MOScout Daily Update: Biden's Mandate and What It Means - SAPA in NYTimes - Hatfield Ellinger $$$ and more...

Biden Announces Employer Mandates

The big news event yesterday was President Joe Biden announcing COVID vaccination mandates.

Politico’s simple explainer: “Biden is finally leveraging the unilateral power of the federal government to expand vax mandates to some 100 million Americans: all workers at companies with over 100 employees, all federal employees and contractors, anyone who works for a health care provider that receives Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements, any employee at a school that receives federal money from Head Start and a few other programs.”

The reaction was swift from Missouri Republicans.  Post-Dispatch gives a good run-down.

·         “Vaccination protects us from serious illness, but the decision to get vaccinated is a private health care decision that should remain as such,” said [Mike] Parson, who has encouraged people to get vaccinated.  “My administration will always fight back against federal power grabs and government overreach that threatens to limit our freedoms,” he said.

·         Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is running for U.S. Senate, said on Twitter: “Biden’s historic overreach on vaccine mandates will not stand in Missouri.” “We must fight back,” said Schmitt, who has filed legal challenges to mask mandates in Missouri.

·         Missouri Senate Majority Leader Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican weighing a run for Congress, said the Legislature “should take action to protect MO’ians and MO businesses ASAP!” “This is one of the most egregious overreach attempts from a President I have ever witnessed,” Rowden said.

·         Rep. Tony Lovasco, R-St. Charles County, urged Parson to call a special session of the Legislature to address the mandates.  “It is our responsibility as those who are elected to protect the liberty of Missourians,” Lovasco said in a letter to Parson that he shared via Twitter.

What It Means

In the short term, it has the potential to add some spectacle to next week’s Veto Session.  Except for perhaps an override attempt on a few budget line items, the only real action was expected to be at fundraisers.

Now, we’ll get speechifying on the vaccine mandates, some bills will be filed (and presumably go nowhere as they’re not in order for Veto Session)…

·         One cynical Republican on calls for a special session: Minus the Courts’ intervention, what does any General Assembly Member think it can do through legislation on Biden’s COVID measures today?  It is a complete overreach we all know the Court will smack down but Biden just created the “who can write the best press release” game in MO politics.

In the longer term, this is incredibly important for 2022.  Democrats had hoped, perhaps half-delusional, that the six-week ban in Texas could play to their favor, helping them with swing voters in the suburbs who might recoil by the extreme measure.  That’s not the issue for 2022 in Missouri.  It looks very much like the issue will be running against the Biden White House.

NYTimes on SAPA

On the front page of today’s New York Times, an article about SAPA.  See it here.

Brad Cole is a fiery defender of the Second Amendment, a set-jawed lawman with a lacquered alligator head on his desk, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum on his hip and a signed picture of himself with former President Donald J. Trump on his office wall.

Sheriff Cole, of Christian County, considers himself part of the constitutional sheriff movement, which contends that the federal government is subordinate to local authorities in most law-enforcement matters. Yet this year he found himself in the unusual position of pushing back against Republican state lawmakers ramming through a bill to punish local departments for collaborating with federal authorities on gun cases deemed to be in violation of Second Amendment rights.

“Anytime you take away a tool from us to do our job and protect the people we serve, well, I’m going to have a huge problem with that,” said Sheriff Cole, a Republican who worked with several other sheriffs from deep-red southern Missouri to modify the bill before it passed in May on a party-line vote…

Last month, the Justice Department filed an affidavit supporting an effort by the city and county of St. Louis to strike down the law in state court, saying it had already hamstrung weapons and drug investigations. The judge in the case recently rejected a request to keep the law from going into effect, and, in response, Attorney General Merrick Garland is considering a federal lawsuit, according to two administration officials.

At the heart of the law is an audacious declaration — that all state firearms laws “exceed” the federal government’s power to track, register and regulate guns and gun owners…

Schmitt Begs Off Fitz-Ashcroft Spat

Missouri Independent reports on Attorney General Eric Schmitt ducking out of the fight over a ballot question involving Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.  Read it here.  Honestly, I was most intrigued by the pay differential between Ellinger and Hatfield…

·         The treasurer’s office hired Chuck Hatfield as its lawyer. His firm will be paid $495 an hour.

·         Ashcroft’s office hired the law firm of Marc Ellinger for $325 an hour.

eMailbag on Campaigns

·         Don’t know about the African American support for Shamed Dogan. For a majority of African Americans, in the current climate, the letter R on a ballot is associated with Trumpism.

·         This auditors race will be no different than other statewide campaigns and come down to money and message… from campaign video of red meat topics, Police endorsement and now the firefighters right before 9/11 [David Gregory] is precisely on brand for this cycle…

·         Funny that Scott Sifton now thinks we should get rid of the filibuster when he regularly used it as a senator…

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