Missouri Senate narrowly confirms former GOP chairman Todd Graves to UM Curators seat

The Missouri Senate confirmed former GOP chairman Todd Graves to a seat on the University of Missouri Board of Curators early Wednesday.

Graves’ nomination was advanced out of a Senate committee despite some objections last week, but soon slammed into opposition on the Senate floor. It came to a vote after close to 12 combined hours of filibuster, which forced Senate President Dave Schatz to table the nomination last Thursday and bring it back after a long weekend.

Graves was confirmed with 19 votes, including one Democrat. Four Republicans voted no alongside all nine other Democrats in the chamber.

It was a rare show of opposition for a governor’s appointment that saw Democrats and Republicans taking turns to try to block the nomination.

Graves, the brother of U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, is a partner in the powerful Kansas City law firm Graves Garrett LLC. Gov. Mike Parson appointed him to the Board of Curators post last month to replace Democrat Phillip Snowden, after a partisan struggle over the position reported on by the Missouri Independent.

Democrats have raised concerns that the appointment of an overtly partisan figure to the post would entangle the university system in politics, while some Republicans were particularly suspicious of how Graves ran the party and whether his law firm has ties to the university system or its lobbyists.

In a committee hearing last week, senators grilled Graves on cases taken on by his firm and the party’s payment of $200,000 under his leadership in 2019 to a PAC seeking to overturn the redistricting reform portions of the ballot measure known as Clean Missouri. The PAC was tied to Graves and his firm; the repeal of Clean Missouri passed last fall.

Graves had represented opponents of the measure and his firm was involved in drafting the legislation that overturned it last year. He told senators last week he thought it was his “responsibility” to party members to get the measure overturned.

He said he’s interested in the post because “I love this school.”

“A university for the state is a noble thing,” he said last week.

Sen. Paul Wieland, an Imperial Republican, had objected to the committee voting on the nomination immediately after the hearing but was privately talked out of it by Senate leaders.

He told Sen. Mike Moon, an Ash Grove Republican who was also opposed, on Tuesday that he thought the nomination was being rushed.

“Whenever someone tries to rush me into something the hair on the back of my neck stands up,” Wieland said.

Hours later, he expressed frustration that Schatz, a Sullivan Republican, was pushing for a vote, saying “deals have been cut.” Wieland said he had many unanswered questions about Graves’ background and accused the former party chairman of disrespecting the state Senate.

Graves was chairman of the Missouri Republican Party during a tumultuous time from 2017 to 2019 that included the governorship of Eric Greitens, his scandal amid allegations he physically and sexually abused a woman and his subsequent resignation. Graves stood by Greitens throughout the scandal.

One of his law firm partners, Lucinda Luetkemeyer, is Greitens’ former general counsel and wife of Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican who was sponsor of Graves’ nomination.

The former governor, who was unpopular among lawmakers, was mentioned briefly during debate over the confirmation when Kansas City Democrats Lauren Arthur and Greg Razer blasted Greitens’ 2017 veto of a spending bill that would have raised half the funds for the University of Missouri-Kansas City to build a downtown arts campus. The project has since been abandoned.

Razer led much of the Democratic opposition to nomination, saying last week that he was frustrated that UMKC did not have representation on the Board of Curators. Graves is a graduate of the Columbia campus.

Both Razer and Wieland warned about tying the prized university system to a controversial political figure.

“I can’t think of a way to inject politics back into the system more than to put a former political party chair on a nine-member Board of Curators where everything that board does is then going to be seen through a political lens,” Razer said.