JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — In the era of term limits, many Missouri state senators are at least partially defined by their staff. In the story of the unlikely rise to power of Columbia-area Sen. Kurt Schaefer, a Republican, a longtime staffer gives credence to that very notion.
Yancy Williams was one of the individuals who recruited Schaefer to run for his seat — a seat at the time held by an entrenched incumbent with plenty of campaign funds and name ID — and Schaefer’s first hire after winning his election. And while Schaefer has cultivated a reputation as sharp and legislatively active, Williams has quietly served as an essential part of the process. Williams, like other Chief’s of Staff who fit the role of both advisor and friend, is the man behind the man. The two have created one of the most active offices in the senate.
“We function very well as a team,” Williams said. “This office is busy because he’s busy. We carry a ton of bills, we pass a lot of legislation, and we do a lot of extra curricular stuff. The Ferguson committee is a good example of that. All the while, we’re doing the budget. It’s a tremendous amount of workload that we have here and I think we pull it off pretty well.”
While some senate offices are marked by energetic but disorganized senators managed by somber but efficient schedulers, Williams relationship with Schaefer is less symbiotic and more about a personal mesh.
“We don’t really have that dynamic,” Williams said. “I think we both look at this as an opportunity to, on the budget side, create a well-crafted and fiscally conservative budget. On the legislative side, we look at it as an opportunity to try to craft good legislation when we can, and often times more importantly, try and stop bad legislation from happening.”
A University of Missouri-Columbia graduate in Political Science and Psychology, Williams’ time in politics has taken him all over the country. As a college Republican, he attended a fundraiser for an up-and-coming Governor looking to seize the White House. Williams came face-to-face with then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1999 and quickly began volunteering on the campaign. When the nation watched with furrowed brows as the Supreme Court and Florida waged a legal battle, Williams was dispatched to the state along with other staffers.
By 2004, Williams was working with the Republican National Committee. Until 2007, Williams was a Regional Director for the RNC for an 11-state region, which included Missouri, as an “Election Day Operations,” director. Williams has worked on, by his own estimate, about 15 federal recounts in elections. Williams isn’t a lawyer, but his job was to coordinate the political operatives and the legal teams in each of these recounts, keeping “logistics” as clear as possible.
Williams soon went to work for the Rudy Guiliani presidential campaign where he would meet the woman who is now his wife, Misty.
Resigning to spend less time on the road — Williams had done a full-scale campaign schedule for most of 2007, clocking a whopping 250 days on the road — and more time in his native state, Williams returned to Missouri, and was almost immediately scrambled to recruit a hungry former litigator who was challenging a long-held Democratic senate seat.
Schaefer and Williams quickly developed an understanding. Schaefer, ambitious but outspent, won. Now the way-out-in-front-runner for the Republican primary for Attorney General, and atop the Senate Appropriations committee, Williams’ bet is paying off well.
“I told him I thought he could win if he executed a perfect campaign and had some luck,” Williams said. “He’s very focused, he’s extremely disciplined, but above all, he’s a very fact learner and a very fast study.”
Williams has cultivated clients outside of the capitol far and away from Missouri politics, and some, much closer. After a few years back in Columbia, he organized “Citizens for a Better Columbia,” to do battle with local politics that they felt was skewing from the proper role of government. In the 2014 election cycle, the group ran a mailer against a newly proposed construction tax, “Prop 2.” and have been nominated for a prestigious Reed Award for campaigns and elections.
“We see our city moving further out of touch with what they think a city council should be,” Williams said. “It’s a gradual shift away from community that is going be vibrant and grow and prosper and into a community that’s much more closed off and focused on wrong priorities.”
Those wrong priorities, to Williams, include the city’s latest attempt to “regulate types of grocery bags” and remove a portion of applications for city jobs that require the disclosure of prior felony convictions unrelated to their work.
Williams, a staunch 2nd Amendment advocate and a self-described “lifer” Republican, is a campaigner at heart with a chance to work in one of the most interesting campaign cycles for Missouri statewide offices in recent memory. He is unlikely to linger in the Senate, regardless of Schaefer’s fate. And it’s not clear that he would remain if Schaefer is successful.
“He needs me a lot less as an Attorney General than he does in the Senate,” Williams said, laughing. “I don’t know if I’ve ever worked for a candidate more tailor-made for an office as he is for Attorney General. It’s been fortunate that we’ve been able to be friends, and I’m planning on helping him in that race in any way I can.”
Collin Reischman was the Managing Editor for The Missouri Times, and a graduate of Webster University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.
