Henry Martin
Martin pledged to be a representative for all the people of his district, and not just the ones who agreed with him ideologically. “You show up when it’s inconvenient for you,” he said. “We have to have a representative who works for all citizens. I will campaign until November 5th. On November 7th, I hope the loser will move on and the winner will represent the entire district, not just the people you agree with.” Martin is running for the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Sam Graves, who has served since 2000.
Allen Andrews
Andrews, seeking his third term, is facing his first challenge since he first ran in 2014. He said that the biggest change since first taking his position was the economic needs of the area. When he started, the area needed more jobs; now, the area is seeking more skilled workers. He said that if reelected, he wanted to help empower public schools and universities to train more skilled workers. “Kawasaki has come out and said that we need skilled work, and we need it now,” said Andrews. He said that it was an opportunity to expand the area. He said other areas in need of improvement include roads and bridges. “We’re in dire need of better transportation and infrastructure.”
Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor, who grew up in Hopkins and went to Northwest Missouri State, is the Democratic Challenger to 1st District GOP Incumbent Allen Andrews. Having worked at LMP, Kawasaki, and other manufacturing firms, he said he was used to solving problems among people who didn’t always agree with each other. “You either got the job done, or you were fired,” he said. Taylor said that unequal funding for schools was an issue, with rural Missouri schools still getting pennies on the dollar compared to big city schools.
Taylor said that inequality was a growing issue in the area like it is everywhere else in the country, with wages flat, while the costs of higher education and healthcare kept going up. He said that roads, bridges, sewer, and water were all in bad shape and that there were too many lead pipes in our water systems – “A Flint waiting to happen,” he said.
Taylor said he supported the recent efforts to expand high-speed Internet, but said that he wanted to return to Net Neutrality. “Right now, the big boys get the high-speed, while the rest of us get what is left over,” he said.
Dan Hegeman
Incumbent Republican State Senator Dan Hegeman said that he has enjoyed working with local governments and election committees over the course of his time as State Senator and enjoyed working with county officials to solve their problems. Before serving in the Missouri Senate, he worked for Sam Graves and KCP&L, where he frequently made rounds visiting with local councils and took calls from people with problems that needed solving.
In the Senate, Hegeman has worked on election reform and serves on the Appropriations Committee, where he helps ensure that the state’s money is being properly spent. This year, he has been seeking to get money for water projects, since the drought has become a big issue. If reelected, Hegeman said he wanted to work on getting more Broadband to the area, saying a lot of young people won’t come back to the area without it. He is being challenged this year by Democrat Terry Richard.
Roger Prokes
Incumbent Republican Circuit Judge Roger Prokes, who is running unopposed, talked about his work dealing with youth. He said he sees his job as a social worker. He has oversight over the Juvenile Office, which is run by Worth County Associate Circuit Judge Joel Miller. Prokes noted that when he first became judge, people would jump him for not sending more people to jail, but he noted, for instance, that it costs $5,000 a year in taxpayer dollars to put someone through drug court, while it costs $25,000 a year to send someone to the Department of Corrections. “My job is to keep families together,” he said. “If you think someone is doing drugs, call the sheriff. It will save you a lot of money. We’re proud of what we do.”
Jubal Summers
GOP Challenger Jubal Summers is running for the Presiding Commissioner spot which is being vacated by Incumbent Ted Findley, who is not seeking reelection this year. Summers has previously served on the Worth County School Board, serving as Board President. He said that Worth County has a lot of great things going for it, and that he wanted to see that continue. He said he wanted to continue to find funding for the county; he said he was in favor of Proposition D, which will raise the gas tax by 2.5 cents a year until the fourth year, when it will be 10 cents higher. Summers said that the difference between it and previous efforts to fund the DOT was that there would be money that would be directly coming to cities and counties.
Summers also said that he wanted to see the county attract more skilled labor. He said the county took a good step when it became a Work-Ready Community. He predicted that if he was elected, he would be spending a lot of time learning things, similar to when he served on the School Board. “If I fall short, Dan will do a good job,” he said of his opponent.
Dan “Tank” Parman
Democrat Dan “Tank” Parman, running against Jubal Summers for Presiding Commissioner, said that folks in Worth County learned to “survive and adapt.” He said he lived all his life down by Denver and both his children live in the county as well. His wife, Pam, works as the High School Secretary at Worth County. He said that he would treat the Presiding Commissioner’s position as a full-time job. “You can’t just go to the Courthouse for an hour each week,” he said.
Roberta Owens
Incumbent Republican Roberta Owens is unopposed this year. She is the daughter of the late Robert “Bob” Pierce, who also served as County Clerk. Her husband, Gary, is retired from the Highway Department.
Meggan Brown
Republican challenger Meggan Brown, running against incumbent Democrat Barb Foland for the Recorder of Deeds position, said that she has two sons, Seth and Drevin, and she said that some of the other candidates were spot-on about how high college tuition costs. She said she wanted to better her family and talked about her background working for attorneys Jerry Drake and Janet Larison with deeds, easements, and real estate contracts. Brown also worked for 12 years as an assistant to the Prosecuting Attorney in Worth County. She has served under five different prosecutors. If elected, she said she would upgrade the office to where she says it would be more user-friendly.
Meggan and David Brown are members of the Allendale Baptist Church and have served Little League, ‘Lil Tigers, and 4-H. They all raise and sell goats. “We do everything as a family,” she said.
Barb Foland
Incumbent Democrat Barb Foland, running for her fourth term for Recorder of Deeds, said that one of the favorite parts of her job was being able to show family members records of marriages and other family history memories. She said it was very expensive to put everything online, but that if reelected, she would continue to take care of the books, like she has for the Recorder’s Office and for her late husband Ted. While in office, Foland talked about how she redid the vault so that she could reach all the records from the ground and noted that her office had a clean audit this year during the regular state audit of all counties of Worth County’s class. During the Square Fire, she took records to the Fairgrounds Building, thinking it might spread across the street into the Courtyard, which it did not.
Linda Brown
Incumbent Republican Treasurer Linda Brown has served for many years in that position. She is running unopposed this year.
Amendment One – Clean Missouri
The candidates’ portion ran fast and low-key, with most candidates contenting themselves with giving short talks. However, there was a lot of lively debate over Amendment One, known as “Clean Missouri,” and the marijuana amendments.
State Senator Dan Hegeman, who opposes Amendment One, started the discussion by giving an overview of the measure, which will be on the ballot November 6th. All ballot measures in Missouri must be approved by a simple majority.
Hegeman said he didn’t have a problem with some of the provisions of Amendment One. It limits lobbyist gifts for legislators to $5. Other measures Hegeman listed that he didn’t have a problem with include extending the prohibition of ex-legislators from becoming lobbyists from the current 6 months to two years, lowering campaign contribution limits from $2,600 to $2,500, and opening up the legislature to the Sunshine Law.
Hegeman said that his problem with Amendment One was its attempt to create more 50/50 Democratic-Republican districts using a demographer appointed by the State Auditor, currently Democrat Nicole Galloway, who is running for reelection this year. Hegeman said he feared it would break up communities and that it would create a lot of strange boundaries to meet its aspirational goals.
6th District Congressional Candidate Henry Martin said that he supported Amendment One because it would stop legislators from selecting their voters. He said he was personally tired of seeing majority Democratic states controlled by 70% Republican legislatures. “The legislature doesn’t have the political will to change it,” he said. He said Amendment One would ensure that legislative boundaries would be done in a nonpartisan way and that the current setup was encouraging negative ads by politicians trying to turn out their bases. “This is about what the people want, not what the legislature wants,” he said.
State Representative Allen Andrews said that he was against Amendment One for what he said was its potential to decimate representation for Northwest Missouri and the rest of rural Missouri. “This petition scares me to death,” he said. He said he didn’t like the way redistricting was done now, but that Amendment One was not the way to do it. He said that he talked to a legislator in Iowa, who told him they redistrict via a computer program, to take the human factor out of it. “And I don’t know of one Democrat or Republican who switched their vote over a $6 sandwich,” he said, referring to the $5 lobbyist gift limit.
Martin responded that it wasn’t true that Amendment One would break up communities. He said that he sat in on a couple of meetings crafting the amendment, and that it would bring together places like Marceline, which he said is currently split into three districts. During the last decade, Worth County was split into two House districts with one representative for the western half of the county and one for the eastern half. Martin said another positive feature of Amendment One was that it would force Dark Money donors to disclose their donations. “It’s nice to know who is backing your candidate,” he said. Martin noted that the district he is running for runs from part of Lee’s Summit to the northern part of the state and clear across the state to the Illinois border. “Then let’s come up with a better alternative to Amendment One,” said Andrews, saying that George Soros was one of its biggest funders. “I’m all for reform, but not at the expense of Rural Missouri.”
Amendment 2, Amendment 3, and Proposition C – Marijuana Amendments
All three of these would legalize medical marijuana, but not recreational marijuana. If both Propostion 2 and Proposition 3 were to pass, the one with the highest number of votes would become law because these are two contradictory amendments to the Missouri Constitution. If Proposition C were to pass, it would become law in addition to Proposition 2 or 3, because it is statutory and not constitutional.
1st District State Representative challenger Paul Taylor spoke first, saying that Missouri spends a lot of money on doctors, but that while they could prescribe almost everything else, they could not prescribe marijuana. “If a doctor thinks you should use it, it should be up to them, and not politicians,” said Taylor. “Let the professionals decide.”
6th District Congressional Candidate Henry Martin said that he supported Amendment 2, while he opposed Amendment 3 and Proposition C. He said the Missouri Department of Health would be tasked with regulating medical marijuana under Amendment 2, while one man, Brad Bradshaw, would be tasked with regulating it under Amendment 3. He said he was opposed to Proposition C because as a statutory law, it would be too easy for the legislature to tinker with it.
Barb Foland to said, “I worry about all the young people and how drugs decimate our communities.”
State Representative Allen Andrews said that every state that has legalized recreational marijuana first started out by legalizing medical marijuana. He presented stats from Colorado which he says shows crime going sharply higher in the last few years and youth use going up 8.5%. “I understand there is data out there showing it has valid medical purposes,” he said. “But let’s go through the FDA and our pharmaceutical networks.”
But Martin said that the current way was too much like prohibition. “This is about relieving incarceration and focusing on rehabilitation. We don’t need to keep sending people to prison.”
Proposition B – Minimum Wage
Proposition B would increase the Missouri Minimum Wage from its current level of just under $8 an hour to $12 an hour by 2023 in increments. 6th District Congressional Candidate Henry Martin said that he supported it. “A person who works hard should be able to pay the bills, it doesn’t matter who you work for,” he said. Martin said that he has sat with the Poor People’s Campaign in pushing for higher wages. “People want to villainize the poor, but they won’t force our employers to pay our workers more money,” he said.
As an educator, Martin said that he had times when he wanted to see a particular mother or father at parent-teacher conference, but that they couldn’t come in because they were working. “Time off costs money,” he said. Martin pointed to Casey’s as an example. “If you pay people low wages, that means money leaves the county if they make a profit,” he said. “With a higher minimum wage, that money stays here. People can now hire John down the street to fix the roof.” Martin said that he understood the argument that it would hurt small businesses, but that more people would be able to spend money to offset the expenses.
Janet Wake Larison, a Democrat who is running unopposed for Worth County Prosecutor, said that there were places that she was scared to go to because one third of the employees used drugs because they couldn’t get hired anywhere else. “A higher minimum wage means businesses can hire better employees,” she said.
Proposition D – Road Tax
Proposition D would raise the road tax over four years until it is up to 27 cents per gallon from the present 17 cents. Currently, Missouri has one of the largest road systems in the nation, but has one of the lowest fuel taxes of the nation. After the lively discussion on the marijuana amendments and Amendment One, there was bipartisan agreement in favor of Proposition D.
State Senator Dan Hegeman gave an overview of the amendment. It would dedicate money to three areas – the Department of Revenue, the Highway Patrol, and the DOT. The Missouri DOT would get the bulk of the new money. The Patrol portion would replace money already being allocated for that purpose, around $280 million, meaning the legislature can free it up for other uses.
Out of the DOT portion, 15% would go to cities and 15% would go to counties. When the entire tax is phased in, Hegeman estimated Worth County would get an additional $154,026 above and beyond what they already get. Grant City would get $13,500.
“I consider roads a basic function of government,” said Hegeman. “I can’t build a road from Cosby to St. Joseph.” Martin said he would have preferred more funds, but as he told Hegeman, “You’ve got to go with what you think will pass.”
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