JEFFERSON CITY — Reflecting the hard feelings that have stalled action in the Missouri Senate, one Republican member turned to social media over the weekend to accuse a handful of colleagues of telling partial truths and creating smokescreens just “to get social media hits.”
, Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder said she plans to use social media tell “the rest of the story” — “true, factual information” about the legislative process.
“It’s unfortunate that I’m gonna have to take to camera to really start giving some behind-the-scenes information on these things,” the Sikeston Republican said in the video. “I just can’t sit by any longer and allow them to continue to snow the voters.”
Rehder, a candidate for lieutenant governor, in an interview Monday told the Post-Dispatch she was referring to Sens. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring; Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg; Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville; and Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove.
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“We have people that are purposefully halting the work of the Senate and then complaining about things not being done yet. It is insane,” she said.
Eigel, Hoskins and Brattin are members of the hard-line Republican faction known as the Freedom Caucus. Like Rehder, Eigel and Hoskins also are candidates this year for statewide office.
“We do have a tendency to take these issues to the public,” Eigel, who is running for governor, told the Post-Dispatch Tuesday. “I know that a lot of what we do makes the status quo Republicans uncomfortable, but my commitment is that we’re going to continue fighting.”
“When is advocating for conservative bills and conservative priorities a smokescreen?” Hoskins, a candidate for secretary of state, said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve tried the go-along-to-get-along approach, and that simply doesn’t work.”
Rehder’s video came after some Freedom Caucus members last Thursday held gubernatorial appointments hostage for several hours, demanding that the chamber first vote on what some call “initiative petition reform” — that is, an effort to make it more difficult to change the Missouri Constitution through an initiative petition.
Initiative petitions circumvent the legislative process and allow Missourians to vote directly on proposed changes to state law or the constitution. Missouri sports teams are now using it to push for , and abortion-rights advocates want to use it to enshrine abortion access in the constitution.
Though the Freedom Caucus last Thursday blamed Republican leadership for failing to enact initiative petition changes up to that point, 17 of 24 Senate Republicans rejected the attempt by the caucus to force a vote on the issue.
“Everything we’ve done in the first three weeks (of the legislative session) has been designed to pass initiative petition reform,” Eigel told the Post-Dispatch Tuesday. “If initiative petition reform moves through this body ... all of the frustrations that we have expressed effectively evaporate, because this has always been about policy.”
Rehder, who lodged her criticisms before Senate President Caleb Rowden stripped some Freedom Caucus members of their committee leadership positions, is running in a crowded field for lieutenant governor. Others seeking the GOP nomination are House Speaker Dean Plocher, Franklin County Clerk Tim Baker, unsuccessful congressional candidate Paul Berry III, and former state Senator Bob Onder, who has also signaled a possible run for Blaine Luetkemeyer’s 3rd Congressional District seat.
This is not the first time Rehder has feuded with Republican Senate hard-liners, who previously were organized in the Conservative Caucus. In 2022, she held a news conference decrying the caucus’s tactics after they derailed her effort to pass a sexual assault survivors bill of rights.