Mike Cierpiot, shunned by anti-abortion group, fights hard-right challengers in GOP primary

In the Republican primary race to represent eastern Jackson County in the Missouri Senate, two hard-right political newcomers will try to unseat state Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican who’s largely been aligned with Republican leadership in the fractured upper chamber.

The primary could reshape the future of the Senate that has been marred by infighting between members of the hard-right Conservative Caucus and Republicans aligned with Senate leadership. It mirrors a divide seen in both Missouri and national politics among establishment Republicans and hard-right factions of conservatives focused largely on social issues.

Cierpiot served in the Missouri House from 2010 until his election to the Senate in 2017. During that time, he has served on several important committees involving the state budget and K-12 education.

This past session, he drafted legislation that would have established new recall procedures for school board members and another that would have banned the use of tax credits to build homes in distressed areas. He also served as a negotiator on a bill that raised teachers’ minimum salaries.

“I think that Cierpiot has done a great job representing, but I think there are a lot of people that feel that his votes in certain areas have just not been in line with theirs. And I think there’s a lot of people that are upset about him being too close to the establishment,” said Jackson County GOP Chair David Lightner.

“I think your race is the establishment against the conservative approach to doing things — the conservative faction, if you want to call it.”

To win the Aug. 2 primary, Cierpiot must stave off two candidates who will likely be more aligned with a group of hard-right senators called the Conservative Caucus: Rachl Aguirre, a part-time teacher at the Hilltop School in Lee’s Summit, and Joe Nicola, a Grain Valley resident who works as a pastor at the non-denominational New Covenant Ministries. The winner of the Republican primary will face Blue Springs Democrat Antoine Jennings in November.

“It’s anybody’s race,” Lightner said.

The incumbent senator’s re-election campaign suffered a blow last month when Missouri Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion organization, endorsed his two challengers. In an endorsement letter to Nicola, the organization, which endorsed Cierpiot in 2018, said it would not back him this year “due to his votes to fund Planned Parenthood.”

Through the state budget, lawmakers prohibited Planned Parenthood from being reimbursed for services provided through the state’s Medicaid program. But state lawmakers failed to pass a House bill that would have barred all public funding from going to Planned Parenthood clinics — even those that do not provide abortions.

Cierpiot said he was against the bill because it would have stripped funding that went to help people with disabilities. He said the state already defunded Planned Parenthood through the budget.

“We have an awful lot of seniors in nursing homes, like 23,000, that rely on Medicaid for their nursing home care,” he said. “And I just wasn’t willing to go throw the dice because Medicaid pays for no abortions in the state. It’s about other services. And we did defund Planned Parenthood.”

Nicola, in an interview with The Star, said he viewed Cierpiot as his only real opponent and attacked the incumbent senator for not being conservative enough. In the interview, Nicola, who served in the U.S. Navy, touted conservative rhetoric about protecting access to guns.

“My No. 1 issue is to preserve our individual rights and freedoms,” he said. “Our First and Second Amendment rights are at stake. They’re under attack.”

He said he’s also against government mandates related to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the height of the pandemic, he said he did not shut down his Independence church or require people to wear masks.

If elected, he said he would vote to eliminate personal property taxes and lower the income tax rate. He also said he would fight for an amendment in the state constitution that guarantees Missourians do not have a right to an abortion in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Aguirre declined to speak with The Star for this story. Hilltop, the school where she works part time, is a Jackson County Family Court facility that provides educational programming for students placed there through the court system, said Lee’s Summit school district spokesperson Katy Bergen.

Her campaign has largely centered around increasing parents’ roles in their children’s education.

“It is vital that we reject Marxist propaganda and instill clear moral values in the classroom,” Aguirre wrote on her website. “Empowering parents in their children’s education is core to the ideals of freedom and personal responsibility.”

Facing two hard-right challengers, Cierpiot has touted his conservative chops throughout his campaign. In an interview with The Star, he pointed to his record of voting against high taxes and vowed to lower the state’s income tax rate. In his campaign, he has also promoted rhetoric around conservative social issues like a so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights that would allow parents to review school curriculum.

The Parents’ Bill of Rights is often mentioned alongside Critical race theory — a college and law school-level concept that examines the role of institutions in perpetuating racism that is not widely taught in Missouri’s K-12 system.

The phrase has been adopted by conservatives to cover objections to a range of classroom materials touching on race, diversity or context to dark chapters in the nation’s history such as slavery and Japanese internment.

Despite his conservative rhetoric, Cierpiot acknowledged that he’s been willing to work with legislators from both parties to pass legislation during his tenure. He criticized members of the Conservative Caucus for derailing debates this past session over “personality and ego.”

He said his practical view of government is what separates himself from his challengers.

“I am a conservative, but I also think that government has to function,” he said in an interview.

“I don’t think compromise is a bad word. I don’t compromise on my values, but a lot of this stuff is not value-based that we were fighting about. There’s a lot of issues that we’re dealing with that are value-based, but we never got that far because it was so dysfunctional this year.”

Cierpiot was referring to his role in the fractured Senate where the Conservative Caucus held floor debates hostage for hours in the hopes of passing strict conservative legislation.

Over the last year, Cierpiot frequently criticized the conservative faction for their unwillingness to work with Senate leadership. He said he thinks both of his opponents are fully aligned with the Conservative Caucus and, if they win, the personal attacks and infighting will continue.

Nicola later confirmed to The Star that he would “absolutely, no doubt” be aligned with the Conservative Caucus if elected.

“We have a serious problem in the Missouri state Senate,” Nicola said. “There’s 34 senators, 24 of them are Republican, but only seven of them vote like Republicans.”

While Nicola trumpeted his Missouri Right to Life endorsement as proof that Cierpiot isn’t anti-abortion enough, Cierpiot questioned whether the organization’s leadership has “gotten off track.”

“I’m still strongly pro-life. That’s really what got me into politics,” he said. “It makes me wonder why [Missouri Right to Life] picked this fight, because…all Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood.”

Lightner, the Jackson County GOP chair, said that while he expects Cierpiot to campaign hard to keep his seat, his challengers are campaigning just as hard.

“I don’t think it’s a dead heat by any means, but I do believe that there’s some traction there,” he said.