Four months and four days into the 2025 Missouri General Assembly, things were going about as well as anyone could have expected.
This came as a welcome sight to a party that has spent the last half-decade fighting like children.
Mostly over egos and nonsense.
It had taken Senator O’Laughlin three years, some turnover of old warring personalities, and nearly every ounce of strength and leadership Missouri could ask of her to put our state’s greatest institution, its State Senate, back together.
Direct, and funny, but certainly a charmer when she chooses, she spent 2 years, four months, and four days working to fix a state senate she inherited in a nearly paralyzed state.
Over that 28 months and one week, one conversation at a time, one bill negotiation at a time, one win at a time, she restored the State Senate to a chamber that a decent Missourian would want to serve in.
She was elected Floor Leader in chaos, and for four months and a day as Pro Tem, she had brought normalcy. I would venture to say even more than normalcy, a certain excellence of pragmatism reigned.
House Speaker Patterson always deliberate, the first Speaker of the House from Kansas City since the Civil War, he had been carefully preparing for this year for some time. Building relationships, storing up favors, and planning.
Dr. Jon Patterson is the real deal, and if you look beyond the horizon the good doctor is the one republican who could campaign in any part of this state, he is a literal rising tide of political talent, and it was on display for the entire state to see for four months and four days.
Then there is the straw that stirs the drink. The bull of the woods, the man whose presence in the Capitol forges a spirit of pragmatic cooperation, Governor Mike Kehoe.
His election, his working the halls, his sense of putting the good of the state over everything else, more than anything helped produce the overwhelming success for his party this session.
Unfortunately, all of the benefits of his presence seem to be gone when wasn’t physically in the capitol. We would see later just how important his physical presence in the capitol would be the last week of session.
The session started off strong with Governor Kehoe giving the legislative leadership an outline for his plan to bring school choice to the state in ‘27.
Then they joined with him in taking over the St. Louis Police Department, started the process of making Missouri energy independent, cut the capital gains tax, and allowed the Missouri Farm Bureau to offer health plans to their members in rural Missouri. I’ll remind folks again that’s the part of Missouri that elected Mike Kehoe Governor.
It was an incredibly successful session, and compared to recent sessions, it was off the charts.
However, as you’ve noticed, sessions are not four months and four days; unfortunately, in this case, they are four months and ten legislative days long.
How could a session that went so right end so wrong?
Well, like any real boondoggle, it’s complicated.
There are many factors that led to issues at the end of the session, but to be honest, the match that lit fire to things falling apart began with House Bill 19 being killed in the House the Friday afternoon of four months and five days into the session.
There are essentially two stories, well really four, or maybe a dozen, but at least a couple from each chamber, on how the legislature shit the bed on HB19 which led to screwing everything else up.
One side from the House side, they claim that the senate didn’t get them HB19 until the final day, and the senate adjourned, leaving them no time for conference, and not enough time to review the amended bill.
Further, they say that Senator Hough is a jerk and a bully who picks on the House, because he will win most any vote in a conference committee, so he doesn’t listen to them enough.
The official House line was that the House didn’t have enough time to review the bill, and they claimed it was too expensive.
Another side from House members, many of whom had projects for their districts gutted by Chairman Deaton’s decision, is that after years of getting railroaded on the budget, this was some way to stick it to the Senate and Senator Hough because of a clash of egos.
One side from the Senate is that the House keeps the budget bills for months and gives them essentially two weeks to put together their entire budget, so they shouldn’t complain about a time crunch.
Further, they will tell you that this bill was passed out of the Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. Since appropriations bills are rarely changed in any significant way on the floor (nor was this one), they had 3 full days to review the bill they were getting on Friday.
The Senate will also tell you that HB19 was a House bill that they kept 100% of the $400 or so million in house priorities the house actually passed in it and added only 150 million of projects to the bill so how could anyone have a problem with getting 100% of what you wanted in exchange for a 20% increase in the bill?
Another side of this, from members of leadership on both sides, says that the real problem is that the Senate appropriations chairman and House budget chairman couldn’t be any more different human beings, and communications between them were strained to say the least. I can tell you that I honestly cannot think of any two different people I’ve ever met in my life.
The divisions were clear from the beginning. Rep. Deaton was quoted as making statements that the House wouldn’t just get rolled again this year, and doing silly things like setting the time for the conference committee at 10:00 p.m.
While at the same time Senator Hough rolls his eyes and pretends not to know the names of most House members, then shows up at the original 3:00 p.m. conference committee time.
They would ultimately meet around 7:00 p.m. When they actually got into the room, for conference things went fine enough.
This budget was similar to probably 5 of the last 6, where the house gives the Senate a very large latitude to write most of the state budget in exchange for an increase in charter school funding. This year was no different.
The ESA program, which was passed as a strictly voluntary tax credit program, saw Governor Kehoe put $50 million into his budget of direct tax dollars to fund it.
Now Senator Hough knew from the beginning that he was going to have to give the Governor and the House that $50 million, if for no other reason than it was the one thing that Senator O’Laughlin wanted in the budget. However, he was gonna leverage and negotiate everything he could over it before ultimately giving in.
After all the drama and back and forth, the budget was well on the way to being completed by the constitutional deadline, and all would be well that ended well with things set up for a stadium deal 72 hours later.
The next day, the House passed each bill in order, sending them over to the Senate to, of course, be approved as the Senate sent HB19 back over. Then there was a pause.
At that point the majority asked the ranking member on the Budget Committee to do her thank you remarks on HB18 instead of the customary bill before the final one. At some point in those last 10 minutes of session they informed the Governor’s staff they would not be taking up HB19.
Then as though it was their plan all along, they skipped HB19 and went to HB20 and after a pause adjourned to a caucus where members like Reps. Tara Peters, Hardy Billington, John Voss, Doyle Justus, Brenda Shields, Dave Griffith, and a couple of dozen more were told that their districts got the shaft.
Now you have to remember every single instinct in a House member is to shut up and do what you’re told. If you get embarrassed you repeat the caucus line and do what you’re told, if vital projects in your district get gutted you repeat the caucus line and do what you’re told. It’s just kinda how the chamber is set up.
This crop of representatives is no different than their predecessors, or for that matter, their predecessor’s predecessors.
Every rule in the House is set up for leadership to run the place, and they do. Further, the members know that unless you feel that you have nothing to lose, you tout leadership’s line.
I personally sent texts to all 25 or so members whose districts got screwed. Their answers were pretty much what you would expect. A couple stood up for their districts, a few were just total kiss asses, and most would send something on the record begrudgingly supporting leadership then call me a few minutes later and unload on that same leadership for letting such a screw up occur without so much as a conversation beforehand with the members whose constituents were impacted.
Their one nearly universal complaint, even from the suck ups, was that Chairman Deaton put his plan for a park in McDonald County costing about $20 million into an operating bill safe from the HB19 fiasco. That drew universal scorn.
The Governor’s office was only told a few minutes before skipping HB19 that they were going to sink it. The Senate apparently wasn’t told at all.
Either way, that pragmatic spirit of cooperation, that shared desire to put big Republican wins on the board that had existed for four months and four days died that Friday afternoon.
Now all of this would be normal House vs. Senate fighting. It’s actually normal for the chambers to clash. For the past half decade they haven’t been able to clash because the Senate Republicans spent all session fighting each other.
This would have all been water under the bridge. Sure a hospital or a sheltered workshop would close, and there might be a sarcastic tweet but the House’s line that they didn’t get enough time to review the bill, and that it cost too much would most likely fly, and everything would settle down in plenty of time for veto session, much less January.
However, the political gods can be some cruel bastards….damn cruel.
See part 2 in Monday’s Whispering Gallery.
