The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).
This time last year, the Missouri Senate was barely functioning.
Members of the Freedom Caucus, a renegade group of GOP senators who’ve been at war with party leadership for years, used procedural hijinks to grind the chamber to a halt almost daily.
In retaliation, Senate leaders stripped committee assignments from Freedom Caucus members — and even mused publicly about expelling a caucus leader from the chamber.
The legislative session limped to a close four months later with fewer bills passed than any year in living memory, including the COVID-shortened session in 2020.
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Flash forward 365 days, and a fragile sense of normalcy is creeping back into the statehouse.
Legislative business is chugging along. Bills are heading to committee and getting public hearings. Leaders of the Freedom Caucus even got plum committee assignments.
The vibe shift has lawmakers, lobbyists and activists holding their breath, with most happy to see the legislature functioning again but still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Well, I don’t want to jinx anything, but they are better,” House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said when asked about the potential for Senate drama. “I was talking to Sen. (Jamie) Burger last night, and I said, just joking around, ‘how many days until your first meltdown?’”
The leader of the Freedom Caucus, GOP Sen. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville, predicted to Missourinet that there will be far more cooperation among Senate Republicans this session.
“People are really going to be surprised at how well and how effective we’re able to work together,” he said.
A big difference this year, said Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, is some of the most vocal Freedom Caucus members were forced out of office thanks to term limits.
“I think there’s been one of the largest turnovers in senators that we’ve ever had,” said Beck, an Affton Democrat.
The new members of the Senate, Patterson said, are all “very conservative, but they want to get things done, as opposed to kind of just being in the news and making trouble.”
There’s also not a statewide election on the horizon this year, Patterson noted, giving the legislature a reprieve from GOP primary politics that have been at the center of much of the recent dysfunction.
It was actually the Missouri House where factional fights that defined the previous four legislative sessions reemerged this year, with Republican state Rep. Justin Sparks challenging Patterson for the job as speaker.
Sparks’ attacks on Patterson echoed the Freedom Caucus jabs at Senate leadership, accusing him of being bought and paid for by special interests willing to betray conservative principles for political expediency.
But Sparks’ challenge fizzled, garnering only a handful of votes in the 163-member chamber. And given the top-down power structure of the House — and rules that don’t allow the filibuster — a meaningful uprising among Freedom Caucus devotees is nearly unthinkable.
Patterson also has the benefit of taking over for Dean Plocher, who spent much of his final year as speaker trying to fend off an ethics investigation.
Plocher left office earlier this month because of term limits.
No one has benefited more from the GOP factional fights than Democrats, who other than a late-session filibuster last year blocking legislation seeking to change the initiative petition process have spent much of the last few years watching as bills they hate whither on the vine in the face of Republican squabbling.
But Democrats never publicly celebrated the gridlock and were always quick to note that GOP squabbles also killed bills with widespread bipartisan appeal — such as expanding child care and assisting foster kids.
Despite the lack of public drama so far, there are no shortage of potential stumbling blocks on the horizon.
The budget isn’t nearly as robust as it was when federal money was pouring in to assist with COVID recovery and infrastructure projects. Perennial issues that have historically bogged down the process — charter schools expansion, changes to the judiciary and utility policy, among others — remain just as complicated.
But if the session goes off the rails again, most expect it will be over abortion.
Republicans are still trying to get on the same page on how to roll back the voter-approved constitutional amendment that overturned Missouri’s abortion ban last year — a possible fissure in the veneer of unity the GOP has managed so far.
Meanwhile, Democrats have been clear they will not go quietly into the night if Republicans try to roll back abortion rights.
“We’re going to uphold the will of the people,” Beck said.
Patterson said he is “under no illusion that there won’t be conflict later on this session, because I think that’s the nature of what we’re doing here.”
“But,” he added, “I’m hopeful and optimistic that can be minimized and we can actually get a lot done.”
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