Over his terms in office, Nixon now has suffered 82 veto overrides

Gov. Jay Nixon holds the distinction of being overridden by the legislature more times than every previous Missouri governor combined.

This year alone, 12 of Nixon’s vetoes were overturned by the Republican-dominated General Assembly — two during the regular session and 10 during a veto session Wednesday.

In his nearly seven years in office, the 82 vetoes the Democratic governor has watched fall are 10 times more than the previous 150 years.

It should come as little surprise that all but two of Nixon’s overrides have taken place since 2012, the year Republicans won veto-proof supermajorities in both the House and Senate. The GOP built on those majorities in 2014, knocking off virtually every Democratic legislator outside of Kansas City, St. Louis and Columbia.

Since then, when the party has managed to stick together it has run roughshod over the Democratic governor.

On Wednesday, Republicans overturned Nixon on bills trimming unemployment benefits and forbidding local minimum wage hikes. They also banned immigrant children in the country illegally from receiving a state-funded scholarship and created a sales tax exemption for commercial laundries.

“With the votes we took today, we enacted common-sense solutions and protections for the people of Missouri,” said House Speaker Todd Richardson, a Poplar Bluff Republican.

Wednesday’s veto overrides, Richardson said, “add to the governor’s legacy as the most overridden chief executive in state history.”

But that doesn’t mean Nixon is politically helpless. The governor prevailed on two of the most high-profile issues of the year.

Republicans were unable to override his veto of a bill making changes to a law allowing students in unaccredited schools to transfer to neighboring districts.

And on the marquee showdown of this year’s veto session, 20 Republican lawmakers broke with their party and helped Democrats sustain Nixon’s veto of a “right-to-work” bill vehemently opposed by labor unions.

“Today’s bipartisan action by the legislature to uphold my veto of this divisive, anti-worker bill is a victory for workers, families and businesses here in Missouri and across the country,” Nixon said in a statement shortly after the vote.

As Nixon enters his final year in office, the political dynamic is unlikely to change.

Republicans will return to the Capitol in January with their supermajorities and a long list of policy priorities likely to draw Nixon’s opposition.

Legislative leaders have already said they’re determined to take another shot at passing a right-to-work law, which would make it illegal to force a worker join or pay fees to a union as a condition of employment.

Whether they succeed or fall short once again, the issue will bleed into the 2016 campaign.

Republicans are in no danger of losing their legislative majorities next year. But GOP lawmakers who opposed right to work may face well-funded primary opponents, thanks to a $500,000 donation by Joplin manufacturer David Humphreys to a political action committee determined to target the wayward Republicans.

“What we saw (Wednesday) were elected officials who used the surging Republican brand to get elected, but caved to union interests and lobbyist promises out of fear and self-preservation,” Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a candidate for governor, said in a statement. “Duly noted.”

The major battle, however, will be in the governor’s race. If a Republican replaces the term-limited Nixon, a right-to-work law could be a foregone conclusion. For Democrats and organized labor, that means pinning their hopes on the only Democrat running for the state’s highest office, Attorney General Chris Koster.

“There hasn’t been a state that’s enacted right to work without a Republican governor,” Richardson said.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Over his terms in office, Nixon now has suffered 82 veto overrides."