Missouri Senate approves gubernatorial appointments after Freedom Caucus stands down

After a 16-hour filibuster lasting into Tuesday morning, the Missouri Senate approved all 28 of the pending gubernatorial appointments that had been held hostage by hardline conservatives.

“I am glad we were able to move past Gubernatorial appointments today,” said Senate President Pro-Tem Caleb Rowden in a post on X. “It has to be noted that we are in the exact same place that we would have been had certain members of the Senate not chosen to hijack business for the past two weeks.”

Members of the Freedom Caucus had refused to allow any gubernatorial appointments to advance before legislation aimed at altering the initiative petition process was passed by the Senate.

“The fire is aimed in the wrong direction,” Rowden said concerning the efforts to prevent gubernatorial appointments in order to accomplish legislative priorities.

Since the start of the session, Freedom Caucus members have levied accusations at their Republican colleagues accusing them of failing to follow objectives in the Missouri Republican Party platform — although state Sen. Mike Cierpiot informed the senators Monday evening that altering the initiative petition process is not in the current platform.

“We are not violating the platform, so we don’t have to listen to these accusations any more,” Cierpiot said.

While the ballot initiative bills have not yet been passed by the Senate, twelve pieces of legislation were heard by the Senate Local Government and Elections Committee on Monday. Immediately following the end of the filibuster Tuesday morning, this committee met to vote on the bills.

All legislation before the committee passed and will head back to the Senate Floor for debate. Similar efforts are underway in the House, although only one bill related to changing the ballot initiative process had passed out of committee by Tuesday.

State Sen. Bill Eigel, who is running to be the Republican candidate for governor this year, initially intended to allow only 19 of the 28 appointments to go through Monday night, as a show of good faith for progress taken towards advancing initiative petition legislation.

However, an unexpected filibuster from state Sen. Mike Moon, who is allied with the Freedom Caucus but not a member, held up Senate proceedings late into Monday evening. Moon was protesting the appointment of former state Sen. Dan Hegeman to the Highways and Transportation Commission.

Moon was acting on a grievance between him and Hegeman from the 2021 legislative session, when Hegeman refused to help Moon overthrow the governor’s veto on legislation that would have reimbursed some businesses for unexpected taxes levied on them during the pandemic.

Moon said at the beginning of his filibuster, which he acknowledged he was entering around 6:45 p.m. on Monday, that he had informed Hegeman of his intention to block the appointment. Moon said Hegeman was unhappy with the news.

“This is not a personal attack on anyone,” Moon said, later explaining that he only hoped to help those businesses negatively impacted at that time.

Moon eventually agreed to halt his efforts to block the confirmation Tuesday morning. Moon filibustered until after 10 p.m. Monday night, with Freedom Caucus members picking up where he left off, carrying on until the Senate adjourned after 10 a.m. Tuesday.

During this time, Freedom Caucus members graced their listeners with live readings of selected literature, working in shifts to keep the filibuster going through the night. All Senate committee hearings were canceled Tuesday except for the hearing that voted on the initiative petition bills. Senate adjourned until Wednesday afternoon, at which time those bills could possibly be debated in that chamber.

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Tuesday morning, the Missouri State Capitol building hosted two very different rallies — one gathering around 200 supporters hoping to preserve the initiative petition process in its current state, and another bringing together roughly 300 Freedom Caucus supporters.

“I’ve never been this popular in this building,” Eigel said as the crowd of Freedom Caucus supporters listened to him speak.

Eigel and state Sen. Denny Hoskins both credited the success of initiative petition legislation in the Senate to the grassroots supporters gathered in the Capitol. President Pro-Tem Rowden, however, feels that, while initiative petition legislation has advanced, the antics of the Freedom Caucus members has halted progress on other bills important to people of the state.

“Nothing has changed in any way relative to IP reform, but other top priorities like education reform, tort reform, and Missouri’s crackdown on illegal immigration are now behind schedule,” Rowden said. “I am hopeful these Senators will recognize their efforts changed nothing for the positive, and that the will of the Senate can’t be dictated by a select few but by the will of the body.”

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Overnight MO Senate filibuster ends, Parson's appointments approved