Dave Wasinger (photo submitted)

For more evidence of Missouri’s drift to the far side of MAGA madness, look no further than the race for lieutenant governor.

In the primary election, Republican voters turned aside Lincoln Hough, the veteran senator and state budget expert. They rejected Holly Thompson Rehder, a state senator with a compelling biography and rock-solid conservative values. They ignored two other lesser-known candidates. 

They chose a St. Louis lawyer who, in the campaign’s final weeks, crashed into public awareness with aggressive TV ads promising to drain the swamp and say “adios, amigos” to illegal immigrants who venture into Missouri. 

In one commercial, David Wasinger stood outside of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, swore allegiance to Donald Trump and proclaimed himself “the only pro-Trump Republican” in the lieutenant governor’s race.

In reality, Wasinger wasn’t even the only Trump-endorsed Republican in the race. He shared that distinction with Rehder. 

But Wasinger was, assuredly, the most Trump-like Republican in the field.

Many people scratched their heads after the primary and asked, “Who is David Wasinger?” Not me. I was a journalist keeping an eye on the University of Missouri system back around 2005 when then-Gov. Matt Blunt appointed Wasinger to the Board of Curators.

According to newspaper accounts at the time (most of which I found behind paywalls or in library archives), Wasinger and another curator bombarded Elson Floyd, then the system president, with demands and inquiries that looked like micromanagement. 

“The board has dipped into everything from what classes should be taught to whether condoms should be sold in dormitories,” The Kansas City Star reported in 2007, around the time that Floyd, the only Black educator ever to lead the university system, announced he had accepted a job in the state of Washington.

Faculty and student leaders speculated that interference from the curators, and Wasinger in particular, was a factor in Floyd’s unexpected departure. 

While on the board of a university system dedicated to affirmative action, Wasinger provided legal advice to a group seeking a ballot measure to dismantle affirmative action.

When an interim university system president issued a strong statement on behalf of a controversial form of stem cell research, Wasinger reproached the academic leader and forwarded him a message he’d received from an unnamed correspondent comparing embryonic stem cell research to Nazi experimentations.

He ridiculed the queer theory classes taught in the university system and was overheard joking to another curator about “putting on a grass skirt and having a lap dance,” according to reports.

Wasinger’s exploits, which took place between 2005 and 2011, seem tame in today’s political landscape. If Missouri Republican primary voters had known more about his stint as a curator they likely would have nominated Wasinger by a larger margin than the 1% of votes that separated him and Hough, his closest contender.

The point is, Wasinger was a disrupter, a bully and an anti-woke crusader years before those traits became prerequisites for a winning Republican ticket in Missouri.  

In 2012, soon after he left the Board of Curators, Wasinger received a phone call from a business acquaintance. The man was an executive at Bank of America’s Countrywide unit and he asked Wasinger to represent him as he went public with allegations of massive mortgage fraud.

Wasinger had no experience with whistleblower cases, but he took this one and the gamble paid off big. Bank of America was found liable in federal court in New York for selling defective mortgage loans to government-backed agencies. Wasinger’s client collected more than $57 million under a federal law that rewards people for disclosing fraud against the government. 

A year later, Wasinger filed a case on behalf of a whistleblower alleging fraud by JPMorgan Chase & Co. That client collected $63.9 million. 

“I am just a country lawyer from Missouri trying to hold Wall Street accountable,” Wasinger told Reuters in 2014. 

Put another way, he was the sole owner of a small St. Louis law firm destined to receive a gigantic payday for his successful role in holding Wall Street accountable.

That wealth has enabled Wasinger to self-finance his political career. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Missouri auditor in 2018 and resurfaced this year in the lieutenant governor’s race.

Records available so far show Wasinger has loaned his campaign $2.6 million. Plus, a company based out of Wasinger’s home loaned a PAC $300,000. Missouri First Conservative PAC spent most of the money on direct mailings either praising Wasinger or bashing Hough and Rehder, his closest opponents. 

Wasinger’s Democratic opponent is Richard Brown, a popular House member from Kansas City. 

In an interview with The Martin City Telegraph, the retired school teacher regaled readers with stories about his “Forrest Gump” life, which includes singing on stage with Phil Collins and being rescued as a kid from a deadly 1977 flood by the Kansas City Royals legendary outfielder Amis Otis. 

But at the start of September, Brown’s campaign reported having a little more than $7,000 on hand — hardly enough to compete against Wasinger.

So it seems safe to ponder what we can expect from Wasinger as lieutenant governor. 

For sure, he didn’t pony up $2.5 million-plus to wait around for the Tourism Commission to convene. Wasinger bills himself as a “conservative outsider” and lists “draining the swamp” as his top priority.

In fact, Wasinger says on his campaign website that he’ll be “taking a hammer to the establishment.”

I’m not sure what that means. But I think we’re about to find out. 

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft announcing a lawsuit Thursday against President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order for federal agencies to promote voting (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

His waning days as Missouri’s secretary of state have not been kind to Jay Ashcroft.

Once considered a frontrunner to become governor, he finished a dismal third in the August Republican primary.

A few weeks later, he was forced to certify Amendment 3, an initiative petition clearing the way for voters in November to decide whether to remove Missouri’s near-total abortion ban and embed the right to an abortion in the state constitution.

Back when he expected to be governor, Ashcroft told reporters he would “have to quit” if being in that office meant defending a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. So you know he hated putting that initiative on the ballot.

Now, in the unkindest cut of all, Ashcroft has unwittingly become the fall guy for a last-ditch effort by abortion opponents to stop a vote on Amendment 3. The irony here is rich, because Ashcroft used every trick at his disposal to thwart a public vote on abortion rights. 

He wrote outlandish ballot language, invited legal challenges, delayed and delayed some more in hopes of running out the clock on signature-gathering efforts. 

None of it worked. The campaign, known as Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, gathered 380,000 signatures in short order. Ashcroft waited until Aug. 13, the last day possible under Missouri law, to place the initiative on the Nov. 5 ballot. 

And then — because this is Missouri, where the will of the people is always at risk — some anti-abortion legislators and lawyers went to court to claim that the secretary of state erred when he placed the amendment on the ballot. 

The rationale of the plaintiffs in the case officially titled Coleman et al. v. Ashcroft is almost incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t a lawyer. But they managed to have their case heard by a judge ideologically inclined to agree with them. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Limbaugh, cousin to Rush, the late conservative radio host, ruled in so many words that “defendant Ashcroft” had indeed screwed up.

Ashcroft announced that “on further review” he now realized he never should have certified the petition in the first place. He removed it from the list of 2024 ballot measures on the Secretary of State’s website.

The Missouri Supreme Court quickly interceded. Judges last week reversed Limbaugh’s ruling and ordered Ashcroft to place Amendment 3 back on the statewide Nov. 5 ballot.

The Coleman et al. v. Ashcroft saga played out over a whirlwind five days, from the time Limbaugh held his hearing in Cole County on a Friday until the state Supreme Court reversed his ruling last Tuesday. 

It was a bad look all around for Ashcroft, and in the end he is left with the task, as secretary of state, of standing watch over a statewide ballot that now contains a constitutional amendment that he loathes and lists Mike Kehoe, the current lieutenant governor, as the GOP nominee for the governor’s post that Ashcroft had sought.

Despite his early lead and name recognition as the son of John Ashcroft — a legend in Missouri politics who went on to become George W. Bush’s U.S. attorney general — Jay Ashcroft was outflanked in the governor’s primary. 

Moderates favored Kehoe and ultraconservatives voted for the anti-establishment state Sen. Bill Eigel. Ashcroft was left in the middle, a bleak no-man’s land in primary politics. 

He will not follow in the family footsteps. He will not impose his controversial beliefs on the people of Missouri.

I say this because beneath the rumpled, somewhat goofy exterior that Ashcroft puts forth to the public beats the heart of an ideologue.

As secretary of state, Ashcroft took it upon himself to draft an administrative rule telling public libraries how to shield children and teenagers from material that he worries may be inappropriate. 

He used his rule-making ability to restrict banks in the state from using environmental and other social factors in investing practices.

In January, Ashcroft suggested that President Joe Biden’s border policies are akin to an insurrection and could theoretically be used to keep him off Missouri’s presidential ballot. 

In 2019, after Gov. Mike Parson signed a bill criminalizing abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy, Ashcroft snuffed out efforts to place a referendum on the new law on the statewide ballot. He simply rejected petitions and dragged his feet until time ran out on signature gatherers.

For nearly eight years, Ashcroft has stretched the limits of his office to get his way. Especially with his handling of abortion-related petitions, he has shown deep disrespect for the volunteers who gather signatures and the voters who provide them. 

If things have gone south for him at the end, a bit of gloating is not out of order. 

But let’s not get carried away. Waiting in the wings to replace Ashcroft in the secretary of state’s office is Denny Hoskins, a member of the far-right Senate Freedom Caucus. Among other worrisome concerns, he believes with all his heart that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. 

Ashcroft politicized the secretary of state’s office, but he did recognize boundaries such as court orders. As impossible as this sounds, we may miss him once he’s gone.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks on Feb. 29, 2024, at the Boone County Republican Lincoln Days dinner in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

While busy with his own campaign for Missouri attorney general, Republican Andrew Bailey also loomed large in the primary race for prosecutor of the state’s second largest county.

He popped up repeatedly in Jackson County in forums and interviews, sometimes by name and sometimes not, but always as a menacing presence.

After a lively and not always friendly campaign among Democratic candidates, voters on Aug. 6 selected Melesa Johnson to replace longtime prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. Johnson, who is director of public safety for Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, faces a Republican opponent in November, but holds an advantage in a county that leans Democratic.

The primary campaign pitted Johnson against assistant prosecuting attorney John Gromowsky and defense lawyer Stephanie Burton. The three candidates argued around the edges on most issues. The starkest difference of opinion had to do with abortion.

At forums, candidates inevitably were asked whether they would prosecute someone suspected of violating Missouri’s near-total ban on abortions. 

Johnson and Burton, who touted their support for women’s reproductive freedom, were unequivocal. They would not prosecute.

“Under my administration, we will not be taking those cases on,” Johnson said during a July 26 debate aired on Kansas City PBS. 

She mentioned that Missouri’s abortion ban specifically empowers the attorney general to investigate and prosecute suspected violations. 

“The attorney general is more than welcome, as he is known to do, to insert himself into prosecuting those cases,” Johnson said.

Burton issued a similar invitation: “If the AG wants to take that up with me, I welcome the fight.”

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture Bailey, who is favored to win his race to remain in office, slipping on the gloves. The attorney general does love a fight, and nothing gets the juices flowing like a clash over a divisive social issue in one of Missouri’s largest and most progressive counties. 

With her adamant stance, Johnson has practically guaranteed that should she become prosecutor, Bailey will insist that any abortion case in Jackson County go directly to his office.

Of the three primary candidates, only Gromowsky said he would review an abortion case.

“When you say you’re not going to prosecute a case like that, then you’re forcing the police to take it to the attorney general’s office,” he said at the PBS debate. “And I think the outcome is probably going to be different.”

Gromowsky’s response was seen by many as a dodge. Although he said the state should not regulate women’s health decisions, he is regarded as more ambivalent on the abortion issue than his two opponents.

But regardless of his personal views, Gromowsky’s response is the one I wish all three candidates had come up with. 

All prosecutors have discretion over what cases they choose to take on, and how they’ll handle them. They can seek to resolve cases quietly with the intent to bring some measure of restoration, or they can crush people with the full force of the law. 

I would expect Bailey’s approach to be the latter. 

This is the official, remember, who forces people to endure additional prison time even after prosecutors and judges have determined that they never committed the crimes that got them locked up in the first place.

Bailey operates without compassion or concern for privacy or human dignity. A doctor, patient, friend or family member suspected of violating a Missouri abortion law would have a very rough time in his clutches. 

Passage of Constitutional Amendment 3, the ballot measure just approved for a statewide vote in November, would not necessarily resolve the issue. 

The amendment would enshrine the right to abortion in Missouri up to the point of fetal viability. But we would then expect Republican legislators to complicate that right with all manner of unreasonable regulations on patients and providers. Legal abortion may return, but legal action is not likely to go away.

Fortunately, Jackson County’s proximity to Kansas, where abortion is constitutionally protected, has minimized the prospect of women and providers being dragged into the legal system. No criminal case involving abortion has come to light since Missouri’s ban took effect in 2022.

When that happened, Jackson County’s current prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker, got in touch with local police departments. Baker has been a staunch advocate of women making their own health care decisions. But if police were asked to investigate an abortion case, she told officials, they should bring the findings to her. 

She explained why in a 2022 interview with Slate. 

“I was elected here,” Baker said. “And I know my community. And I’m going to do my job here rather than let somebody else come in my jurisdiction and do it for me.”

At the time, the “someone else” she referred to was then-state attorney general and now U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt, who initiated the practice of picking fights with local prosecutors.

Bailey has picked up that mantle and run with it, perhaps even more furiously than Schmitt. He is out for himself, not for the good of Missouri or its communities or citizens. All local prosecutors, regardless of their politics, should be wary of handing their decision-making powers to him. 

Thirty-one percent of Missouri respondents to a recent poll said Donald Trump’s new status as a convicted felon would make them more likely to vote for him (Ralph Freso/Getty Images).

A recent national poll asked prospective voters in some states how Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges would impact their choice in this year’s presidential race.

In Missouri, 31% of the respondents said that Trump’s new status as a convicted felon would make them more likely to vote for him.

I had to read that section of the Emerson College poll twice. A jury determines that the former president broke the law by falsifying business records in order to pay a porn star to keep quiet about their sexual encounter, and nearly a third of the Missourians surveyed love him all the more. 

My first thought: This is bonkers.

My next thought: This is Missouri. 

This is where we are now. Ever defiant. Increasingly eager to double down. No longer content to join the MAGA parade, Missouri seeks to lead it.

Signs of this are everywhere. Let’s start with the state attorney general’s office. 

Under its current manager, Andrew Bailey, Missouri has sought unsuccessfully to intervene in the U.S. Supreme Court case challenging the use of an abortion drug. It has sued President Joe Biden’s administration multiple times.

Bailey sued Media Matters, a progressive watchdog group, for, well, doing its job. He just lost a case in the U.S. Supreme Court having to do with the Biden administration’s attempts to push back against misinformation on social media platforms.

It’s difficult to keep track of Bailey’s frenetic filings. Look for wild lawsuits against Democratic officials or in support of right-wing heroes like Elon Musk and chances are you’ll find Missouri leading the charge.

There are other indicators of the state’s crazy-right tilt.

Missouri’s delegation in the U.S. Congress was rated the second most partisan in the nation, right behind Alabama, by the Lugar Center at Georgetown University. The ranking is based on the number of  bipartisan bills a lawmaker sponsors, and how many cosponsors sign on.

Another study placed Missouri in the top five among the states whose legislators have joined at least one far-right Facebook group.  

And can we talk about the Republican primary campaigns currently underway for state offices? 

Bailey, who was appointed to his office as attorney general two years ago and is seeking election for the first time, is not even the Trumpiest candidate in the race. 

That would be his primary opponent, Will Scharf, who cut his teeth in Missouri politics as policy director for disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens. Apparently fond of disreputable leaders, Scharf is now a personal attorney for Trump. 

After last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting presidents legal immunity for anything they do under the broad umbrella of “official” duties, Scharf told CNN that Trump’s scheme to reverse the results of the 2020 election by creating slates of alternate electors from battleground states was indeed an official act.  

Scharf then made his way to Missouri, where he pledged at a rally in Springfield to investigate “corrupt” agencies in state government, starting with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

In the race for secretary of state, Republican candidate Valentina Gomez has distinguished herself in a field of eight contenders by posting homophobic videos. And who knows what we’ll see in the final weeks of the GOP primary for governor, as the right-wing provocateur Bill Eigel attempts to close a gap with Jay Ashcroft and Mike Kehoe.

I should point out that right-wing extremism isn’t exactly new in Missouri. It is, in fact, more the norm than the exception. 

Throughout its history, the state has been the launching pad for numerous white supremacist and anti-government movements. The Minutemen and CSA (The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord) are two of the more memorable ones. 

More recently, a bust of Rush Limbaugh sits proudly in the state Capitol. Mark and Patricia McCloskey became instant celebrities for waving firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters. 

And remember the fist pump. A news photo of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s salute to the roiling crowd outside of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, shocked some of the people who had voted for him. They predicted it would end his career. 

It didn’t. Hawley had the photo reproduced on coffee mugs. That’s the current state of Missouri in ceramic. Defiant and doubling down.

The Emerson Poll, which gauged Missourians’ reaction to Trump’s felony charges, asked the same question of voters in battleground states, and received a milder response.

In Minnesota, 15% of voters said they would be more likely to vote for Trump after his conviction. In Arizona, the response was 25%. The state that came closest to Missouri’s 31% was Pennsylvania, where 29% of the people surveyed said they were more likely to elect the former president as a result of his legal troubles.

Missouri, of course, is no longer a battleground state in national politics. 

But we do love to show the rest of the nation that we know how to fight.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks on Feb. 29, 2024, at the Boone County Republican Lincoln Days dinner in Columbia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Immigrant baiting is now official business for Missouri officeholders.

That’s the message from Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who says his office will represent three state senators who are being sued for defamation over social media posts they filed after the Feb. 14 shooting in Kansas City at a rally to celebrate the Chiefs Super Bowl win.

As a motion that Bailey’s office filed on behalf of one of the senators explains, Missouri lawmakers “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 issue of national importance the attorney general is talking about is the false message that immigrants, especially those who did not enter the U.S. legally, are dangerous people whom law-abiding Americans should fear.

Sens. Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Nick Schroer chose to highlight that fallacy by joining in a right-wing fit of hysteria when images of a man temporarily detained at the scene of the Super Bowl parade shooting circulated in the media.

The murky depths of the internet, for reasons that are bizarre and not easily explained, decided the man was definitely an undocumented immigrant, possibly a notorious one, and undoubtedly responsible for the gunfire that erupted in a crowd of revelers, killing one person and injuring two dozen more

He is, in reality, a U.S. citizen and father of three from Kansas and a Chiefs fan who’d been slow to leave the scene when the mayhem started.

Sens. Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer didn’t wait for an official identification before they recirculated posts with the man’s image and the damning suggestions. 

The Chiefs fan sued, saying he was subjected to harassment and threats because of the public exposure, and the Missouri attorney general’s office took on three new clients.

Bailey’s decision to represent the three senators has been denounced by Republicans and Democrats alike. It is infuriating, I agree, to think about my tax dollars going to defend public officials who seem to have poorer impulse control than a class of preschoolers.

Just as bad, though, is the attorney general’s suggestion that defaming immigrants as a group is not only a lawmaker’s prerogative, but a responsibility.

This idea that newcomers to America are a threat to public safety has been roundly discredited in study after study. Immigrants, documented or otherwise, are less likely to commit crimes and wind up in jails than people born in the U.S. Having made their way here, they are mostly focused on making a living and fashioning a better life for their families.

But politicians like Bailey and the three senators have no use for research or realities. They need to invent a threat in order to promise people that they’re the ones who can keep us safe.

They aren’t the only ones.

A few weeks ago, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas kicked up a ruckus when he suggested in an interview with Bloomberg and later on social media that the Kansas City region, which needs workers, could make room for some of the migrants with work permits who have recently surged into New York, Denver and other cities.

In fact, Lucas disclosed, Kansas City is already making plans to welcome migrants and integrate them into the workforce.

I have spent some time pondering whether my mayor actually thought his revelations would be applauded, or whether he knew he was poking a bear and didn’t care. I called his office to ask, but his staff wasn’t eager to make him available.

No matter. I’m pretty sure he knew what he was stepping into. And sure enough, the bear roared. So many bears, so many roars.

“Good grief!”  Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft exclaimed on X. “The Mayor should be protecting the people of Kansas City, and instead is taking away protection to import lawlessness.”

Someone should tell Ashcroft that, with 182 homicides recorded last year, Kansas City is already quite lawless. And the problem isn’t caused by immigrants, but by U.S. citizens with easy access to firearms, thanks to Missouri’s loose gun laws.

The presiding commissioners of Clay and Platte counties in Kansas City’s Northland penned a joint statement calling on Lucas to withdraw his plans to welcome immigrants to Kansas City. 

“Forcing these reckless and likely illegal policies will only increase criminal activity and endanger Northland families,” said Jerry Nolte, a Republican from Clay County who is running for the Missouri Senate. 

Nothing about creating opportunities for people with legal work permits is illegal. And Nolte must have a short memory.

A little more than a year ago, he was lamenting the “tragic situation” after a high school student named Ralph Yarl knocked on the wrong door and was shot in the head. Yarl is the son of immigrants from Liberia and the 84-year-old man who shot him said he was “scared to death” of the teenager standing on his doorstep. 

Undoubtedly so. He was scared to death because right-wing media outlets and politicians like Nolte repeat the lie ad nauseam that he needs to be afraid of people who don’t look like him or talk like him. 

Their lies and distortions make Missouri a more hostile and unsafe state. But not to worry. Should any of these officeholders cross a legal line and damage an innocent person, Attorney General Bailey will have their back.

The Independent has calculated that if the latest measure finds its way into the state constitution, just 23% of voters could thwart an initiative petition (Getty Images).

I’m heading into the grocery store and someone with a clipboard approaches. 

“Hi,” the person says. “Are you a registered voter in Missouri?”

The same thing happens in front of the neighborhood bakery. And at public gatherings like parades. Outside the post office. Even on random street corners. 

I confirm that I am indeed registered to vote in Missouri. Next question: “Would you like to sign a petition to end the ban on abortions in Missouri?”

Oh, heck yes. I signed this particular petition weeks ago. I am grateful for the people who did the hard work to make my signature possible.

I have also been invited to sign a petition to legalize sport betting in Missouri. I passed on that one. But, considering the Missouri legislature’s, um, shortcomings, I can appreciate the frustration that led the gambling lobby to ask for my signature. 

As a person who generally votes for Democrats and favors issues that are deemed progressive, I am feeling increasingly voiceless in Missouri.

My vote for Joe Biden as U.S. president in November will be mostly symbolic; Missouri will almost surely go for Donald Trump in the anachronistic Electoral College, which ought to disappear but likely never will. 

I think some of the Democrats running for statewide office this year would make exceptional leaders, but their gutsy campaigns are long shots in this red state.

I appreciate the lively City Council races in Kansas City, which usually draw an eclectic group of candidates and allow for an actual discussion of issues. It grates on me that the people I elect won’t be able to choose a police chief or make big decisions about the Kansas City Police Department. That privilege goes to a board on which four of five members are appointed by the Missouri governor — currently a Republican far out of step with Kansas City.

All of which is to explain why I love initiative petitions and direct democracy. And I am eyeing with trepidation the legislature’s latest effort to further marginalize my voice.

Lawmakers, in a panic over the prospect that voters might overturn their abortion ban, are moving at what for them amounts to lightning speed on a constitutional amendment to make it harder to pass initiative petitions in Missouri. 

Right now a citizen-led initiative can pass with a simple majority of votes statewide. A Republican backed proposal that has already cleared the Senate would change that — it would still require 50-plus percent statewide approval, but also a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts.

The logic is diabolically simple. Republicans want to give less weight to the votes of people in the 1st and 5th congressional districts, around St. Louis and Kansas City, and more weight to the votes of people in more conservative parts of the state. 

“This to me is a very similar concept to the Electoral College,” Tim Jones, state director of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, told The Independent.

For once, I actually agree with this guy. And can I say again how much I loathe the Electoral College?

The Independent has calculated that if the latest measure finds its way into the state constitution, just 23% of voters could thwart an initiative petition. In other words, a majority of Missouri voters could vote to restore abortion rights, or raise the minimum wage, or legalize sports betting. But that wouldn’t matter if enough voters in certain congressional districts opposed those initiatives.

The legislature’s attempt to kneecap the initiative petition process comes with a stack of indignities and contradictions.

The bill under consideration would only make it harder to pass constitutional amendments proposed by citizens. If lawmakers want to change the constitution, they could put a measure on the ballot and would only need a statewide majority vote for passage.

This notion that the Missouri legislature thinks it alone should have the last word on big issues is the ultimate rub. Let’s see, the House speaker has serious ethical problems, members of the Senate frequently hurl insults and come close to blows, and despite being in session since January the full legislature has yet to pass a single bill.

And these folks want to be the deciders?

The Missouri legislature is so chronically dysfunctional it can’t even get bills passed for powerful special interests anymore. Hence the sports betting petition.

That, perversely, gives me reason to hope. Should legislation to change the initiative petition process make it to the ballot, we may witness a strange alliance of progressive, corporate and perhaps even conservative interests coming together to fight it.

I get it. Missouri is a deep red state and those of us who don’t like it must settle for now with the role of the principled opposition. 

But being in the minority is one thing. Being voiceless is another. All citizens of Missouri should question why a legislature so ostensibly opposed to tyranny is intent on silencing so many of us.

Union Station and downtown Kansas City (Getty Images).

Kansas City’s downtown took on a campus-like feel in early February as 8,000 visitors congregated at the downtown convention center and fanned out to nearby bars, coffee shops and tourist sites.

The guests included students, immigrants, people of color and people who identified as LGBTQ, in town for the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). 

The conference went off smoothly, and most attendees left Kansas City happily unaware of the angst that preceded the event.

Last April, as the Missouri legislature was in session, the AWP published an open letter, saying its leadership was “appalled and deeply concerned” about bills that would threaten health care and quality of life for transgender people.

“We share in the concern for the safety of LGBTQIA+ attendees and allies while attending #AWP24 in a state where these bills are under discussion,” the letter said, using the hashtag for the conference.

The association had booked the convention center in 2015, and the event was rescheduled from 2021 because of the COVID pandemic, leaders explained. 

“It is financially and legally impossible for us to cancel, move or postpone the conference out of Kansas City,” the letter said.

But just knowing such a possibility was considered is another reason to wish, however futilely, that cities could operate independently from the states in which they reside.

Kansas City is an aspiring region, seeking to capitalize on its sports teams, new airport and overall good vibes, and to present itself as a welcoming city for visitors, companies and new residents.

The Republican-run Missouri legislature wants to push the limits on gun access, deny that gender identity can be fluid, ban abortions and crack down on anything that might be considered “woke.” 

The city and state are in conflict and, given Republican supermajorities in Jefferson City, the state has the upper hand. 

But Missouri’s Republican priorities are harmful for Kansas City. That became glaringly apparent on Feb. 14, when terrified adults and children scattered after gunfire broke out as thousands of people were celebrating back-to-back Super Bowl wins for the Chiefs football team.  

A valued member of Kansas City’s community, Lisa Lopez-Galvan, was killed. More than 20 others were taken to hospitals. People were traumatized.

As details about the shooting came to light, so did revelations of Kansas City’s sky-high murder rate — 180 deaths in 2023.

The people charged so far in the Feb. 14 shooting are locals, young men in their teens and early 20s. They showed up at a crowded event with weapons stuffed into pockets and backpacks, prosecutors say, and the shooting reportedly started because of a vague suspicion among some of the accused that others were looking at them the wrong way. 

It was the most common type of Kansas City homicide: born of a petty dispute and enabled because guns are rampant.

Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who was at the celebration at Union Station, blamed “a bunch of criminals, thugs out there.” But the correlation between Missouri’s loose gun laws and rising homicide rates in the state is well established, and the legislature has passed laws making it difficult for cities, and even the federal government, to reduce the number of weapons in circulation.

With lawmakers unwilling to budge, Kansas City must attempt to reduce homicides with different policing strategies and a renewed push for conflict resolution and violence prevention measures.

On other matters, city leaders and boosters spend a lot of time trying to reassure outsiders that Kansas City does not share the values of the Missouri legislature or statewide officeholders. 

In the weeks leading up to the AWP conference, the writers’ association emailed a list of resources for LBGTQ visitors and allies. People on the list received welcoming letters from state Sen. Greg Razer, who represents parts of Kansas City, and Joel Barrett, vice president of the Mid-America LGBT Chamber of Commerce, who was the city’s official ambassador for the event.

“I know many of you have been apprehensive about coming to our state, and I understand that,” Razer wrote in his letter. “Missouri is a tough place at times — and this is one of those times. Laws being passed by my colleagues are detrimental to our state and our people.”

Razer assured the expected visitors that Kansas Citians would welcome them, just as they had welcomed him, a gay man, when he moved to Kansas City in 2001.

Someday, Razer promised, “Missourians will right these wrongs, and we will once again become a deep-purple state, frustrating both the far right and left with our moderate leanings.”

We can hope. 

In the meantime, Missouri’s cities must rely on damage control, workarounds and apologies for the actions of a state legislature and administration that doesn’t care about their aspirations or even the safety of their people.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson chats with visitors at the state Capitol on June 27, 2023, who were there to see the Vince Lombardi Trophy on display following the Kansas City Chiefs' victory in Super Bowl LVII (photo courtesy of the Missouri Governor's Office).

Apparently not everyone is thrilled with the prospect of Kansas City returning to the Super Bowl against San Francisco.

“Bleh. How uninspired. How anti-climatic. How disappointing,” is how a USA Today story summed up fan reaction outside of the Chiefs Kingdom and the Bay area.

Sorry, not sorry. We here in Kansas City believe we totally deserve to wrack up Super Bowl honors for as long as Patrick Mahomes can throw a football. 

Also, sorry if you are bothered by the appearance of pop star Taylor Swift at Chiefs games. Here’s a pro tip: Cover your eyes for at least 30 seconds every time the Chiefs score a touchdown or Travis Kelce catches the football. That should minimize the upsetting glimpses of a woman enjoying herself in the suites. 

And, awfully sorry if you are giving any credence to the bizarre idea that Swift’s romance with Kelce is a contrived plot to unite the fan bases of the pop star and the National Football League in support of Joe Biden’s re-election bid. 

For that, I can only recommend therapy.

The bizarre conspiracy theory that turned Taylor Swift into an antihero to the GOP

The theory is bonkers on so many levels. Not least of which is the notion that a grand conspiracy to harness the power of the Swifties to prop up a Democratic candidate would be centered in a city in Missouri, a state that hasn’t voted blue in a presidential race since 1996.

Granted, Kansas City itself votes Democratic. And some of the local fans booed Republican Gov. Mike Parson when he showed up on the stage outside of Union Station to help celebrate the Chiefs Super Bowl victory last year. 

That was rude. But Parson has signed his name onto laws limiting abortion, health care for transgender youth and gun safety that are deeply harmful to Kansas City residents. So, not sorry.

In the big picture, though, the Kansas City Chiefs football team is one of the few institutions that can bridge Missouri’s rural-urban, red-blue divide. It might be the only one right now.

Drive through Missouri on an autumn Sunday when there’s a home game at Arrowhead Stadium and you’ll find red Chiefs flags flying from vehicles making their way to Kansas City from every corner of the state. The Chiefs radio network broadcasts in more than 70 Missouri cities.

I randomly googled “Kansas City Chiefs” and “Joplin, Missouri,” to get a pulse on whether the Swift-Kelce-Biden conspiracy was gaining traction in that red niche of the state.

What I found was an announcement that a venue called Journey Through Slime was sponsoring an event whereby kids and adults could craft slime creations with a Taylor Swift or Chiefs theme, and enjoy a Kansas City Chiefs cookie in the bargain. Based on the Journey Through Slime’s Facebook page, the event was a big hit. People stood in line to get in.

Far right media figures and departed GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy find it highly suspicious that Swift, an entertainer who has endorsed Biden and other Democrats in the past, has teamed up with Kelce, who has appeared in ads for Pfizer, the vaccine maker, and Budweiser, which had signed off on a brief partnership with a transgender influencer.

“An artificially culturally propped-up couple,” is how Ramaswamy put it, as if Taylor Swift, one of the world’s busiest women, could somehow be manipulated to appear at 12 Chiefs games, including one in Kansas City where the wind chill dipped to negative 27, and another in Buffalo, New York, just after a snowstorm.

It speaks again to the presence of the Chiefs as a unifying force that statewide Republican politicians — even those who are normally on high alert for stirrings from “the woke mob” — aren’t jumping in on the cultural backlash. 

Sen. Josh Hawley congratulated the team on social media, singling out “my friend” Harrison Butker, the kicker, who is open about his anti-abortion views. 

Sen. Eric Schmitt’s X account reposted a Chiefs photo montage that prominently features Kelce.

Parson also posted congratulatory messages. “Missouri’s team gets it done!” he gushed, and displayed a photo of a tattoo on his arm that he said was partly inspired by the Chief’s victory in last year’s Super Bowl. 

The governor’s excitement over the Chiefs playoff run was not enough to prompt him to include money in his proposed budget for the upcoming year to finance stadium upgrades for either the Chiefs or the Kansas City Royals. He told reporters the teams’ proposals were still too undefined to put money behind. He’s got a point. Nothing stretches fan loyalties like a hit to their pocketbooks. So expect more developments on that front as the year continues.

For now, the Chiefs are in their winning era, so much so that folks in other places find us boring and/or irritating. Sorry, not sorry. Here in Missouri, the Chiefs Kingdom remains one of our last bipartisan tents. That’s something to be glad about. 

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson at a bill signing in St. Louis in October 2020 (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson clearly doesn’t know what to do about Eric DeValkenaere, the former Kansas City police officer convicted of killing a 26-year-old Black man, Cameron Lamb.

Parson, forever a county sheriff at heart, hates the thought of a cop sitting in prison and he’s under pressure from the extended brotherhood of law enforcement to bring DeValkenaere home. 

He also knows that commuting DeValkenaere’s sentence will enrage many people in Kansas City and beyond. And if Parson has studied the case — as he claims to have done — he surely knows that the facts support the second-degree manslaughter conviction that has earned DeValkenaere six years in prison.

So what is a governor to do? 

Prosecutor, lawmakers urge Missouri governor not to pardon cop who killed a Black man

If you’re Mike Parson, you create a diversion. Find someone to blame. Not DeValkenaere, who rushed into Lamb’s backyard without cause or a warrant and shot Lamb as he was backing his pickup into a garage. Not the KCPD leadership of 2021, which tacitly encouraged officers to push the limits.  

No. You blame Jean Peters Baker, the Jackson County prosecutor who did her job and brought the charges against DeValkenaere.

“The one thing that bothered me more than anything else was the way the prosecutor handled this in Kansas City,” Parson told radio talk show host Pete Mundo last week. 

“She’s done a poor example of setting the stage and making this more of a political issue,” he went on, “when she should have been doing what’s right by the law.”

I wish Mundo had asked the governor exactly how Baker has not done right by the law, when her case has been validated by a grand jury, a circuit court judge in Jackson County and three Missouri appeals judges. He did not. 

Another great question would be what Parson thinks Baker has to gain politically. Because here’s what he’s missing: No prosecutor in their right mind wants to charge a cop with anything, least of all murder. 

A prosecutor’s success in bringing successful cases and getting criminals off the streets depends on a healthy working relationship with everyone from the police chief to detectives and crime scene investigators. 

Why would Baker endanger that relationship? Why would she invite the wrath of the police union, the anonymous threats linked to this case and the endless condemnation of conservative talk show hosts and pundits?

There is only one answer: Because Baker swore an oath to uphold the law, and prosecuting DeValkenaere was the right thing to do.

Baker has been Jackson County’s prosecutor for 12 eventful years. In that time she successfully prosecuted a Catholic bishop for failing to report suspected child abuse by a priest and she passed on charging former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens with invasion of privacy, saying she couldn’t prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. She sent scores of people to prison for life terms when evidence showed they were guilty and she helped free Kevin Strickland from that fate after 43 years in prison because the evidence showed he was innocent. 

She prosecuted police officers for assault and other crimes, and in other cases she declined to prosecute officers even when the community was calling for her to do so. Baker has built a trove of credibility in Kansas City and Jackson County by meticulously gathering facts and applying the law without regard to race, status or position.

Facts and the rule of law matter much less to Parson and his appointed attorney general, Andrew Bailey. The only law they want applied in the DeValkenaere case is the unwritten one that says a cop in uniform can never be wrong. And so the prosecutor seeking justice in the death of a young Black man must be the one in error.

The problem for them is that, when Bailey took the preposterous step of appealing the guilty verdict handed down by a Missouri circuit court judge, another set of judges reiterated that Baker had been right. DeValkenaere broke the law when he fatally shot Lamb. 

In Kansas City, which has been on edge for months about the possibility of the governor pardoning DeValkenaere or commuting his sentence, Parson’s remarks on the radio show were interpreted as a sign that he’s getting ready to do just that — free DeValkenaere and attempt to pin the inevitable fallout on Baker and her office.

But Parson said something else in that interview that makes me think that outcome is not inevitable. He said he had supported Bailey’s move to appeal the circuit court’s verdict, rather than defend it as is usually the attorney general’s role. But two of the three appeals judges who slapped down Bailey’s request to reverse the verdict were Parson’s own appointees.

“Those were some of the judges that I actually put in place,” the governor told Mundo. “I just don’t have a quick answer for you.”

Baker has announced that she’s not running for reelection and will leave office in January 2025 — the same time Parson will be moving out of the governor’s mansion. Baker can return to private life knowing that she’s done the right thing. Will Parson be able to say the same?

Greg Mosier's first assignment as president of Kansas City Kansas Community College was to get student housing on campus. With trustee chair Evelyn Criswell, he recently cut the ribbon at a dedication ceremony for Centennial Hall, which will house 258 students (Chase Castor/The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

Community colleges traditionally have been commuter campuses. Fewer than one-third of the nation’s two-year schools have on-campus housing.

But on Aug. 12, 258 students at Kansas City Kansas Community College in Wyandotte County will move into a sparkling new residence hall. Named Centennial Hall, the building has been designed to offer students a safe learning environment, privacy and camaraderie.

“I think I’m most excited about building our community and getting to know people,” said Kaitlyn Bradbury, a second-year student at KCKCC who has been training to be a residential adviser at Centennial Hall. “It’s part of that college experience.”

Greg Mosier, the college’s president, said his school’s elected board of trustees named campus housing as a top priority when he took the job in 2018.

“This building is really meant to let our students know how much we care about their success,” Mosier said at the July dedication ceremony for Centennial Hall.

Bradbury’s experience so far illustrates why KCKCC leaders wanted campus housing so badly.

She graduated in 2020 from Piper High School, about a 15-minute drive from KCKCC.

Bradbury chose community college because it’s more affordable than a four-year school, and because it offered her a chance to continue playing softball at a competitive level. She could have commuted from home, but she wanted to be closer to her teammates, many of whom moved to Wyandotte County from other parts of Kansas or out of state.

For years, KCKCC has helped athletes and other students lease apartments in an aging complex near its campus. Last year, about 100 students had to be relocated because of a mold issue.

“At first I was put in a hotel and then I ended up having to move home,” Bradbury said.

Eventually, the school helped her find a different apartment. This school year, she is looking forward to less drama and more time to focus on her studies as a mass communications major.

Community college vs. four-year college

Shawn Derritt, KCKCC’s dean of student services, said that research has found that safe housing on or close to campus improves academic outcomes for community college students.

“There’s less distractions. They’re not having to commute from home,” he said. “They’re able to be engaged in campus activities. That allows that focus on education.”

Rural community colleges in Kansas and Missouri have for years offered some form of housing for students who make their way to their campuses to participate in athletics or special programs, or who simply want an affordable option.

Residential accommodations are more unusual at two-year schools located in urban areas, like KCKCC. Johnson County Community College has no on-campus housing, and neither do the campuses of the Metropolitan Community College system in Kansas City.

With the opening of Centennial Hall, KCKCC has become part of a movement among community colleges nationwide to help students manage an ongoing affordable housing shortage.

In a 2020 survey by the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice, based at Temple University in Philadelphia, 52% of community college students who responded said they had difficulty finding housing or keeping up with rent and expenses. That’s higher than the 43% of four-year college students who reported experiencing housing insecurity.

Research has shown that students who are worried about having a safe place to stay in general have lower grade point averages than their peers and higher rates of anxiety and depression.

Community college students, who are more likely than students at four-year schools to come from low-income families and minority communities, cite the inability to pay for basic needs such as food and housing as a leading reason they abandon their pursuit of college credits and workforce credentials.

Scrambling for housing options

In response to the alarming enrollment declines — since the pandemic, community colleges around the nation have lost about 800,000 students — and a growing awareness of student needs, more campuses are looking into housing options. These include partnering with nonprofits or lobbying for state funds to build residence halls.

“We’re not a four-year school, we’re not a research institute that has thousands of dollars to do stuff,” Mosier said.

To fund the $20 million Centennial Hall project, Mosier secured revenue bonds that will be repaid over time with the fees students pay to live in the building.

Contracts for Centennial Hall call for students to pay $5,700 over the course of the fall and spring semesters. That amounts to about $630 a month, which is less expensive than the rents listed for apartments near the campus and includes utilities.

About 7,000 students enrolled at KCKCC in the 2021 academic year, so one residence hall won’t meet everyone’s housing needs. Children and spouses cannot live in Centennial Hall with students, and 140 of the units are reserved for student athletes, who find their way to KCKCC from around the nation and even overseas.

Most students will live in suites with four individual bedrooms and shared kitchen and bath facilities. The building has numerous gathering areas and study pods and a gaming and recreational area in the basement.

“I love that the dorms look like mini apartments,” said Elizabeth Daniels, who will be a student residential adviser. “It’s a big, wide open space.”

Daniels, a 2020 graduate of the Kansas City Kansas Public Schools’ Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, spent her first year at KCKCC at home, taking online classes for her business major.

The move to Centennial Hall will be her first opportunity to have a room to herself. At home, she shares quarters with a sibling.

She said she is looking forward to being one of the hall’s first residents.

“I really just wanted to be a part of this new experience for everybody,” she said.

From left, Josh Hawley, Steven Mnuchin and Eric Greitens listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the St. Charles Convention Center in 2017 (Photo by Whitney Curtis/Getty Images).

Flush with ambition and cash, a newcomer arrives like a bolt from the blue. Or, in Missouri’s case, red.

He jumps a line of aspirational politicians, lands in a statewide elected office and immediately sets his sights on a higher target, heedless of the wreck just up the road.

Missouri has seen this movie twice in four years. 

The original performance starred Eric Greitens, who was largely unknown before he began his improbable but successful 2016 run for governor, only to be forced out of office after two years, enveloped in scandal.

The sequel features Josh Hawley. His first elected office, also gained in 2016, was state attorney general — a job that traditionally has gone to politicians who have spent years in the trenches of the state legislature. Two years later, Hawley vaulted to the U.S. Senate. He is now facing nationwide wrath for prolonging baseless doubts about Democrat Joe Biden’s election, and for encouraging insurrectionists with a fist pump before they stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Outside of President Trump’s deep red base — whose votes and affections Greitens and Hawley both covet — the actions of the two wunderkinds have left many Missourians embarrassed and wondering how their state has become the cradle for ambition gone so wildly awry.

The explanation begins with the two men themselves, who both grew up in Missouri, went elsewhere and returned with the intention of using the state as a launching pad for their presidential ambitions. 

Greitens settled in the St. Louis area and founded a non-profit to help military veterans. Hawley landed a job as assistant professor at the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia.

While Hawley was conscientious about teaching his classes and meeting with students, he showed no interest in the life of the university or the usual faculty activities, said Frank Bowman, a professor at the law school. 

“It became clear that personal advancement was the priority behind which everything else had to fall,” said Bowman.

The author of a recent book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump, Bowman has been sharply critical recently of both Trump and Hawley. He contributed about $500 to Democrat Claire McCaskill, Hawley’s opponent in the 2018 U.S. Senate race.

In their 2016 campaigns for office, Greitens, 42 at the time, and Hawley, 36, tapped into a populist preference for newcomers — as well as enthusiasm for Trump, who won Missouri by almost 19 points.

“I think Republicans are inclined to vote for folks who are making their initial run,” said John Hancock, a political consultant and former Missouri Republican Party chairman. “There is some dissatisfaction with the institutional Republican figures and that has manifested itself in allowing new and fresh faces to vault their way to the top.”

Both parties are seeking candidates with selling points, like military service, that don’t include a trail of votes, Hancock said.

“When I started in this business, we would give slogans to our candidates,” he said.  “It’s probably been 10 years since I’ve used the ‘experience counts’ slogan.”

The aspiring newcomers benefited from Missouri’s wide-open campaign financing laws.

“Both of these guys had access to a tremendous amount of money early,” said Terry Smith, a professor of political science at Columbia College. “That was certainly important for Greitens and allowed him to almost come out of nowhere.”

Candidates could receive unlimited contributions to their personal campaign committees in 2016. Greitens, who defeated several primary opponents and Democratic state Attorney General Chris Koster, raised more than $30 million, including a $13 million contribution from the Republican Governors Association. Voters have since limited contributions to candidates’ campaign committees to $2,600, but donors can still channel unlimited amounts through political action committees. 

In both his statewide runs, Hawley benefitted from the sponsorship of former U.S. Sen. John Danforth and mega donors in Missouri, like Joplin businessman David Humphreys.

“He was the anointed one,” Smith said. “He was fast tracked. When you get the endorsement of somebody like John Danforth and when you get the money of somebody like David Humphreys, that’s going to really help.” 

When seeking office, Hawley and Greitens sidestepped the state’s traditional party apparatus. Instead of building relationships with Missouri politicians and groups, they worked with out-of-state consultants and relied on expensive media buys to introduce themselves to voters. 

Greitens touted his service as a U.S. Navy Seal. Hawley used his legal resume, which includes clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

The absence of party vetting, as Missourians have learned, comes with risks.

“Once upon a time, both of the political parties basically said, ‘wait your turn,’ and enforced that,” Smith said. “You had your occasional embarrassments, but nothing like what we have now.”

Once in office, Greitens and Hawley continued to rely on out-of-state operatives to build their political brands, raising concerns among ethics watchers that they were mingling state resources with political activities.

Greitens’ closest advisers hailed from Georgia. Hawley stuck with OnMessage Inc., a national strategy firm known for keeping a tight grip on its clients’ image and activities. News outlets eventually got ahold of private emails showing political operatives from OnMessage coordinating with taxpayer-paid staff in the attorney general’s office. Among other things, they scripted a  2017 raid on massage parlors in Springfield designed to portray Hawley as the fearless protector of human trafficking victims.

Both neophyte politicians shunned legislators and leaders in their own party and were quick to pick fights on social media with mainstream news reporters and outlets, interest groups and anyone inclined to question what they were doing.

With Hawley, that combativeness has increased with his ascension to the U.S. Senate. His Twitter feed shows him lashing out at certain Missouri newspapers (“rags”) “big tech,” “corporatists,” the “new left,” China, and anything he considers “woke.”  

“I have been surprised by the kind of vituperative quality of many of the things Josh has said,” Bowman said.

Greitens was notoriously nasty in person and on social media during his abbreviated stint as governor. Few people in Missouri today care to revisit his pugilistic nature or the abusive extramarital affair and brazen, ongoing corruption that eventually did him in. His initial steps last year to form a political action committee for a future run for office sent shudders throughout the state. Taking a page from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, he is Missouri’s Voldemort — He Who Shall Not Be Named.

Hawley’s legacy remains to be written. National pundits believe he has “immolated” his presidential prospects with the fist pump and his willingness to defy U.S. Senate leadership and turn the Electoral College certification process into a brawl. But many Republicans at home are sticking with him, and there is no sign at the moment of a Democrat with the drive and resources to challenge him for his Senate seat in 2024.

But this is Missouri, home of unbridled ambition and unlimited cash. Anything could happen.