JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri is no stranger to divisive politics. During the Civil War, the state had two men claiming to be governor at the same time.
Yet at no time in Missouri history has there been a General Assembly and governor more at odds over which measures ought to be laws than now.
During a remarkable veto session last week, Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature overrode 57 vetoes of Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon affecting state spending, abortion, gun rights and variety of other things. Not only did that set a single-year record, it nearly doubled the total amount of veto overrides that had succeeded since 1820, when Missouri was still a territory.
The blitz of veto overrides comes as Missouri politics have become increasingly polarized and term limits have created an atmosphere in which lawmakers must act quickly to accomplish their priorities while positioning themselves for higher office. The political tension underlying those veto overrides has, in a sense, become the new normal.
“There is more of a separation between the executive branch and the legislative branch than certainly I have witnessed in my 40-plus years of following Missouri politics,” said Terry Jones, who has been a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis since 1969. “It mirrors what’s been happening in the country in terms of the increasing polarization.”
A report this summer by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that Democrats and Republicans are more divided along ideological lines than at any point in the past two decades. The percentage of people who express consistently conservative or liberal opinions has doubled over that time, and nearly all Republicans now are to the ideological right of a typical Democrat while nearly all Democrats are to the political left of the median Republican, according to the Pew report.
In Missouri, those differences are amplified by a partisan split at the Capitol. Whereas the governor is a Democrat, Republican lawmakers control two-thirds of the legislative seats - enough to override vetoes even without any Democrats.
Nixon and Republican-legislative leaders have transformed the veto process into high theater. For each of the past two years, Nixon has traveled the state warning that if lawmakers override his vetoes on various tax-related measures public schools and other essential state services could be financially crippled. Republicans, while acceding to some of Nixon’s concerns, have nonetheless reveled in their ability to override numerous vetoes. In 2013, the Legislature overrode 10 Nixon vetoes - at the time, the highest single-year total since 1833.
“Looking at it from the outside, there appears to be some delight taken on each side about one-upping the other,” Jones said.
The political situation was reversed for much of the 1980s, when Democrats had a roughly two-thirds majority in the Legislature and the executive branch was led by Republican Govs. Kit Bond and John Ashcroft. Yet not a single veto was overridden during that time.
Political scientist Mark Rushefsky, a professor emeritus at Missouri State University, said that’s partly because there was more of an ideological overlap among Democrats and Republicans.
“You would find more liberal Republicans, you would find more conservative Democrats than you would find now, where those people hardly exist anymore,” Rushefsky said. Today, “the Democrats and Republicans are in different orbits - they’re like different planets.”
Rushefsky said he believes modern Missouri politics is more divided than at any point since the Civil War.
In 1861, when Missouri Gov. Claiborne Jackson aligned himself with the Confederacy, attendees at a special state convention declared the office vacant and appointed former Missouri Chief Justice Hamilton Gamble as governor. As Gamble led a pro-Union government, Jackson convened a minority of the former General Assembly to pass a measure attempting to secede and join the Confederate states. Jackson eventually fled to Arkansas.
Missouri’s current political divide, while record-breaking, remains far more amicable than the disputes of 150 years ago.
Yet it appears that “party polarization is here to stay for the foreseeable future,” Jones said.
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David A. Lieb has covered state government and politics for The Associated Press since 1995. Follow him at https://twitter.com/DavidALieb
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