Filibusters and overalls: Inside the Missouri Senate’s dysfunctional ‘embarrassment’
In the Missouri Senate, the overall situation was quickly deteriorating. Urgent business was stacking up and senators had yet to pass a new congressional map.
But on Tuesday, the question before the 34-member upper chamber of the General Assembly was: What can a man wear on the Senate floor?
Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from the southwestern town of Ash Grove, had decided to take a stand. Senate President Dave Schatz stripped Moon of several committee assignments the prior week after he allegedly violated the chamber’s rules of attire by wearing overalls onto the floor.
Schatz said all he wanted from Moon was an apology and he’d get his committee seats restored. But Moon, who once recorded a video of himself beheading a chicken, said he read the rules and couldn’t find any evidence that he’d broken them. He wanted his committees back, and vowed to block the Senate’s agenda for the day to get them.
“If I need to have to offer an apology for something that there was no violation mentioned ... I’m not willing to do that,” Moon said. “I can’t just roll over and be steamrolled. And I won’t be.”
“There are things that we don’t do,” said Schatz.
This continued for more than an hour. Moon filibustered by reading from a book about a Joplin native held as a POW in World War II.
The Senate eventually adjourned without having even approved the previous day’s journal, one of its most routine tasks.
The next day, Schatz apologized to Moon, and the chamber mustered up enough goodwill to pass a mid-year budget critical to fund schools and keep the state’s Medicaid program going – but only after burning an entire day debating overalls. It was the first bill passed by the chamber in 2022.
For nearly two months, the Senate’s principal work product has been dysfunction. Gripped by infighting and personal animosity, it is a place where very little happened for weeks.
The breakthrough marked a genuine moment of progress and was followed by the passage of two more bills on Thursday. But the Senate’s previous record of inaction raises questions about whether it is turning a corner or will regress into gridlock.
The chamber this year has been led not by Schatz, the duly elected leader of a GOP supermajority, but by a cadre of hard-right members called the Conservative Caucus. In their telling, this group of seven believes its mission is to enforce greater fidelity to conservative principles. Detractors, who include GOP leaders and Gov. Mike Parson, instead see inflated egos besotted with political ambition.
When other Republicans resist their program, the Conservative Caucus spends full days chewing up floor time. In long speeches, they’ve sung the praises of Missouri’s finest dogs, rattled off the lyrics to country music songs and read from the stacks of books that sometimes sit on their desks.
The filibusters this year have often been directed at redistricting. The Conservative Caucus wants to block new congressional district boundaries endorsed by GOP leaders that they portray as a capitulation to Democrats.
Still, few measures are completely safe. A week before the overalls debate, the Senate took up a bill popular among other Republicans to reauthorize and expand a scholarship program for college and trade schools. The measure is part of Parson’s signature workforce development initiative.
Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, wanted to include a measure banning colleges and universities from teaching certain race-related material, frequently and falsely referred to as critical race theory.
This followed other Conservative Caucus amendments targeting transgender athletes and enrollment of undocumented immigrants. Democrats and a majority Republicans rejected the provisions.
Hoskins, fuming, tore into his fellow Republicans. They had all told their voters, he said, that they would ban critical race theory. But here they were, “too scared” to vote on it.
He and Republican Sen. Bob Onder, a Conservative Caucus leader, listed their threats as their voices rose to a scream. They could block votes on future bills. They could just read from books for the rest of the session.
In other words, they could bring the Senate to a halt.
“If that’s the game we’re going to play, we won’t pass any bills this session,” Hoskins shouted.
The next day, after hours of filibuster, Hoskins and the bill’s sponsor reached a compromise on the scholarship program’s renewal. The following week, the chamber deteriorated into the overalls standoff.
‘We should all feel ashamed’
The Missouri Senate has had its share of passionate conservatives and bitter fights. But the current level of gridlock and mistrust appears unmatched. Long-running divisions and personality conflicts between Republicans have exploded this year, resulting in a chamber that more closely resembles the post-apocalyptic hellscape of “Mad Max: Fury Road” than an august deliberative body.
Interviews with more than a dozen senators, lobbyists and other political professionals suggest the multiple sources of the crisis. Term limits have fueled the political ambition of individual senators and reduced their deference to leadership. Of the seven principal caucus members, four are running for higher office. At the same time, many members have adopted the pugnacious style of politics embodied by former President Donald Trump, hoping appeal to his base, which helped deliver Missouri by 15 points in 2020.
“This dysfunction in the Senate is a clear distraction and barrier to our elected leaders delivering on their oath, the motto of the Show-Me State, and even the spirit of good governance,” Crystal Brigman Mahaney, communications director for the workers advocacy group Missouri Jobs with Justice, wrote in an email.
“While dysfunction may make for great TV headlines or campaign ads, the impact is — once again — being felt greatest by those workers & families who have always been pushed to the margins.”
Continuing the slow pace could have real consequences. Long days and nights of filibustering have prevented committees from meeting, resulting in a backlog of legislation. Redistricting is the largest point of conflict, but other measures Republicans have wanted, including changes to election laws and gambling measures, have yet to reach the floor.
The Conservative Caucus is adamant the Senate add a seventh GOP congressional district by gerrymandering Kansas City Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver out of a job. That would scrap the existing 6-2 scheme, leaving one lone Democrat (Rep. Cori Bush of St. Louis) in the delegation. Republican leaders say the infusion of Kansas City-area Democrats into surrounding districts could place the GOP’s dominance at risk.
Senators insist they can still find a path out of the muck. But each passing day represents more time lost as the session moves toward its constitutionally-mandated adjournment in mid-May.
Senate Majority Leader Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, said he remains an optimist. A former Christian worship leader who speaks with a pastor’s cadence, Rowden sounded more disappointed than angry about the whole situation in an interview.
“What is happening right now is, frankly, an embarrassment and we should all feel ashamed of how we’ve done what we’ve done up until this point. And I’ll lump myself as much into that category as anybody else,” he said earlier this month.
Purity tests
Republicans wrested control of the Missouri Senate from Democrats in 2000 for the first time in 50 years. They have been in charge ever since. As the GOP’s edge has hardened into an ongoing supermajority, conflict is less partisan and more internecine.
The Conservative Caucus formed after the 2018 election to push the legislature further to the right. While membership has fluctuated over time, it has a core of seven senators who hail from across the state.
Moon and Onder are among the most outspoken. Moon, who raises cattle and used to work in marketing at Mercy Hospital, has been cultivating a self-acknowledged rebellious reputation for years, first in the House, where he mounted a quixotic effort to impeach Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon. Onder, a former board member for Missouri Right to Life, spent a single term in the House more than a decade ago before running an ill-fated 2008 congressional campaign, losing the GOP primary.
The group first drew attention in 2019 for pushing Missouri’s strict eight-week abortion ban.
In the past, Senate Republicans tried to project as much unity as possible, with grievances often aired behind closed doors. Of course, some conflict inevitably always spilled out into public view, but senators took pains to minimize it.
The Conservative Caucus, by explicitly dividing Senate Republicans into two camps, arguably helped create the conditions for conflict. And rather than shying away from division, the senators leaned into it.
Their hardline tactics are driven by the belief that voters want “fighters” willing to engage in the kind of verbal brawling that in a past time would have been considered extreme, especially in the Senate, where tradition and manners are prized.
The caucus fights by establishing purity tests for fellow Republicans, tacking hard-right priorities onto routine, uncontroversial legislation. When members don’t fall in line, the response is usually denunciation: The rest of the GOP are RINOS (Republicans In Name Only) supportive of transgender athletes, or working to send another Democrat to Congress.
There is also an implicit threat: that insufficiently pure Republicans could face primary challengers from their right flank. In recent weeks, the caucus has also relied on the steady presence of grassroots protesters ready to show up at the Capitol to put pressure on GOP leadership.
“I think there’s sometimes a difference in tactics, but I think it’s really more than that a difference in priorities,” Onder, a Lake St. Louis Republican, said.
Onder, a physician with a pilot’s license who is greeted like a celebrity at conservative rallies, said bolstering Second Amendment rights, banning critical race theory and fighting “COVID tyranny” rank very high on the priority list of the Conservative Caucus.
“But not always high on the priority list of Senate leadership,” he said.
Rowden said the divisions enforced by the Conservative Caucus are dangerous because people often wrongly assume others are operating in bad faith. He said he’s “just as conservative as anybody.”
Senate Republicans nearly always agree on policy, he said, adding that the issue is more about “how loud do we feel like we need to yell to accomplish an objective that we were probably going to accomplish anyway.”
“I know the Republican caucus is not terribly excited or interested in just this continual escalation, escalation, escalation,” Rowden said.
The Conservative Caucus put their tactics on full display last year in the protracted fight over renewing a tax critical to funding Medicaid. The tax, called the Federal Reimbursement Allowance, or FRA, was set to expire in September.
The FRA’s must-pass nature handed enormous leverage to anyone who wanted to stand in its way, and the Conservative Caucus used it to press one of its core issues, abortion. Throughout the session, Onder and others held up the renewal, demanding lawmakers take aggressive action to stop Planned Parenthood from receiving any taxpayer dollars. Federal law already bars Planned Parenthood from receiving public funding for abortion, but the organization receives government support for other services.
Eventually, the Senate moved on to other legislation, pushing action off further into session.
In May, it adjourned without taking action, forcing Gov. Parson to call a special session. Lawmakers returned in June and, after a few days of heated rhetoric, approved the renewal without a filibuster by the Conservative Caucus. Still, the crisis was a traumatic period for Missouri’s medical community as providers stared down the possibility Medicaid would be defunded.
In retrospect, the standoff was a test run of sorts for this year’s blowup over redistricting – another time-sensitive issue. The longer the legislature goes without approving a map, the more likely Missouri will face a federal lawsuit that could result in judges drawing new district lines.
“Normally in the past, what would have happened is if there’s such an impasse you usually put it aside,” said Carl Bearden, a former Republican House Speaker Pro Tem who now leads United for Missouri, which promotes limited government. “In this particular case you’re not going to be able to do that.”
The redistricting debate opened just as the Conservative Caucus was coming off a major victory, having effectively ousted Donald Kauerauf as director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, who they accused of promoting COVID-19 vaccination too aggressively. Kauerauf resigned after the Senate failed to confirm him.
Parson denounced the Senate, saying that he was praying “that honor, integrity, and order can be returned” to the chamber “sooner rather than later.”
The Senate began debating a congressional map late afternoon on Monday, Feb. 7. It went all night and then much of the following day as the Conservative Caucus — with some help from Democrats who wanted a map more favorable to their party — held the floor.
They gave long, meandering speeches. They read from books. And they frequently summoned bleary-eyed senators to the floor by noting an absence of a quorum.
The Senate eventually began taking breaks to allow senators to sleep, but the standoff persisted, resulting in a rare Saturday session that ended without progress.
Can the women fix this?
All the while, tensions were building.
Four days into the filibuster, Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a typically reserved Lee’s Summit Republican, rose to introduce special guests, a regular practice.
Cierpiot, looking at a white sheet of paper, began to introduce former Sen. Jim Lembke, now a political consultant. A St. Louis Republican who left the Senate in 2013, Lembke has been aligned with the Conservative Caucus and is a frequent presence at the Capitol.
But instead of a few words of praise, Cierpiot coolly delivered a takedown.
“Showing his flexibility on ethics, he’s now leading the charge as puppet master of the 7-1 congressional district,” Cierpiot said calmly. He noted Lembke’s penchant for accepting lobbyist gifts as a senator, and reminded members that he supported the 6-2 status quo following the 2010 Census — even though he’s now pushing the Senate to go further.
“So his tireless efforts in finding ethics loopholes, efforts on Republican fidelity and legislative compromise – I ask the body to make former Sen. Lembke feel welcome.”
Cierpiot declined to comment for this story. Lembke called the idea he is a Conservative Caucus puppet master “insulting.”
“I can’t believe that another senator would get up there and say that about his colleagues,” Lembke said.
Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Springs Republican and Conservative Caucus member, was so enraged that he later confronted Cierpiot in a near-physical altercation in Schatz’s office, the Missouri Independent reported.
Compromise in this environment is still possible, say senators on both sides of the divide. Many have looked to the chamber’s 11 women as part of the solution.
The bipartisan group, the largest serving at one time in Missouri Senate history, have forged strong relationships, something some of the men have failed to do. They’ve jointly published a picture book together that chronicles the stories of the 36 women who have served in the Senate and have identified a shared focus on education and childhood literacy issues.
Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin, originally a member of the Conservative Caucus, left over disagreements with their aggressive tactics. The Shelbina Republican has been heavily involved in compromise talks between the two “warring factions” of the party.
A breakthrough is close, she said.
“I do think the women have an important part to play,” she said. “Men are more likely to want to win … I mean, the reality is none of us are winners. We are all losers right now.”
Rowden, the majority leader, is adamant the impasse will eventually be broken, one way or another.
“That is going to happen and I will do anything that I have that is at my disposal – clearly with the support of a bunch of people who would have to come with me in that process – but we are going to govern,” Rowden said.
Implicit in his remarks is the possibility of moving to cut off debate and end the filibuster. Republican leaders, with a majority of the Senate, could deploy a parliamentary weapon that allows a bill to be brought to a vote.
Frequently used in the House, the move is considered a “nuclear” option in the Senate because it could blow up the rest of the session. If the Senate ends debate on redistricting, the Conservative Caucus could retaliate by filibustering every bill – forcing GOP leaders to choose between the traditions of the Senate that value extended debate and getting the work done.
No senator says they want to use it, though Onder has dared Rowden to, and the chamber has averted the most immediate chance of doing so by passing the critical mid-year budget bill. But privately, more members have been considering the move.
“The Senate works on a mutual respect principle, the old thing that your integrity is your word in the Senate. That doesn’t exist anymore,” Sen. Bill White, a Joplin Republican, said. “There are individuals out there I totally trust … but there are less than there used to be.”
For their part, Democrats have mostly just watched the Republican infighting. Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, said the Conservative Caucus doesn’t respect GOP leadership.
“And as long as they can cause a ruckus or slow things down or stop things and get something they’re gonna continue to do it,” Rizzo said.
‘Nobody wants to budge’
As the tone in the Senate remains nasty, a fear lurks that the chamber is slowly turning into the more rambunctious House. Representatives on the other side of the Capitol often deal with bills swiftly, limiting amendments and cutting off debate.
The House’s influence on the Senate can already be felt to a certain extent, others say. Term limits mean House members frequently become senators and bring a more top-down perspective on legislating with them.
Senators are also term-limited, meaning that except in rare instances no one can stay in the chamber for more than eight years. The gap between the legislative experience of rank-and-file senators and leadership is small to non-existent, making senators less likely to defer to leadership.
Term limits also encourage political ambition. Senators close to terming out may be tempted to run for higher office, infusing the chamber’s proceedings with an additional political element.
In the Conservative Caucus, three members – Moon and Sen. Eric Burlison and Sen. Rick Brattin – are running for Congress. Onder is also considered a possible future congressional candidate and announced Monday he is running for St. Charles County executive. Schatz, meanwhile, is running for U.S. Senate.
Given the severity of the Senate’s divide, the current dynamics may not change until after the November election. Six senators are ineligible for election this year, though Onder is the only Conservative Caucus member terming out.
But for at least the rest of this year, the Senate is stuck with its current cast of characters.
“Nobody wants to budge,” said Sen. Elaine Gannon, a De Soto Republican. “We all say we want to work together, we all say we want to find a compromise but it’s not happening.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
