Maybe Missourians are smarter than Jefferson City gives them credit for

Missouri Republicans have been making the case for years that our state constitution is getting hijacked by out-of-state interests. Gov. Mike Kehoe said it plainly in a video backing Amendment 4, the proposal that would have made it virtually impossible for voters to amend the Missouri Constitution.

“Our constitution,” he said, “shouldn’t be the victim of out-of-state special interests who spend millions to deceive voters and pass out-of-touch policies.”

To hear him tell it, cash pours into our politics to bankroll initiative petition campaigns, buying signatures and TV time. Missourians — decent people with jobs and kids and no particular interest in reading a 30-page, proposed constitutional amendment — get talked into things.

And before you know it, voters have expanded Medicaid, legalized marijuana or guaranteed abortion rights over the objections of the Republican supermajority they sent to Jefferson City.

The implicit message: Missourians keep getting duped.

But it’s hard to square that with Tuesday’s primary election results.

A political action committee called Missouri Promise raised $23 million to boost a GOP-backed tax overhaul on the ballot as Amendment 5. It did so through a fountain of cash flowing through a pipeline of nonprofits — two with Missouri addresses, one of them a Jefferson City post office box, and others at private mailboxes in Ohio, Virginia and Maryland.

It flooded the airwaves with ads, promising to take on data centers, put more money in taxpayers’ pockets and, down the home stretch, give the middle finger to the commies.

It lost by 67 percentage points statewide and was defeated in every county.

Historic defeats for Missouri GOP priorities raise questions about what comes next

On the same ballot was Amendment 1, renewing the one-tenth-cent sales tax that pays for state parks and soil and water conservation.

Supporters of Amendment 1 had been nervous about Amendment 5. Their fear was pretty understandable: Spend weeks telling voters that one amendment could lead to higher sales taxes and maybe they start seeing the words “sales tax” everywhere and vote no on both.

They didn’t.

Amendment 1 received about 82% of the vote. So on the same trip to the polls, Missouri voters gave one sales tax amendment 82% support and another 16%.

Then there’s Amendment 4.

Its supporters wanted citizen-led constitutional amendments to win not just statewide, but in every congressional district, citing the complaint over wealthy interests spending millions to manipulate voters.

Voters don’t seem to have a problem with the system. Amendment 4 couldn’t muster 20% of the vote.

That’s what I think Jefferson City sometimes misses about the initiative petition process. Republicans tend to study the amendments voters have approved and conclude something has gone wrong with the process.

Democrats have their own version of this. They see that same list, decide Missouri is a secretly progressive state waiting on the right candidate, and then watch voters hand Republicans another supermajority.

Both parties keep concluding the electorate must have meant something other than what it said. Whatever you think of Medicaid expansion, marijuana, minimum wage or abortion rights, voters had opportunities to hear arguments, watch millions get spent and make choices.

Sometimes they said yes.

Tuesday they said no. Loudly.

None of this makes Missouri voters uniquely wise. They’ve made decisions they’ll regret. So have legislators. So have governors. That’s democracy’s rather inconvenient feature: Nobody gets a monopoly on good judgment.

That doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter. Of course it does. Nobody spends $20 million on political advertising because political advertising doesn’t work.

But Tuesday was a useful reminder of the difference between voters being persuaded and voters being stupid.
Missourians may keep making choices Jefferson City wishes they wouldn’t.

That doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing.