Drebes: Who will win office that's gone from sleepy to big GOP concern?
By Dave Drebes – publisher of Missouri Scout, a private news service covering state politics
Apr 8, 2024
Over the last couple of years, the secretary of state’s office has gone from something of a sleepy spot among Missouri’s statewide elected offices to the nexus of great Republican concern.
In the years since Donald Trump’s claims of a “stolen election,” it’s now the focus of MAGA paranoia: election fraud, conspiracy about voting machines and proposals for hand counting paper ballots.
This year, in the final days of candidate filing, four people from the St. Louis region threw their hat in the ring for the Republican nomination for secretary of state. The crowded field makes it anyone’s to win. Depending on how the vote splits, the winner might grab the nomination with far less than a majority of votes. A weak 25% plurality might be enough.
Here’s a look at the late-comers to this race.
Speaker Dean Plocher was one of two candidate who initially filed for a different office, but made a last-minute change to SOS. Plocher had previously been running for lieutenant governor. However, also running for that race is Sen. Lincoln Hough from Springfield. Hough chairs the Senate’s powerful Appropriations Committee, and he is a fundraising juggernaut. Folks think that his campaign will raise about $2 million. That’s important because although Plocher starts with a big war chest, he also has some well-known vulnerabilities, including an ongoing ethics investigation. He needs to avoid a race where an opponent could spend $500,000 on TV ads attacking him. Hough would have been able to do that. The SOS race is much more hospitable for Plocher. So far, no one appears to have Hough-level money. And even if they do, with a crowded field it’s less likely someone will spend money targeting one person, and risk losing to one of the others.
Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman from Jefferson County, like Plocher, pivoted from another race. She had initially filed to run for Congress to replace retiring Blaine Luetkemeyer. But Coleman must have calculated that her geographic base was too small in the third Congressional district to compete effectively.
Additionally, Coleman has been a champion of pro-life causes, and she would have had distinguish herself on that issue because another candidate in that race, Bob Onder, is equally fervent on that issue with strong ties to Missouri Right to Life. It won’t surprise me if Coleman ultimately lands MRL’s endorsement in this race.
One person who won’t get MRL’s love is St. Louisan Jamie Corley. She had advanced an initiative petition that was a moderate option on abortion, making exceptions for rape and incest, but not going as far as Planned Parenthood wanted. Her IP effort stalled, and she has filed for SOS.
According to polling, Missouri Republican voters are split on abortion. Forty-four percent support the current total ban on abortions, but an equal number wish it was less strict, though they differ by degrees. Forty-five percent prefer an alternative regulatory framework (27% banning abortion after the first trimester, 4% after the second trimester and 14% against any ban).
In this crowded field, Corley is zigging while the others are all zagging. It could be a smart strategy.
The final entrant was Mike Carter. Carter is an attorney and judge of the City of Wentzville. He ran for lieutenant governor in 2012, state senate in 2016, lieutenant governor again in 2020 and state senate again in 2022. He hasn’t been successful yet, though his last race was pretty close. He’s probably hoping he has residual name ID from his previous campaigns. That’d be an optimistic plan. However, in a free-for-all race like this, if the vote splits evenly, no one will need a huge total to win.
