Elaine S. Povich | Stateline.org (TNS)
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — When a Republican colleague threatened to read aloud from a 2-foot stack of books — including a biblical guide to leadership and a tome by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist — to protest inaction on his bills last month, Missouri state Sen. Rick Brattin quickly took up the cause.
Seizing on a chance to hijack the planned schedule, Brattin spoke for about 45 minutes, accusing the leaders of his own Republican Party of ignoring some bills and making things “really frustrating” for ultra-conservative members. He often waved his arms for emphasis, as other senators sat flipping through papers, waiting for the session to begin.
“It leads to things coming to a halt in this chamber,” he said. “I wish we would do things people actually want.”
Brattin is chair of Missouri’s Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican legislators who aim to push their party further to the right on issues such as immigration, voting access and transgender restrictions.
But some other Republicans say members of the Freedom Caucus gum up the legislative works and are more interested in publicity and grandstanding than conservative policymaking. Frustrated by such tactics, Missouri Senate leaders stripped four Freedom Caucus senators, including Brattin, of their chairmanships and parking places earlier this year.
“It’s hard to do stuff even when everybody’s acting in good faith,” said Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Republican. Rowden derided the Freedom Caucus members as “swamp creatures who all too often remind me more of my children than my colleagues.” He added that last month’s delay was a mix-up and that the bills at issue would come to the floor.
“They did that repeatedly, day after day for two weeks, basically,” Rowden said in an interview at his spacious desk in his high-ceilinged office across the hall from the Senate. “It became necessary for us to do something that would indicate that we’re not going to let four guys run the place; it’s just not how this works.”
The Missouri Freedom Caucus claims at least six senators and is approaching a dozen House members. There are similar chapters in 10 other states so far that are officially part of the State Freedom Caucus Network, an outgrowth of the congressional group that has held up deals and helped oust speakers in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The state chapters are proposing conservative legislation and slowing measures they don’t like, even bills that were once considered routine and noncontroversial. And its members in many states, including Missouri, are running for higher office. But regardless of whether they succeed on legislation, they excel at getting publicity and drawing attention to themselves.
That is by design, Andrew Roth, president of the Washington, D.C.-based network, told Stateline.
“What we try to do is push conservative policy,” he said. “If we win, we win. If we lose, we’re exposing the fake Republicans for who they are. They will then have to answer to their constituents. We feel like we win either way.”
The national group gives support and money to the state caucuses. This includes paying the salary of each state director, none of whom are legislators, according to Roth.
The state directors pay attention to what’s happening in state government even when the legislatures are not in session and the mostly part-time lawmakers are home tending to other business. They can inform the more than 160 members about issues and either get them to call a news conference or create legislation to be considered in the next session to highlight their priorities.
Tim Jones, a former Missouri House speaker who is now director of the state’s Freedom Caucus, said in an interview that since the parking spaces kerfuffle, the caucus has picked up five new members in the House. “It’s not meant to be a publicity stunt for anybody,” he insisted. “It’s supposed to be the conservative North Star of the General Assembly.”
Sen. Bill Eigel, a Missouri caucus member who is running for governor, said taking his parking spot “is kind of the height of pettiness,” but that he won’t be deterred.
“They are trying to silence us, just like they are trying to silence Donald Trump,” Eigel said in an interview. “Unfortunately for them, it’s not going to work. We’re going to continue to be bold.”
Eigel said he parks “down by the river” now, a few blocks away from the underground Capitol garage. His wife is happy that the extra walk means he’s getting in a few more steps each day, he quipped.
Pushing to the right
Like most other Republicans, Freedom Caucus members across states have championed school vouchers, pushed to send state troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue migrants crossing into the country illegally, and opposed large state budgets and transgender medical care for minors.
But the Freedom Caucuses formed because some Republicans saw the rest of their party as not conservative enough. That has led to conflicts within many GOP-dominated state capitols.
In Missouri, for example, the Senate passed a bill that would make it harder to change the state constitution, if voters approve the measure, after leaders removed a provision supported by the Freedom Caucus to ban non-citizens from voting. The Missouri Constitution already limits voting to citizens only, but Freedom Caucus members argued the ban could be made even more clear. Democrats disagreed and staged a filibuster that tied up the Senate; Republican leaders eventually agreed to remove the provisions, drawing the Freedom Caucus’s anger.
Eigel would like the House to put the tougher provisions back in. Still, he claims credit for the Senate victory. “If the Freedom Caucus doesn’t stand up and cause a ruckus, the [ballot] initiative petition doesn’t move,” he said.
In Idaho, Republican leaders removed some Freedom Caucus members from committee leadership late last year. And in South Carolina, some Freedom Caucusers who refused to sign a loyalty oath pledging not to campaign against other Republican members, which is against party rules, were dumped from the House Republican caucus.
Matthew Green, a politics professor at the Catholic University of America who has studied the state Freedom Caucuses extensively, said in an interview that the state caucuses are “arguably more important than the U.S. House Freedom Caucus for policymaking.”
In an upcoming document, Green discovered that conservative groups in state legislatures formed as early as 2017, before the current Freedom Caucuses, because lawmakers thought their state's GOP was not conservative enough.
But starting in 2021, the caucuses have formed under the direction of the national State Freedom Caucus Network, showing how national interest groups and elected officials can contribute to state-level division. His research also found that legislators with less power are more likely to join the caucuses.
Green stated that these caucuses have been able to push the party's agenda further to the right, especially if the caucus makes up a significant portion of the party.
He said that using delaying tactics can force Republican leaders to address certain issues. “It seems that if the Freedom Caucus is disruptive and confrontational, they can win battles.”
Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, said that the Freedom Caucus members in Missouri take advantage of unlimited debate to slow the legislature down significantly. Given the rules, it is relatively easy for them to obstruct the process when they are unhappy with the way things are going.
The hostility is not limited to Missouri. In South Carolina, Green said there is a major internal conflict within the supermajority Republican Party.
Members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus refused to commit to not supporting challengers to GOP incumbents; this violated a 2006 law that restricted “special interest” caucuses from raising money and getting involved in political campaigns. Only major caucuses organized by political party, race, ethnicity, or gender — the Democratic, Republican, Black, and Women’s caucuses — were permitted to have political operations. The ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus argued that this was unfair in a lawsuit against the legislature’s Ethics Committee. Last year, a federal judge. agreed.
Rep. RJ May, one of the leaders of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus, stated that the law was a way to “limit our First Amendment rights. The establishment tried to manipulate the rules,” he told Stateline.
May stated that one reason the Freedom Caucus formed in South Carolina is because the majority Republicans do not “follow the party platform” and are too willing to compromise. The momentum grew, he said, when GOP legislative leaders began only allowing floor amendments from leadership, not rank-and-file lawmakers.
“People in South Carolina are fed up with leaders who say one thing at home and do something different in Columbia. They claim to be in favor of reducing the size of government, but they vote for budget after budget that increases the number of agencies.”
May said his caucus has achieved some successes, such as pushing for a bill that passed the House to prohibit gender-affirming care for minors. (The bill is awaiting action in the Senate.) Caucus members also take credit for cutting the state’s spending bill, although many of their members’ proposals were rejected, such as a plan to provide grants to churches and nonprofits to strengthen the foster care system.
May repeated what leaders in Missouri and other places have said, by stating that the goal is not necessarily to pass a bill. He said, "We are aiming to shift the political position to the right."
House Speaker Murrell Smith’s team did not reply to requests for comment. He also did not comment for local media stories about the caucus.
‘The farm team’
Most of the Freedom Caucuses emerged in states with Republican supermajorities. Pennsylvania is an exception, where the governor is a Democrat and Democrats control the House while Republicans control the Senate.
The Freedom Caucus in Pennsylvania has filed a lawsuit accusing Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, of unconstitutionally seizing power from the legislature to expand access to elections in the state. A federal judge ruled on this last month. dismissed the suit.
Dawn Keefer, the Republican Freedom Caucus chair in Pennsylvania who is running for the state Senate, did not immediately comment on the ruling to local media. She also declined to comment for this story.
In Arizona, chair Sen. Jake Hoffman and other members of the Freedom Caucus led a campaign that resulted in the state Board of Education postponing the approval of a new handbook governing how parents use state-funded educational savings accounts to send their kids to private schools until next year. The new handbook was intended to tighten the rules for using the accounts.
Hoffman stated that parents had not provided sufficient input. The new rules would have limited the use of the funds for summer programs and required more updates for using the money for students with disabilities. He called for a "robust stakeholder working group" to provide input into the rule changes. The Board of Education argued that it had consulted parents and other interested parties. However, it yielded after concerns from families and members of the Freedom Caucus.
According to its director, Roth, holding news conferences and filing lawsuits are all part of the State Freedom Caucus Network's playbook.
“Our members see themselves as the farm team of the House Freedom Caucus,” he said. “We also provide them communications support, legal support, and connect them with legal groups to help them file lawsuits.”
Eigel said that what Freedom Caucus members in Missouri are doing is unsettling the established GOP leadership.
“We’re disturbing the status quo just by scrutinizing many bills brought to the floor and asking a lot of questions that can frustrate people who are expecting a much smoother path to get their special interest priorities to the legislative chamber,” he said just before the Senate session featuring Britton’s delay tactics. “I expect that if you are watching today, you’re going to see a lot of questions.”
And indeed, there were.
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