Friday, the Missouri legislature saw its last day to propose bills for the 2025 session. Usually, this gives members a last-minute chance to sponsor a bill that may have come to their attention late. However, over in the House, it seems it allowed for one representative to use this opportunity to troll a colleague.
Representative Scott Cupps sponsored House Bills 1601, 1602, 1603, 1604, and 1605. The bills, if you can’t believe what your eyes are seeing, are all targeted at naming various Missouri landmarks and one government institution after Representative Bishop Davidson.
These include renaming all named bridges as the “Bishop Davidson Bridge”, renaming the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to the “Bishop Davidson Curriculum Distribution Department”, renaming Taum Sauk Mountain to the “Bishop Davidson Summit”, renaming the Katy Trail as the “Bishop Davidson Trail”, and renaming the Missouri State Fair as the “Bishop Davidson Fair”.
On the surface, it seems like a simple joke. Anyone who knows Representative Cupps has witnessed his charismatic, humorous, and good-natured disposition. The likelihood of these bills gaining any traction is near zero.
But those who are aware of the situation regarding the House’s Vice Chair of the Budget Committee may see it as being a passive-aggressive way for Cupps to needle Representative Bishop Davidson, who was chosen to fill the role of the Vice Chair to one of the House’s most influential committees.
It’s not a new thing for representatives to be upset with not getting spots on certain committees, nor is it a new thing to see representatives find ways to vent their frustrations.
The question now is will this last minute joke possibly bleed over into caucus unity, something the House has already struggled with this session during their recently contested leadership race. House leadership has managed to keep their caucus together despite obvious ideological divisions between some in leadership and other, newer, members of the House.
Cupps and Bishop even have some identical legislation with both of them each filling the same nine bills for the 2025 session. It is unclear if this was intentional or planned by one of them or perhaps both.
It should also be noted that in terms of the amount of bills filed this session, Cupps has filed a lot more legislation than he usually does. So far, Cupps has filed 20 bills this session. This is compared to the zero bills he filed last session, the five bills he filed in the 2023 session, the six bills he filed in the 2022 session, the four bills he filed in the 2021 session, and the three bills he filed in the 2020 session. So far, Cupps has filed more bills this session than all his previous sessions combined.
Notably, in the almost five sessions these two Representatives have spent together, none of Cupps’ previous legislation mentions Davidson. Nor have the two ever filed the same legislation during the same session before this one.
While no one can say with 100% certainty why Representatives Cupps and Davidson have the exact same legislation or why Cupps seems to want to name everything in the state after Davidson, what is for certain is that something interesting is going on in the Missouri House of Representatives.
Jake Kroesen is a Jackson County native and a graduate of the University of Central Missouri. He holds a B.S. in Political Science.
