lawyers to do it.”

All the records in question should be public and readily available, Hatfield said. They would be obtainable through the Missouri Sunshine Law, but Bailey’s office has such a massive backlog of requests that it is unlikely any records would be produced until late spring. 

Initiative petitions hoping to get on the 2024 ballot face a May deadline to collect the required number of signatures from across the state. 

Bailey’s office confirmed earlier this month that it has almost finished work on requests filed to the attorney general’s office in 2022. 

“We did not put in a Sunshine request because our understanding, from publicly available reporting, is that it would take several months,” Hatfield said. “And with a subpoena, we should be able to get documents within 45 days.”

A spokeswoman for Bailey declined comment. 

The attorney general’s office is not a defendant in Corley’s lawsuit. Though Bailey’s cost estimate is part of the fiscal note, it was the auditor’s office that decided to include it in the summary that could appear on the ballot. 

In arguing for the $21 million cost estimate, Bailey said in October that if Corley’s amendment was approved by voters and resulted in any litigation, his office would likely have to hire conflict counsel to represent the state. That’s because, Bailey said, he has “staked out a position strongly in favor of protecting the unborn, creating a positional conflict that is untenable for the Attorney General and would necessarily generate greater legal costs.”

Bailey seemed to back off that argument last month, when he told reporters he is “committed to enforcing the law as written.” 

“I’m not a lawmaker. I’m in the executive branch,” he said. “We’ve (got a) documented history of defending state statute and state constitutional provisions, and we’ll continue to do that.”

It’s the second time Bailey has sought to inflate the cost of an abortion-rights initiative petition this year. 

In July, the state Supreme Court ruled Bailey overstepped his legal authority when he refused to sign off on a fiscal note produced by the auditor’s office unless it was reworked to say legalizing abortion would cost the state billions. 

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

An investigation into alleged misconduct by Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher remains ongoing, as a panel of state lawmakers emerged from a nearly three hour behind-closed-doors hearing on Wednesday and gave no indication of when the inquiry will conclude. 

The investigation of Plocher could stretch into the next legislative session, which begins on Jan. 3.

“Due process takes time,” said state Rep. Robert Sauls, an Independence Democrat and vice chair of the House Ethics Committee, later adding: “We want to be thorough to make sure that we are doing what we’re supposed to and ensuring that due process is followed.”

Wednesday’s hearing was the third by the House Ethics Committee to focus on Plocher. Proceedings of the committee are confidential, and none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered is public until a report is issued. The public notice for Wednesday’s hearing said the the committee would discuss a “personnel inquiry” and an ethics complaint, and lawmakers have neither confirmed nor denied the focus of the inquiry. 

Records show Dean Plocher charged the state for travel already paid for by his campaign

But the investigation was launched after The Independent reported last month that Plocher on numerous occasions illegally sought reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign. 

The revelation followed weeks of scrutiny surrounding Plocher’s unsuccessful push to award a contract to a company to manage constituent information and a decision to fire his chief of staff. 

Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres running for lieutenant governor, has flatly denied any wrongdoing, chalking up false expense reports to a “checkbook error.” He paid back the illegal reimbursements, saying he and his wife — who is also his campaign treasurer — caught the mistakes and self-reported them. 

But though the false reports went back years, Plocher didn’t begin making repayments until two weeks after The Independent submitted a Sunshine request seeking his expense reports.

State Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Republican from Mountain View and chair of the House Ethics Committee, told reporters following Wednesday’s hearing that the committee’s work is not done but a future hearing has not been officially scheduled. 

“Our task is to protect the integrity of the institution,” Kelly said, later adding: “Our job is to make sure that the ethics of the institution and of the individuals of this state that we work for are upheld.”

The 10-member ethics committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

When a complaint is received, the first step is for the committee to determine whether the complaint was filed in the proper form. Once the committee is satisfied that it is, a vote is held on whether to proceed to a “primary hearing” where the subject of the complaint is given a chance to answer the charges.

The committee must allow 21 days for the answer to be received in writing. The answer can be an objection to the jurisdiction of the committee to conduct an investigation. At the conclusion of the primary hearing, the committee has the choice of dismissing the complaint, proceeding to a formal hearing, behind closed doors, or allowing the member to accept a sanction for misconduct. 

When an investigation proceeds to a formal hearing, the committee has 45 days after it finishes taking testimony to deliver a report to the House.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey addresses a crowd at the state Supreme Court Building after being sworn into office on Jan. 3, 2023 (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

By the end of the month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey expects to complete work on the mountain of public records requests submitted to the office last year.

That will allow the five-person team working through the Sunshine Law backlog to finally turn its attention to the nearly 300 pending requests filed since Bailey took office in January. 

“I’m proud of the thorough and expeditious work we’ve done to get Missourians the records they have requested,” Bailey said in an emailed statement. 

First Amendment and government transparency advocates, however, aren’t so sanguine about Bailey’s efforts. 

Records requests filed since January have continued to pile up, leaving many waiting more than a year for Bailey’s office to take any action. And new requests, no matter how simple and easy to turn around, are still projected to take at least six months to be completed. 

The attorney general’s website declares that the Sunshine Law is the “embodiment of Missouri’s commitment to openness in government,” said Bernie Rhodes, a First Amendment attorney who has represented numerous media outlets, including The Independent. 

By allowing requests to pile up and wither on the vine, Rhodes said, Bailey isn’t living up to those standards. 

“It’s called the Sunshine Law for a reason. It exposes sunlight on what our government is doing. If we have to wait six months to find out what someone did last week, it may be too late to do anything about that,” Rhodes said. 

“It’s not called the historical records preservation act, so that when we write the biography of Andrew Bailey 20 years from now we know what he was doing,” he said. “It exists so we know what he’s doing today so that when he comes up for election, we know whether to vote for him or not.”

Bailey inherited 224 unfinished public records requests from his predecessor, U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt. Since then, the office implemented a policy to work through the backlog on a first come, first served basis. Newer inquiries that are small and easily dispensed with sit in limbo as staff work on older and more expansive requests. 

For example, copies of Bailey’s official calendar on Nov. 6 and 7 won’t be available until May 2024. A request like that is typically turned around in a matter of days by other government agencies, if not sooner. 

“It remains deeply concerning that the attorney general’s office refuses to take a common sense approach to fulfilling Sunshine Law requests,” said David Roland, director of litigation for the libertarian nonprofit Freedom Center of Missouri. 

“If a citizen’s request could be fulfilled in a matter of minutes,” Roland said, “it is manifestly unreasonable for the office to delay the fulfillment of that request by several months, even if that might require addressing requests in an order other than which they were received.”

Jean Maneke, an attorney with the Missouri Press Association, said delayed access to public records is a slap in the face to transparent government. 

“Public servants,” she said, “are not acting in the public interest when they delay serving the public in this matter.”

‘Crocodile tears’

Bailey has defended how his office has handled the backlog, arguing that the office processes requests in order to avoid the perception it is “picking winners and losers.”

“You’ve got to fulfill them in the order in which they came in, or you run the risk of people saying that you’re cherry-picking favorable requests,” Bailey recently told the Springfield News-Leader. “It’s a no-win situation.”

To demonstrate his commitment to government transparency, the attorney general has pointed out that, unlike many state agencies, his office doesn’t charge anything for processing public records requests.

Madeline Sieren, Bailey’s spokesperson, said by the end of the year the attorney general’s office will have completed 56 separate Sunshine Law trainings. That’s the most in terms office’s history, she said, and up from 51 in 2022 and 42 in 2021. 

The 2023 total is double Schmitt’s first year as attorney general in 2019.

“Our total attendance was in the thousands, across all of our presentations this year,” she said.

Sieren added that the attorney general’s office also “significantly improved the efficiency, speed, and results in addressing Sunshine Law complaints.”

Since Bailey took office, she said, “we have closed 525 Sunshine Law complaints, which were received both this year and in previous years. This includes approximately 20 warning letters that typically included training as a condition in lieu of further enforcement action and over 40 situations where we assisted citizens in obtaining records due to our intervention through the complaint process.”

But transparency advocates remain skeptical.

Part of the concern is Bailey’s role in crafting legislation while working as general counsel for Gov. Mike Parson to weaken Missouri’s Sunshine Law. A major policy priority for the governor during Bailey’s tenure, the legislation would have allowed government agencies to withhold more information from the public and charge more for any records that are turned over.

Rhodes said Bailey is “absolutely in violation of the Sunshine Law” by not promptly processing public records requests. If government transparency was really a priority for him, Bailey could “dispense with the backlog immediately by choosing to staff his office in a way that acknowledges Missouri’s commitment to open government.”

“If his staff says they can’t get to requests in a timely manner, those are crocodile tears,” Rhodes said. “He inherited a bunch of lawsuits, too, so is he just going to ignore those? That’s his job. He should just do his job.”