The House Republican caucus voted Nov. 9 to select new members of leadership, and the biggest decision that day came with the decision to elect Rep. Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield, to the post of Speaker Pro Tem. Haahr has been a prominent legislator within the party for years, and his service on the House Emerging Issues Committee has seen him preside over major issues, including last year’s SJR 39.
With just about a month left before the entire General Assembly, under solid Republican control, finalizes his role as the next pro tem of the House, he has begun to formulate exactly what his role will entail in the months and years ahead.
Haahr sees his role as twofold: First and foremost, Haahr wants to facilitate communication between his caucus and its members and the voters who put them into office. “It’s about… taking the things that we’re going to try to do to move the state in a better direction and taking those to the voters back home and reminding them of why they sent us up here.” He views that part of the job as not merely something which occurs during session, but one which he will do year-round.
The other aspect involves his work in creating policy for the state of Missouri, and working with other members of leadership to examine what works best. When Speaker Todd Richardson announced that Haahr had been voted the nominee for Speaker Pro Tem in November, to say the Speaker was giddy about the chance to work with a Republican governor for the first time in his six years in the statehouse is an understatement.
Haahr feels the same way.
“All of the ideas and all of the legislation that we have pushed over the past few years, the people of Missouri have now given us the opportunity to now make good on all of those promises,” Haahr said. “For the first time since I’ve been in office, we’ve got the opportunity to be pulling in the same direction as the governor of the state, and I think that gives us a real opportunity that we have not seen as a long time to make substantial and significant changes to the political landscape of Missouri.”
“Those will be borne out over the next two years as we get to institute the agenda that we ran on and campaigned on and we took as our message to the voters.”
At the forefront of those changes is labor reform (“We’ve never done that in the state of Missouri,” Haahr comments. “A lot of the states around us have done that and they’ve seen their economies start to spark and move forward.”), but Haahr also sees the potential for economic development to take on a greater share of the limited pie that constitutes the Legislature’s time. Haahr believes that people in all parts of the state – rural, urban or suburban – can expect to see progress in terms of more businesses and better employment opportunities by cutting regulations that Republicans argue have stifled private sector growth in Missouri.
“One of the things we want to do is look at ways that we can break down barriers to innovation and unleash a free market in the state of Missouri,” Haahr said. “What can we do to reign in government and unleash the private sector?”
Republicans have a lot of confidence about the changes they wish to make in Missouri, and they should. While some on the national scene have debated whether or not President-elect Donald Trump has a “mandate” with slim majorities in the legislature and a popular vote loss, it’s hard to argue Republicans lack a mandate in Missouri with a statewide sweep in 2016, often by large margins, and Republican supermajorities in both chambers. Now, with the next two years at least to deliver on that message, Haahr says he and other Republicans have no cold feet moving forward now that they have full control of government.
“I think I can speak for the House and Senate and the governor’s office when I say we welcome the opportunity to show the state of Missouri what we can do,” he said.
