Monthly Archives: December 2018

Christmas: Just another working day

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Merry Christmas from the Missouri Capitol.
Governor Mike Parson’s office is fully involved in the Christmas season. We don’t recall anything like this in all the years we have covered the capitol. Don’t expect to see him at his desk on Christmas day, however, although there were many times when a lot of people were at their capitol desks at Christmas.
The governor’s office often has been on display during this Christmas season because of something else Governor Parson has done that we’ve never seen done before. The double doors between the capitol hallway and the big oval office are open often with a glass barrier that people can walk up to and look into the office. The doors are closed when he’s doing governor business but at other times they’ve been opened so the visiting public can see the office and its Christmas decorations.
We’ve often thought it’s a shame that capitol visitors don’t get to see that magnificent room.
History tells us that Christmas has been through a lot of changes through the decades. For decades, it was just another day. Not until Victorian times did it begin to assume the secular commercial bonanza it is.
When the state legislature moved from its temporary home in St. Charles to the City of Jefferson, the fourth session of the General Assembly convened on Monday, November 20. Christmas day was just another regular business day, as was New Year’s Day. A reading of the House Journal for December 25, 1826 sounds similar to the House Journals today. It is—as it is now—pretty dry stuff.

MONDAY MORING, DECEMBER 25, 1826
The house met pursuant to adjournment.
Mr. Speaker appointed Messrs., O’Bryan, Grant, Thornton, Jewell, Canole, Bollinger, Nash, Johnson, Bruer, Brinker and Brock as a select committee on an engrossed bill from the senate, entitled an act supplementary to an act to organize, govern and, discipline the militia, approved 11th Feb. l825.
Mr. Grant of the committee of ways and means introduced bill appropriating money for defraying the expenses of government, which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading. On motion of Mr. Watkins, the rules of this house requiring a bill to be read three several times [sic] on-three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on to-day.
On motion, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house. Mr. Harris of the select committee to whom was referred the petition of sundry inhabitants of the counties of Chariton and Ralls, praying for the formation of a new county, reported a bill to establish the new county of Marion which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading.
On motion of Mr. Burckhartt, the rules of this house requiring bills to be read three several times on three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on jo-day,
On motion of Mr. Cook, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house.

The journal continues for several more paragraphs of routine business before the House adjourned until the next day. Representative Jewell, by the way as Dr. William Jewell of Boone County, a founder of Columbia for whom William Jewell College was named. Bollinger was George F. Bollinger, who represented Cape Girardeau in the territorial and state legislatures from 1812 until 1840. When a new county was formed of Cape Girardeau County, it was named for him.
Working on Christmas was not all that unusual in those times. It was seventeen years yet before Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published or that Sir Henry Cole, an Englishman, printed a couple thousand Christmas cards that sold for a shilling each. Christmas would not be declared a federal holiday for forty-four more years.
In 1828, the second general assembly to meet in Jefferson City took December 25 off but was back at work the next day. The practice was common for several years. In 1840, the House took the day off but the Senate did meet on Christmas day, a Friday, and on Saturday the 26th but adjourned both days because it could not achieve a quorum. Business as usual resumed in both chambers on Tuesday the 29th.
The House met on Saturday, December 21, 1844 and transacted business before adjourning until Monday the 23rd. But not enough people showed up to make a quorum again until the afternoon of December 30. The Senate met on Christmas day but only five members answered the roll call. It tried to meet each day after that but didn’t get enough members in the chamber to do official business until the 30th.
Then we get to this entry:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, At the First Session of the Fifteenth General Assembly, begun and held at the City of Jefferson, on Monday, the Twenty-Fifth day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight.
The Senate was called to order by the Hon. JAMES YOUNG, Lieutenant Governor and President of the Senate, and FALKLAND H. Martin, Esq., acted as Secretary pro tem.

That’s right. The 1848 legislative session began on Christmas Day. And it happened again just six years later:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, AT THE FIRST SESSION, BEING THE REGULAR SESSION, OF THE EIGHTEENTH GENERAI ASSEMBLY, BEGUN AND HELD AT THE CITY OF JEFFERSON, ON MONDAY THE 25TH DAY OF DECEMBER, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR, THAT BEING THE DAY FIXED BY LAW FOR THE MEETING OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

The Senators were called to order at 11 o’clock, A. M., by the Hon. Wilson Brown, Lieutenant Governor, and President of the Senate.

Lt. Governor Brown was one of about thirty people killed in the Gasconade bridge disaster on Nov. 1, 1855, the day the first passenger train was to have arrived from St. Louis.


In this building, long ago, Christmas was just another day for many years. There were times, though, when it appears some members of the general assembly left town for a few days, leaving the House and Senate without enough members to transact business although a few members who lived too far from home in those pre-highway, pre-bridge, pre-railroad days when the rivers were too icy to travel by boat stayed in Jefferson City, a town of no paved streets, few amenities, and fewer than three-thousand people before 1860.
The new Missouri Constitution adopted in 1865 established the January start date for the legislature, ending the winter sessions. Although the observance of Christmas had been slowly building, it was not until the Reconstruction years that December became the biggest month of the year for retail sales.
In a couple of weeks, today’s legislators will start a new session in today’s capitol. By then the Christmas decorations will be gone and the present capitol will feel, as the old one undoubtedly felt, the quickening pulse within it. Christmas and the old year are gone. A new year and new careers soon will begin to take shape. And so will the new journals that somebody else might read 170 years hence.

Jim

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I knew only one person who had anything bad to say about Jim Spainhower, the only person in public office I ever would have given any thought at all to working for—-and I still would have refused had he ever offered.    

I missed Jim’s funeral yesterday (Tuesday) because of a couple of things that required staying at home. But Nancy was among several folks from Jefferson City and a lot of other places who were there to say goodbye.  One phrase was heard over and over, or circulated over and over on social media—“good man.”  

Jim had been out of the public eye for a long time.  He was 90 when he died.  It has been almost forty years since he left the State Treasurer’s office after losing a primary race for governor in 1980. 

I met Jim the first time when he was the featured speaker at one of the retreats held in the spring and fall of each year by the college group at the First Christian Church in Columbia.  He was a close friend of our student program minister, Eldon Drennan, and had not yet entered politics.  He was straightforward, thoughtful, eloquent, never presuming to be the only repository of scriptural knowledge.  About the time I graduated, he became a state representative while also remaining a minister in Marshall.  

Later, I covered part of his political career as a reporter.  And still later, when Eldon formed a social/religious studies group made up of Jim and Joanne, Eldon and Ilene, and some other folks from Columbia and Jefferson City, Jim Spainhower was included and became the only political office-holder who was ever welcome in our home. 

Jim knew, however, that except for those few occasions when we gathered in that group, I was always the reporter and he was always the politician.  

I played softball with several of his young employees in the Treasurer’s office, one of who was a second baseman named Bob Holden.  Pretty good with a glove.  Singles hitter.  We were just young guys who liked to play softball.  Never talked politics between innings that I can recall. 

Jim wrote a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics and told me when my first book came out that I was entitled to begin my prayers with, “O Thou who also has written a book….”  

 The world was different then, of course.  Today’s religious-political alliance that seeks power to mandate by law those policies that are not convincing enough from the pulpit to bring voluntary participation had not yet materialized. And Jim’s profession of faith in his book fell far short of today’s efforts to claim exclusive access to the path of salvation and to turn dogma into statute:

And although a lifelong Democrat, I know that all political wisdom is not confined to my party. I admire the Democratic party for its record of policy-making on behalf of the underprivileged and needy, but I also admit that there have been periods in this nation’s history whenother parties have better served them.  

I am a member of the Christian faith and of the Democratic party. I declare my religious and political membership in neither a spirit of pride nor by way of apology but only to help the reader better understand and interpret the views expressed…Although I am a Christian, I do not believe all religious truth is confined to the Christian faith.  Jesus did say he came to reveal the way, the truth, and the life but he did not claim his to be the only way, the only truth, the only life.  I am convinced that Jesus’ life and words emphasize the truth about God in whatever religious garment it may be clothed. I have been blessed with the friendship of manypersons of the Jewish faith and impressed by their personal dedication to thesame principles of truth, honor, and justice that my Christian faith has taughtme to uphold. I know we worship the same God.

Membership in a political party does not require unreasonable partisanship. Nor does it necessitate unthinking, blind loyalty to every position a party takes. Parties themselves are so contradictory that the member who insists on following its dictates without raising questions is certain to end up as a fool…

  I stress these points  because it is necessary to guard against making an ideological god out of one’s political party affiliation….Any government, though, that does not consider the moral and ethical implications of policy-making will soon face a disturbing spiritual crisis among those who are governed…I strongly believe that too little emphasis has been placed on the role of religion in providing the ethical ingredient needed to complement political expertise in a well-governed society.

Jim was the youngest of fourteen children, raised in Stanberry, a graduate of Maryville High School.  He became an ordained minister in 1953 and during his eight years in the Missouri House, he earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in political science.

 State Treasurer William E. Robinson, who could have been thefirst state treasurer to succeed himself—thanks to a change in state law—raninto some serious legal problems (he was acquitted) and didn’t run again, Jimwon the office. And it was Jim Spainhower who became the first State Treasurerwho succeeded himself with a second four-year term. He got sixty-nine percentof the vote.  The only statewide office-holder to beat that record since was Auditor Tom Schweich, who ran without major opposition in the general election of 2014.

He was inaugurated for his second term only a few minutesbefore Joseph Teasdale took the office of governor and told a small audience suffering in the most miserable weather in the history of Missouri’s outdoor inaugurations, “I am firmly convinced that the will of God in this election to the office of governor has been manifested through your free will to vote according to the dictates of your conscience.”

Jim later told me, “Never trust a politician with a messianic complex.”  

Four years later, when he could not seek another term as treasurer, Jim ran against Teasdale, whose administration had a checkered record.  He lost in the 1980 primary.Teasdale later lost to Christopher Bond by ten times more votes than he won with against Bond in ’76. 

In 2004, the next time a sitting governor, Bob Holden, was challenged in a primary election (by Claire McCaskill), I called Spainhower and Teasdale and asked them to reflect on how the contested primary in 1980 affected the Democratic party in the general election.  Jim still would not refer to Teasdale by name and Teasdale still blamed Spainhower’s opposition in August for his loss in November.  Forget about the old saw that time heals all wounds.  Not in this case.

After Jim left public office he became the President of the School of the Ozarks at Point Lookout, succeeding the school’s founder, M. Graham Clark.  But he was never comfortable in that role because, as we recall the story, Clark kept an office elsewhere in the same building and Jim felt people still went to Clark with an issue instead of going to him.  When the chance came to become the head of Lindenwood College, Jim moved on. 

Even after he retired as an educator, he remained a pastor.  And a friend although it has been many years since we saw each other.  

Near the end of his book, Jim wrote:

If I have one single ambition in life it is to finish my days on earth knowing that, for the most part, I have done my best to serve God in the manner he desires. I recognize my fallibility and know that when death is just a moment away it will bring to close a life that failed many times to measure up to God’s expectations. But I desire that those failures be as few in number as possible…

I have always taken great comfort in the words of Abraham Lincoln when censored for his unwavering policy in defense of the union…”I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right; stand with him while he stands right and part company with him when he goes wrong.”

The reaction to word of his death both at the funeral and on social media has been universal: “He was a good man.”  

Yes, he was. 

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The value of a vote

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Newly-elected members of the Missouri legislature have been going to “legislator school” for a few days, trying to absorb what all those departments, divisions, and institutions look like and are all about;  how to make a speech; how to cast a vote; what cubbyhole office they’ll get (especially on the House side); where the bathrooms are, and so forth.  

 This is only a brief brush with the real world they wanted to join.  The pressure-cooker that is a legislative session will become all too real early next month. We imagine that most of these newbies think they are starting a career.  They are, indeed, doing that.  But they also are starting to create their legacy.  And what will that legacy be after the next two to sixteen years? 

We have come across an old poem that makes that point.

Back on September 13, 1856, the Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger printed an unsigned poem in the weeks leading to that year’s general election.  Those who are in legislator school might want to read it in the context of their life to-be:

They knew that I was poor,

And they thought that I was base.

They thought I would endure

To be covered with disgrace—

They thought me of their tribe

Who in filthy lucre dote.

So they offered me a bribe

For my vote, boys, for my vote.

O, shame upon my betters

Who would my conscience buy!

But I’ll not wear their fetters

Not I, indeed, not I!

My vote!  It is not mine

To do with what I will;

To cast like pearl to swine

To these wallows in ill.

It is my country’s due,

And I’ll give it while I can,

To the honest and the true,

Like a man!  Like a man!

O, shame upon my betters

Who would my conscience buy,

But I’ll not wear their fetters,

Not I, indeed, not I!

No, no, I’ll hold my vote

As a treasure and a trust.

My dishonor none shall quote

When I’m mingled with dust;

And my children when I’m gone

Shall be strengthened by the thought

That their father was not one

To be bought! To be bought!

O, Shame upon my betters

Who would my conscience buy.

But I will not wear their fetters. Not I, indeed, not I!

The language is old but the sentiment remains current. Thenewbies will wrap up legislator school later this week.  The real world will await them less thanthree weeks later.   It’s always interesting to watch what happens to them.    

Grasping to retain power, regardless

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We’re watching with interest efforts in Wisconsin by Republicans to limit the power of a newly-elected Democratic governor who will replace Scott Walker.                The New York Times reported yesterday:

“The long list of proposals Republicans want to consider also includes wide efforts to shore up their strength before Tony Evers, the Democrat who beat Gov. Scott Walker last month, takes office: new limits on early voting, a shift in the timing of the 2020 presidential primary in Wisconsin, and new authority for lawmakers on state litigation. The Republican plan would also slash the power of the incoming attorney general, who is also a Democrat…In recent years, single parties have come to dominate state legislatures, allowing lawmakers to make significant policy changes in states even as Washington wrestled with gridlock. But in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, where Democrats regained governor’s offices in capitals that Republicans fully controlled for years, Republicans are making last-minute efforts to weaken their powers…It is a model pioneered in North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers in 2016 tried to restrict the power of the governor after a Democrat was narrowly elected to the post. That set off a bitter court battle that continues to this day.”

There is nothing new in this.  In fact one of the most egregious examples happened here in Missouri. Only then it was Democrats who had controlled the state government including the legislature during the depression in a way that could make today’s two-thirds Republican legislature jealous. The state constitution then in effect required the Speaker of the House to make the official announcement of the election results at the start of the next legislative session so the winners could be inaugurated a few days later.

Governor Lloyd Stark, who had broken with the political boss in Kansas City, Tom Pendergast, could not succeed himself but in the process of what happened after the election he became the longest-serving single-term governor in Missouri history. With the demise of the statewide Pendergast machine, the organization run by St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann became the dominant machine power within the Democratic Party.

Forrest c. Donnell (whose name was pronounced as if it was “Donald” without the “d”) campaigned heavily against Democrat machine politics and beat Lawrence McDaniel, his former Sunday School pupil, by 3,613 votes, the second-closest margin in state history. Democrats retained the other statewide offices.

Two weeks later, Democratic State Committee chairman C. Marion Hulen of Mexico proclaimed there was “an imposing array of reports, evidence of illegal use of large sums of money and of vote buying, of irregular voting and of alleged frauds.”  Another committee member claimed there was enough evidence to show McDaniel had won by 7,500 votes.

When the House convened on January 8, 1941, it passed a resolution barring Speaker Morris Osburn from announcing the results until a ten-member committee (of which six were Democrats) examined the ballots. Attorney General Roy McKittrick, one of those re-elected in November, held such an action was legal.

The committee recommended that Osburn certify the re-election of all of the Democratic candidates but it said Donnell should not be certified because of mistakes and fraudulent voting in the governor’s race.  The Republican committee members called the report a fraud and noted nobody had presented the committee with any evidence of fraud.

Inauguration day was January 13.  But there was no parade, no big event in the rotunda (inaugurations were indoors then), no inaugural ball.  Secretary of State Dwight Brown, Auditor Forrest Smith, and Attorney General McKittrick were sworn in for their third terms at the Supreme Court.  Lieutenant Governor Frank Harris, also a third-termer, took his oath in the state senate chamber because he constitutionally was the President of the Senate. Wilson Bell was sworn in as treasurer for his first term.

Donnell could have been sworn in by a Justice of the Peace (an office later replaced by magistrate judges who were even later replaced by associate circuit judges on the government charts) or some other qualified officer but he rejected the suggestion, saying he wanted to avoid further chaos.  Instead, he went to Jefferson City and asked the Supreme Court to order Osburn to announce him as the winner.

With those actions, Lloyd Stark could not leave office. He was to serve until his successor had been elected and qualified to take over. He was, to put it politely, urinarily agitated.

In what was to have been his final State of the State speech he announced he had vetoed the joint resolution seeking an investigation and said he would not approve spending any money for any such thing. He called for Donnell to be seated as governor and for any dispute about the results to “proceed in a legal and proper manner.”

His fellow democrats, not happy with his position, started an “absolutely bipartisan” recount anyway.  In mid-February the Supreme Court ordered the legislature to declare Donnell governor.  Osborn read the official document on February 20 declaring Donnell the winner.  The Senate majority leader immediately announced that McDaniel would file a declaration contesting the results.

Newspaper editorial writers from both sides of the aisle flayed the Democrats, the Joplin Globe saying “thousands of Democrats” had been “nauseated from the stench from the original office-stealing effort.”

Donnell finally was sworn in on February 26, in the rotunda. Stark, who said he had been “living in a suitcase since January thirteenth,” quickly headed back to St. Louis and his private law practice.

McDaniel’s 226-page election contest petition claimed that a complete recount would show him the winner by 30,000 votes.  State Republican Chairman Charles Ferguson laughed, particularly at the claim that hundreds of non-residents had voted for Donnell in Newton County in southwest Missouri: “It stands to reason that five or six hundred strangers could not show up to vote in a town as small as Neosho and get away with it.”  Neosho’s population that year was 5,318.

Donnell’s response was fifty-thousand words long and accused Democrats of the things they had said his campaign did.

The chairman of the recount committee, Senator Phil M. Donnelly of Lebanon, said the recount would not start until mid-April.   When it did, it was a disaster for McDaniel and the Democrats. By late May reports indicated recounts in eighty-one counties and St. Louis City had ADDED four-thousand votes to Donnell’s total. McDaniel met with Donnelly and agreed to file a letter withdrawing his request for a recount.  He did so without consulting party leaders who had pushed him to demand the recount and who had cooked up the claims of massive Republican vote fraud. McDaniel’s statement later seemed to be a slap at Hulen and his party allies when McDaniel said he had been “misled” by those who claimed he should be declared the winner.

The House and Senate met in joint session and in ten minutes declared the recount over with Donnell the winner.  Because the recount was never completed, his official victory margin remains 3,613 votes.

Democrats paid a heavy price for this escapade.  Several saw the writing on the wall and did not run again in 1942.  Several who did run lost their primary elections and many of those who got through the primaries were whipped in November as Republicans regained control of the House and pulled into a tie in the Senate.

Donnell was succeeded by Senator Donnelly, the senator who led the aborted recount effort. Donnelly later became the first governor to serve two full terms although he had to serve them separately because he was barred from succeeding himself but not prohibited from being governor again.

While Donnell was governor, a constitutional convention was called.  The new constitution, approved after he left office, prevents another effort to “steal” the governor’s election.  It says the Secretary of State, not the Speaker of the House, will certify the winners.