Decline to Sign

Clean Missouri? Not so fast. A campaign for your signature is underway but you should think twice before giving it.

The initiative petition process to alter Missouri’s Constitution as it relates to the state legislature is underway. Petitions are being circulated by paid signature gathering firms to yield 160,199 voter signatures broken out by our eight congressional districts. Petitioners must submit all signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office no later than 5:00 PM on May 6, 2018.

The “Clean Missouri” political action committee is the driving force behind an unparalleled attempt to change the political paradigm in Missouri. The adage “if you can’t win the game, change the rules” seems appropriate to this endeavor.

Clean Missouri might be better described as make Democrats win again. Their promise to “stop the big money, powerful lobbyists, & partisan games” is brazen hypocrisy.

Their entire campaign is being funded by big money from traditional partisan democratic special interests: abortionists, big unions, and trial lawyers.

It’s donor lists are a who’s who of liberal-progressives. At least $100,000.00 from Planned Parenthood and their political arm, $500,000.00 from the National Education Association (NEA) and Missouri NEA, and a minimum of $250,000.00 from George Soros’ network as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And the list goes on.

At first glance Clean Missouri appears to be all about ethics reform. It’s not. It’s an attempt to change the rules so they can win again. They do not like how Missouri’s state legislative district maps are drawn because they continue to lose. Its a problem for them nationally and they know it.

That’s why former Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder and former President Obama have joined forces. Their goal is remove state policy-makers (the people you and I elected) from the redistricting process and give that power to an unelected bureaucrat. If successful in Missouri’s case it would give unprecedented powers to one unelected, new position called the “non-partisan state demographer”.

To achieve the redistricting component, which is presumably a heavy lift for them, they shrewdly lead with two relatively popular ethics reforms. First, they offer as bait disallowing legislators from taking lobbyist gifts. Second, they further bait the hook by limiting campaign contribution amounts and constitutionally bind the hands of the elected representatives and senators from ever dealing with campaign finance limitations again. If we bite and they set the hook, it’s over.

The rest of their petition goes into detail to change forever Missouri’s Constitution as it relates to drawing future legislative district maps. Those changes paired with campaign finance limitations designed to harm the way conservatives historically fund campaigns will give a distinct advantage to the same liberal entities that are funding Clean Missouri.

While ending the special interest lobbyist-legislator power nexus may sound great at first blush to conservatives, we must remember that the meager ethics reforms they are offering will not substantively end cronyism. It will however, cause liberal-progressives to start winning elections.

Democratic candidates have failed to win in the Missouri General Assembly since they lost their long entrenched legislative majorities in the early 2000s. It’s gotten progressively worse for them culminating in their historic statewide losses in 2016. They are panicked and executing a long-ball strategy to put themselves in a position to win again. My advice is don’t fall for it. Decline to sign.

#2018

#decline to sign

#misleading