MOScout Daily Update: Galloway Makes TV Buy - Schroer Residency Challenged - Special's Slow Pace and more....
Galloway Makes Big Media Buy
The Galloway campaign has made its first big TV buy. It’s a $2.1 million reservation across eight weeks starting after Labor Day.
· This is just an initial foundation — you should expect to see more.
The buy will cheer Galloway supporters who have had to watch the governor’s PAC, Uniting Missouri, flush with cash, release multiple commercials.
· Team Galloway sees this as a turning point: Uniting Missouri has already spent close to $3.5 million trying to build up (and rebuild) Parson — and the Governor’s numbers have dropped. The Governor’s team should be very worried about what happens once Galloway is up on TV.
Schroer Residency Challenged
Post-Dispatch reports on a lawsuit alleging that Rep. Nick Schroer no longer meets the residency requirement for his House seat. See it here.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in St. Charles County Circuit Court, Schroer’s Democratic opponent, Victoria Witt Datt, accused Schroer of a “fraudulent scheme” to conceal the fact that he moved, including updating his driver’s license with a false address within the district.
The lawsuit says the actual inhabitants of Schroer’s in-district housing, on the 300 block of San Jose Drive in O’Fallon, are Mary Gerst, 60, and her mother, Elizabeth Gerst, 85.
Schroer said in an interview Thursday that his daughter, who attends private school in the Francis Howell School District, couldn’t access necessary services from O’Fallon’s Fort Zumwalt School District, where the Schroers had lived, without her attending class in that district.
“So I ended up telling my wife, I said, ‘you know, find a house (in Francis Howell),’ we can get it fixed up,” he said. “I’ll make the sacrifice to live away from the girls. I do it already all the time.”
He said he signed a lease with Mary Gerst, who is “like family,” Schroer said.
“It may seem weird with our situation,” Schroer acknowledged. “I’m willing to do this where I’m putting them to bed and making sure that Daddy’s home and doing things like that. If I have to sleep somewhere else, and live with my close family friend, so be it. You know what I mean?”
The Missouri Constitution says when a state representative moves out of their district, their “office shall thereby be vacated.”
Datt asked for an order disqualifying Schroer from the election and removing his name from the ballot…
According to the lawsuit, a private investigator “confirms” Schroer parks his Dodge Ram, with a specialty “R 107” license plate, outside of the house in Defiance, an unincorporated community in St. Charles County.
“The private investigator confirms, however, that no vehicles associated with Schroer or his wife have been seen at the Gerst House,” the lawsuit says…
Rumorville: Senate in No Rush
The House returns on Monday to take up the individual bills which make up the governor’s legislative package to curb violent crime. Those bills will then head to the Senate.
That’s where things get murky. It’s unclear when the Senate will reconvene.
There’s a possibility that they will wait and finish special session concurrent with Veto session (the week of September 14). That three-week wait would undermine the supposed urgency of the governor’s call which occurred about a month ago.
And
The House has plain ignored the governor’s expansion of the call to include giving the AG jurisdiction. There’s no indication that the Senate plans to touch the issue either.
Meanwhile
There’s still talk of the governor pursuing a second special session. One lobbyist forwarded me this article (“Tennessee governor signs COVID-19 liability measure into law”) with the note: “coming soon to a moleg near you…”
Voting Process Lawsuit
The ever-busy Chuck Hatfield again… Post-Dispatch reports: A national voting rights organization and three Missourians have sued the state in advance of the Nov. 3 election, challenging the constitutionality of five laws that they say “make it more difficult — and sometimes, outright impossible” for voters to cast ballots. Among the statutes the voters are targeting is a Missouri law requiring mailed-in ballots to be received by election authorities by 7 p.m. on election night in order to count…
Waters Passes
Columbia News Tribune: Henry J. Waters III, former editor and publisher of the Columbia Daily Tribune and known to everyone in Columbia as Hank, died Thursday at age 90. Waters was the grandson of Ed Watson, who purchased the Tribune in 1905, and his first job at the paper was as a delivery carrier. At age 18, in June 1948, Waters began selling advertising. He was a sophomore at the University of Missouri at the time… Hank Waters was promoted to advertising manager in 1959 and on May 15, 1966, he became the editor and publisher of the newspaper. In that role, Waters began writing a daily, signed editorial. He published in excess of 18,000 editorials in that period…
eMailbag on GOP’s Crime Focus
· I guess I’m in the minority, too. I agree with you. They can talk about crime if they want, or they could lead on the issues that matter to people…
· I am also in the minority. It’s always about the economy and jobs and for Covid control, let’s add keeping kids safe in schools…
· I agree with your take re: crime
Weekender Preview
Coming tomorrow… Senate 15 poll.
$5K+ Contributions
New Approach PAC - $15,000 from New Approach PAC (Washington DC).
American Property Casualty Insurance Association Political Account - $140,264 from American Property Casualty Insurance Association.
Keep Government Accountable - $10,000 from IUOE Local 513 Political and Education Fund.
Sheet Metal Workers Local No 36 Voluntary Political Fund - $100,000 from SMART PAL (Washington DC).
House Democratic Campaign Committee - $50,000 from International Union of Painters and Allied Trades PAT Federal PAC (Hanover, MD).
Lobbyists Registrations
James Harris deleted Banner Public Affairs, QuikTrip Corporation, and Missouri Cable Telecommunications Association.
Birthdays
Happy birthdays to Shane Schoeller, Dave Hageman, Sammy Panettiere, Katie Gamble, and Jim Cooper.