Statewide officials scramble to grab attention in homestretch of Missouri primary campaign

With less than a week before Tuesday’s primaries, statewide elected officials are doing what they can to use their jobs to grab last-minute headlines.

On Thursday in Jefferson City, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft went first, holding a news conference to announce he is suing President Joe Biden and 15 federal department heads over a 2021 executive order intended to boost voter registration.

Ashcroft is locked in a bitter fight with Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and state Sen. Bill Eigel for the GOP nomination for governor.

Two hours  later, Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the man who put him into office, Gov. Mike Parson, held a joint news conference announcing a crackdown on unregulated cannabis products legalized by federal agricultural laws governing hemp.

Bailey faces a stiff challenge in the GOP primary from Will Scharf, who has raked in millions of dollars from national conservative groups.

And for State Treasurer Vivek Malek, the opportunity for publicity came on Wednesday in the form of new state money available to subsidize business loans through a linked-deposit program called MoBUCKS.

Malek is trying to keep his job in a Republican primary against five opponents, including three who are running full-scale campaigns.

Ashcroft, an attorney, is representing himself in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Other plaintiffs are Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston, McDonald County Clerk Kimberly Bell and St. Charles County Director of Elections Kurt Bahr.

In it, they accuse the Biden Administration of overstepping its legal authority in the executive order. The result, the filing states, requires “federal officials and agencies to use federal taxpayer money and resources to fund what is, in all practical effect, a get-out-the-vote and ballot harvesting scheme favoring a select demographic of the electorate that favors President Biden and the Democrat (sic) Party.”

Thor Hearne, a St. Louis attorney, is providing pro-bono help in the lawsuit, Ashcroft said at a news conference.

The order received little attention until this summer, when it became a GOP target for outrage. It directs federal agencies to do what they can to promote voter registration in their interactions with the public.

“It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” the order states.

The lawsuit is being filed now rather than when the executive order was issued, Ashcroft said, because he believes a body of evidence shows the Biden administration doesn’t want to provide information about how the order is being implemented.

Ashcroft was unable to state with certainty whether his office had tried to obtain information from the Biden administration about how the order was being implemented in Missouri or how many times it had tried to obtain that information.

“This is something that I’ve been following for years, and we’ve been trying to get more information about it,” Ashcroft said. “We only filed now because we were finally ready to and because it needed to be done.”

Parson’s event with Bailey also included agency leaders who will be responsible for implementing a new executive order banning the sale of any food product containing hemp-derived cannabinoids as adulterated with unapproved additives.

During the news conference, Parson held up several packages of products labeled like candies but containing THC derived from hemp. Children are eating the THC-laced products and being hospitalized, Parson said, because of the deceptive packaging.

The state Alcohol and Tobacco Control office will help enforce the order by threatening the liquor license of any retailer who keeps the products on their shelves.

The order will take effect on Sept. 1.

Hemp and derived products were legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill and the result has been a rapidly expanding market.

“When the almighty dollar, for the people who sell these products, becomes more important than our children’s lives here in the state of Missouri, it should be a wake up call for everybody,” Parson said.

Bailey said his office has been investigating the sources of the THC additives in the products and the investigation would continue. He’s compiled information about poisoning cases involving children, he said.

“We must end deceptive business practices that pursue profit from illicit substances ahead of children’s sake,” Bailey said. “These products represent an abusive market failure and the various children are suffering.”

Malek didn’t hold a news conference but he did use his social media accounts to promote the renewal of the MoBUCKS program.

The loan program shut down in January when it reached its statutory allowance of $800 million. The program works by linking a deposit of state money to a loan that is discounted because the lender pays below-market interest to the state on its money.

Malek successfully lobbied lawmakers to increase the statutory allowance to $1.2 billion during this year’s legislative session. 

“MOBUCK$ is a relief valve from inflation, and I urge everyone interested in a lower-interest loan to meet with their local lender and discuss what is necessary to submit an application,” Malek said in a news release.