MOScout Weekender: Voters Like Gun Storage Bill, Texting While Driving Ban, Assessment Limit - Hallway Split on CLEANER - WWTW and more....

Remington/MOScout Poll: Issues Before GA

This week I asked about some proposals before the general assembly: Sen. Andrew Koenig’s SB 705, Rep. Cody Smith’s HB 106, Rep. Wiley Price’s HB 1391, and Rep. David Evans’ HB 1290. See the full results here.

Survey conducted February 5 and 6, 2020. 1,130 likely 2020 General Election voters participated in the survey. Survey weighted to match expected turnout demographics for the 2020 General Election. Margin of Error is +/-2.8%.

Q1: Senate Bill 705 prohibits residential property assessments from increasing by more than five percent or the percent increase in inflation, whichever is greater. Do you approve or disapprove of Senate Bill 705?

Approve: 70%

Disapprove: 17%

Not sure: 13%

Q2: House Joint Resolution 106 guarantees health insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions and coverage of dependent children until the age of twenty-six, limits Missouri Medicaid benefits to Missouri residents, requires able-bodied adult Medicaid recipients to participate in work and community engagement and subjects all Medicaid funds to appropriations. Do you approve or disapprove of House Joint Resolution 106?

Approve: 58%

Disapprove: 28%

Not sure: 14%

Q3: House Bill 1391 creates a crime of unlawfully storing a firearm in the presence of a child. A person is guilty of criminal negligence if they leave a firearm in a place, they should have known a child could access, and the child discharges it, and injures or kills him or herself or someone else. Do you approve or disapprove of House Bill 1391?

Approve: 66%

Disapprove: 26%

Not sure: 8%

Q4: House Bill 1290 prohibits the use of a hand-held wireless communications device for texting by drivers of any age. Do you approve or disapprove of House Bill 1290?

Approve: 73%

Disapprove: 16%

Not sure: 11%

MOScout’s Hallway Index: Cleaner at the Ballot Box

I asked lobbyists if they thought the Republicans’ new CLEANER proposal would pass in November.  The question found them evenly split.

RESULTS

1. Very likely it will pass… 25%

2. Somewhat likely it will pass… 28.6%

3. Somewhat unlikely it will pass… 25%

4. Very unlikely it will pass… 21.4%

Sample of Comments

·         Democrats fund ballot issues. Republicans fund candidates. I'm not sure there's a Republican donor out there that is willing to do both.

·         The opposition (clean MO) will have plenty of resources. And the message to vote no is always the easiest path.

·         If they get Trump to say something about it, it will send it over the edge

·         I think it depends if there is a concerted effort by the folks who passed Clean MO to spend the money to do an education campaign against it. If not, it definitely passes.

·         Dems want to believe they can beat their own messaging. They can’t.

·         Likely to be tossed in court, but even if it’s not, there will be enough confusion and money involved that it will be hard for folks to vote ‘yes’.

Who Won the Week?

Caleb Rowden – Manages to finesse his caucus’ top priority to perfection without resorting to a filibuster/PQ death spiral.  It’s an auspicious start to the session.

Grain Belt backers – In a new twist, Grain Belt promises to help facilitate rural access to broadband.  That’s a very enticing offer which changes the calculus of how out-state legislators will look at the project.

SB 5 Reforms – The recent MO Supreme Court decision, which mightily narrowed the basis for challenging a “special law,” is already having ramifications – including giving AG Eric Schmitt a new avenue of defense for his signature municipal reform bill.

MedEx – In a seeming rebuttal letter to Missouri Right to Life, Archbishop Richard Carlson tells his flock that the pro-life position is to support Medicaid expansion.

Kansas City – Super Bowl CHAMPS.

Find a downloadable version here.

Finally

Pretty fascinating read in Sports Illustrated about the Texas’ feral hog problem.  Missouri makes a cameo.  See it here.

·         Compared with the pigs found on farms and in children’s books, they have thicker hides, leaner builds, longer and darker hair, and sometimes tusks. An average wild pig weighs around 150 pounds, but it’s not unusual to see triple that. As species go, they’re aggressively invasive and, crucially, prodigious, able to breed at less than 12 months old, producing an average of two five-to-six-pig litters every two years.

·         They decimate crops, devouring fields of corn, sugarcane, wheat, oats, melons, pumpkins and whatever else they find appetizing, typically leaving farmland too ravaged to reharvest. It’s not unheard of for a farmer to take a $70,000 hit overnight. In fact, the federal estimate of the total annual damage done by wild pigs is $1.5 billion. One USDA researcher has called them “the worst invasive species we’ll ever see.”

·         The biggest contributors to the problem… were scofflaw hunters... The people most interested in killing wild pigs were expanding the animals’ territory even faster than the pigs could themselves. Which is why modern distribution maps show isolated clusters in places like Illinois, Michigan, North Dakota and Washington. Enthusiastic as those hunters may have been, the relocated pigs bred faster than they could be killed off.

·         “In 1982 the USDA killed 86 feral hogs” in Texas, says Mike Bodenchuk, a San Antonio–based wildlife biologist. “Thirty years later we’re killing 30,000. We look at other states—Kansas, Missouri—and say, ‘You guys are where we were 30 years ago. You don’t wanna be where we are today.’ ”

·         Support for any large-scale effort is hard to garner. Pigs present an off-beat problem that many citizens have been slow to take seriously… States like Kansas and Missouri have banned hunting wild pigs on public lands in a well-received (if counterintuitive) attempt to stamp out sport hunters’ motivations for releasing hogs within their borders.

eMailbag on Grain Belt

There are still five schools in Missouri that don’t have adequate access to internet. This is shameful. Even if parts of North Missouri do have access to broadband, the Grain Belt project would offer the hyperloop of internet investment in the state – providing increases in speeds and reliability to everyone.

$5K+ Contributions

Vote 2020 - $16,800 from North Fund (Washington DC).

Missourians for Healthcare - $27,428 from The Fairness Project (Washington DC).

Birthdays

Happy birthdays to Terry Swinger and Kathie Conway.

Sunday: Rep. Jered Taylor and Ryann Summerford.