JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – With only a week left in the legislative session, Sen. Paul Wieland, R-Imperial, has approached the end of his second legislative session in the Senate. Despite being one of the quieter legislators on the floor, he has already made a large splash since moving to the upper chamber.
“I’ve never been a real big person as far as pushing legislation, sponsoring a lot of bills and trying to get a lot of things passed,” he says. “I don’t mind doing that, but my score card is not how many bills I passed. It’s whether or not it was successful.”
In the Senate, he has had to adjust to the slower pace, and described his primary attitude about the proceedings last year as “impatient.”
“The biggest difference is that this is the deliberative body and there’s not a hurry. Senate language is only as fast as the slowest senator,” he says. “In the House it’s more of a methodical process. They get so much stuff done, they kind of become a factory. They’re generating the legislation… In the Senate, it’s not necessarily that way.”
Instead, Wieland focuses on doing what many people believe elected officials should do: represent their constituents.
By most accounts, Wieland has done that. He hails from Jefferson County, a working class sector of the state that has transitioned from a rural community a few decades ago into a much more suburban one, especially in Imperial, which is just a few miles from South St. Louis County. He hits most of the party positions: pro-life, staunchly religious, looks out for business interests and tax reductions here he can. However, he diverges with most Republicans with his favorable views of organized labor. Wieland is one of few pro-union Republicans in the Senate, providing a strong “no” vote on right-to-work last year under pressure from some of the more pro-business members of his party.
However, both his relationship with his constituents and with his fellow lawmakers keeps him steady in his stance.
“It’s more just me representing my district,” he says. “My Republican colleagues understand that if we’re going to have this big of a majority, we may not be able to all be 100 percent lockstep on every single issue. I think they understand that, and they appreciate that I may not be able to vote with the caucus every single time.”
Al Bond, the executive secretary-treasurer of the state arm of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, believes that Wieland simply does his best to represent his pro-union constituents.
“Paul listens very closely to the people that vote and listens to their concerns and evaluates it and comes up with his own conclusion, but I think he’s right on our issues,” he said.
Bond added that Wieland was a “friend” of the carpenter’s union, as well as simply being a good man.
One of the other major points of divergence Wieland has with his party is his disapproval of the use of capital punishment. In January, the senator introduced legislation that would do away with the death penalty in the state of Missouri, citing his pro-life Catholic views.
“I’m a devout Catholic, and I believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception to natural death,” Wieland said in February when it came up for debate on the Senate floor for the first time in decades.
Democrats, by and large, supported the measure, but it faced such stiff opposition from members of his own party that Wieland withdrew the legislation.
In the end, he still considered it a victory. He knew the bill had no chance of passing, but he hoped at the very least it would start a conversation.
“Every person I’ve met has a different take on the death penalty,” he said. “There’s so many nuances about it… My goal is to keep the discussion going. The only way to change hearts and minds is by talking about it.”
This session has brought legislative victories though where he did pass bills or get money appropriated for projects he is passionate about. He cited $10 million budgeted for Missouri’s port infrastructure as one of those wins, and another being a bill traversing through the house right now that would alter some towing regulations to make it harder for the “bad-eggs” to take scam customers.
Aside from that, he did not elaborate on his plans for the rest of session, but none of the major legislation coming up has his name next to the title.
For the quiet senator, that might just be his intent.
