JEFFERSON CITY — Expectations for a productive session for the Missouri House and Senate were dismally low in the weeks and months leading up to it. The first week seems to have confirmed those fears.
More than 15 state lawmakers are already running for higher office this year. And political spectators and elected officials alike are bracing for floor debate that doubles as campaign speech, putting authentic policy discussion on the backburner.
At the same time, the temperature of the yearslong fight between a hard-right faction of Senate Republicans and more moderate Senate leadership appears to be higher than ever.
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Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, and Senate President Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, have pointed to a need for relationship- and consensus-building as the path toward policy-making.
But members of the newly formed hard-line Missouri Freedom Caucus see it differently.
The , which held a kickoff event Friday in St. Charles, is part of the larger State Freedom Caucus Network, which provides “the high-level staff, strategy, and community conservatives need to take ground across the country,” according to the network’s website. It’s an outgrowth of the House Freedom Caucus, launched in 2015 by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan and other hard-right Republicans in Congress.
State Senate members of the Missouri caucus used the first two days of the session to air grievances against Republican leadership and colleagues on the Senate floor.
Excited to be with the this morning as they launch the fight for conservative values in Missouri!
— Illinois Freedom Caucus 🇺🇸 (@ILFreedomCaucus)
“Peace is no option,” said Freedom Caucus chair Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Lee’s Summit, on Wednesday. “I’m not going to be spiteful towards an individual. I’m not going to be hate-filled. But in terms of advancing policy, this will be a show-no-prisoner type approach.”
On Thursday, Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, a Freedom Caucus member, berated a Republican colleague for his voting record, prompting O’Laughlin to abruptly end floor debate after less than 30 minutes.
“It’s my job as floor leader to try to facilitate professional exchanges on the floor,” O’Laughlin said at a press conference afterward. “I am always open to listening to anybody who wants to advocate for a certain position or a certain policy, but I don’t want to see us devolve into personal attacks.”
On a Thursday, Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring, said that last year’s diplomacy failed “spectacularly,” and this year is about holding Republicans’ “feet to the fire.”
“If I gotta filibuster every day from now until the end of session to get even a small personal property tax cut done, then that’s what we’re gonna do,” he said.
Eigel is running for governor, and will face Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft in the GOP primary on Aug. 6.
In an interview with the Post-Dispatch Friday, O’Laughlin said she is considering how to proceed if Eigel or others disrupt progress on conservative legislation, though she has not yet decided what that would entail.
“If they persist in following that path, we’ll have to deal with that,” she said.
In addition to Brattin, Eigel and Hoskins, other Freedom Caucus members in the Missouri Senate are Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, Nick Schroer, R-Defiance, and Jill Carter, R-Granby.