MOScout Daily Update: Low Expectations for Final Day of Session - Huckabee for Ashcroft - MRA for Scharf - Ed Martin Back in News and more…

Front page of the Post-Dispatch this morning….

Republican Standoff Dooms IP Change
The Republican supermajority proved itself unable to forge a path forward on initiative petition reform.

After Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman’s motion asking the House to “recede from its position, or, failing to do so, grant the Senate a conference,” the House did neither.  It refused to recede from its position and sent the SJR back to the Senate.

If the House had stripped the ballot candy, it could have sent the question to the ballot.  If the House had granted a conference committee, the path would have been narrowed, but it would have existed.  (That narrow path was leaving half-candy on, say foreign influence, and making it the second bullet point in the ballot summary.  That might have induced either Dems to sit in the Senate or another GOP senator to join the PQ tribe.)

Given the state of the Senate, the House simply returning SJR 74 was the worst-case scenario for folks hoping to see concurrent majority go before voters.

Democrats will filibuster it again, and the Freedom Caucus will likely filibuster any renewed motion to conference.

·       Over the years, I have seen too many issues declared dead only to be resuscitated again and again and somehow make it to the end.  But.  With the present intransigence of the warring factions, I can’t see how this isn’t dead.

 Update at 6:23AM

Senate Pro Tem Caleb Rowden rejected the House’s message on SJR 74 yesterday, sending it back to the House.

This gives the measure one more chance should the House decide that passing a clean concurrent majority question is better than nothing.

New Record Low?

The House has many bills which they can pick up and send to the governor desk today.  I expect they will pass some.  But we’re still going to be making or flirting with a record low number of bills passed this year.

As we enter the final day of session, only 35 bills have been passed.  19 of those are budget bills.

·       That’s less than the previous year’s anemic 57 bills. 

·       But it’s less than even the COVID-ridden abridged legislative session of 2020.  That year, 42 bills were passed.

Some of the reasons for this seem session-specific…

·       Speaker Dean Plocher was lame-duck, and under an Ethic investigation during the entire session, while his staff churned over.

·       The Senate remained mired in its Republican Civil War, exacerbated by election year posturing.

But with back-to-back dismal sessions, it does raise the question if some systemic changes need to be made to improve the legislature’s ability to function effectively.  When I asked lobbyists this question last weekend in the “Hallway Index,” a plurality (45%) thought term limits were a main culprit to the current malaise.

Senate Fights Until The End

Yesterday, Sen. Bill Eigel offered a comical amendment to the Journal that the Senate was “interrupted by a stampeding herd of rhinoceroses running through the Senate chamber, laying waste to the institution. The sergeant-at-arms of the Missouri Senate is advised to keep an eye out for the return of the stampeding herd of rhinoceroses should it return to the chamber at any point during the final two days of the legislative session.”

After a recess, Sen. Mike Cierpiot retaliated with his own amendment that “the opinion of the Missouri Senate that the Office of the Missouri Attorney General should not expend any public funds or moneys from the Missouri State Legal Expense Fund in the defense of, or the payment of damages from, lawsuits brought against Senator Hoskins, Senator Brattin, or Senator Schroer that are currently pending…”

When Eigel arose to attack Cierpiot over the amendment (“The 8th betrayed the entire pro-life cause in the state of Missouri for a generation yesterday by derailing the initiative petition reform bill out of personal animosity”) Floor Leader Cindy O’Laughlin had heard enough and adjourned for the day.

What’s Next

I’ll be surprised if anything happens in the Senate today.

Huckabee for Ashcroft

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will headline a fundraiser for Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft later this month…

MRA for Scharf

Will Scharf announced on Twitter he was “excited to receive the endorsement of the Missouri Republican Assembly, one of the largest, most organized, and most committed grassroots groups in the state!”

·       Team Scharf thinks the endorsement is particularly potent in the 7-CD (southwest MO).

Martin on New PACs

Politico’s Playbook reports that Ed Martin has been named a member of the leadership team for the Republican National Convention’s Committee on the Platform.

·       Martin was Governor Matt Blunt’s chief of staff before taking over – amid lawsuits and controversy – the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles.

Lobbyists Registrations

Noah Reandeau deleted Kids Read Now, Inc.

$5K+ Contributions

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom (pro-reproductive rights) - $25,000 from Gary Mark Lauder (Atherton, CA).

Missouri Right to Life Political Action Committee - $10,000 from Frederic G Sauer.

Gromowsky for Prosecutor - $10,000 from APD Management Co LLC.

Gromowsky for Prosecutor - $10,000 from Louis Accurso.

House Republican Campaign Committee, Inc - $10,000 from Real Action PAC.

Birthdays

Happy birthday to Doug Funderburk.

Saturday: Carolyn Kindle Betz.

Sunday: Will Wheeler, Chuck Purgason, Gary Cross, and Scott Callicott.

MOScout Schedule

I’m off for the weekend.  I’ll zap out an update this afternoon if by some miracle things jiggle free in the legislative stalemate.  Otherwise, see you Monday!