MOScout Daily Update: Dunn to MOPets - Charters' Moment - Greitens Contra McConnell - The Big Lie - Lessons From the Road and more...
Dunn to Pet Breeders
Missouri Pet Breeders Association (see their website here) has hired JP Dunn as its Executive Director. Dunn comes from the Missouri Dairy Association where he was executive director. Before that he did a stint with the Missouri Department of Agriculture after starting his career with Missouri Soybean Association.
· One tipster says MO Pets is “flush with cash after members benefitted from the pandemic pet boom, and they are close with Mr. Dunn as a result of his work through Protect the Harvest.”
Charters’ Moment
Axios reports this morning that “the pandemic has weakened America's public education system, as Zoom classes, teacher fatigue and student disengagement take their toll. And that hobbled system is shedding students to charter schools, private schools and homeschooling. Those dynamics are exacerbating inequities in American education, as it's typically wealthier and white students who make the switch.”
· Their reporting is based on data from National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. It shows Missouri charters gaining 855 students (+3.5%) last year and district schools losing 1,146 (-.1%). That’s not a huge swing, but it’s part of a larger multi-year trend.
· Public school officials in St. Louis City have pushed for a moratorium on new charter schools.
Greitens Contra McConnell
Eric Greitens says he won’t support Mitch McConnell for leadership if he becomes a US Senator.
“I am committed to finding new leadership in the Senate when Republicans win back the majority in 2022. We have sadly watched Mitch McConnell morph from a conservative fighter into the power- merchant of D.C., prioritizing special interests and personal influence over America. Now he is actively engaged in working against President Trump and the MAGA movement as we chart our path back to the majority—seemingly unaware why he even has his job in the first place…”
· It was already baked into the cake that McConnell wasn’t going to be supporting Greitens, so he had nothing to lose with this gambit, and maybe it helps him get the Holy Grail Trump endorsement?
MoIndy on The “Big Lie”
Missouri Independent writes that “Allegiance to Trump’s discredited allegation of a stolen election has become a litmus test for Republican candidates around the country…. nowhere is it more evident than the GOP primary for the seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, where the idea of a Trump endorsement is largely seen as a golden ticket for whomever gets it.”
· Seconds into a web ad supporting Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s U.S. Senate bid, footage of former President Donald Trump alleging a stolen election is juxtaposed with headlines touting Schmitt’s role in lawsuits challenging the 2020 results.
· A largely discredited audit of the presidential election in Arizona has become a key piece of Eric Greitens’ Senate campaign, with the former governor traveling across the country to witness it and celebrating the endorsement of a legislator who is one of its biggest cheerleaders.
· U.S. Reps. Billy Long and Vicky Hartzler — both seeking the GOP Senate nod — joined most Republicans in Congress in January to vote against certifying Biden’s electoral college win.
· And three days after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop that certification vote, Senate hopeful Mark McCloskey tweeted, “there is no question that the election was the result of massive fraud, there is no question that Donald Trump won the legitimate vote…”
Meanwhile
New York Times reports on court documents that even Trump’s own team didn’t believe the lie. Read it here.
“Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump. But… Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims... The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.”
· “Although Mr. Trump’s allegations of a stolen election have died in the courts and election officials of both parties from every state have said there is no evidence of fraud, Republicans across the country continued to spread conspiracy theories.”
More on DEI
On the heels of yesterday’s blurb about the brewing battle over CRT and DEI in school curriculum, one reader notes that Senate Education Chair Cindy O’Laughlin could use some DEI training, sending me this video she shared on Facebook just before the January 6 riot. “Two Dumb Ass Farmers,” while urging Congress to reject the electors, call Stacy Abrams “an angus.”
Getting Passed Around: Lessons From the Road
When Medicaid Director Todd Richardson took a leave of absence and traveled the country with this family, they kept a travelogue of their adventure.
Getting passed around among building denizens yesterday was the final post, written by his wife, about lessons learned. It’s worth reading here. Highlights…
1. Live life while you can-I thought a lot about my Dad on this trip. Actually, he’s probably the biggest reason we ended up going in the first place. Dad passed away nine years ago, just before he was able to retire. Lots of people think of a trip like this as something they do AFTER they retire. I decided I wasn’t going to take for granted any guarantee of what may or may not come to pass in the future…
3. Doing laundry is awful no matter where you are…
7. We don’t really need all our stuff-We packed way more than what we needed in the RV. I quickly found that we wore the same clothes repeatedly and had a lot of overflow we either used once, or never. With rare exception, there was nothing we didn’t fit in the RV that we really missed. What this tells me is that we have entirely too much stuff. The stuff doesn’t add anything to our lives other than possibly minor convenience...
10. Kids are capable of much more than we give them credit for…
But
One reader felt “#5” was “tone deaf” given the struggles the state faced with COVID, FRA and Medicaid expansion.
5. We place way too much importance on our careers… I think we both learned a good lesson in that despite how we feel the world might fall apart if we don’t answer a certain phone call or push in an extra appointment, it really doesn’t. It makes me think that if we take a step back and don’t push ourselves to the limit everything will end up ok (even when there’s pressure to do otherwise).
Lobbyists Registrations
Nexus Group added Okta Inc.
Cassandra Allana Grewing added Armstrong Teasdale LLP, and AT Government Strategies LLC.
Irl Scissors added Electrify Missouri.
$5K+ Contributions
Missouri Senate Campaign Committee - $15,000 from Evergy Metro Inc.
Birthdays
Happy birthdays to David Willis, and Bruce Franks Jr.