When Rep. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, won election last fall to her first term in the House, her predecessor, Sam Page, advised her to be on the floor whenever it was in session, learning the ropes. She and three other progressive freshman women from St. Louis spoke to the West County Dems on Monday, and she commented on his advice:

So I think each one of us actually were among the few who were always on the House floor, always paying attention, trying to not only hear the debate but follow the processes. And I think it served each of us well.

Even if they paid attention, though, Jeanne Kirkton says they were lucky if they could keep from being caught flat footed.

Hmm. Reminds me of the way congressional Republicans kept the pharmaceutical bill open on the House floor into the wee hours of the night till they could twist enough arms to pass their bad legislation.

The Dems got Congress back not too long after that fiasco, and–with redistricting looming after the next election–2010 is the year it has to happen in Missouri.

Did freshman Democratic representatives Margo McNeil, Florissant, and Jill Schupp, Creve Coeur, even serve in the same legislature this year? It doesn’t sound like it when they describe their committee experiences. They and two other freshman Democratic women from the St. Louis area–Vicki Englund, South St. Louis County, and Jeanne Kirkton, Webster Groves–spoke Monday at the West County Dems meeting about the committees they served on. McNeil loved the Health Care committee she served on because it actually got some useful legislation passed.

The legislative session ends at 6:00 p.m. Friday, and on Tuesday, after four months of absorbing punches from the GOP, House Democrats felt like they were hanging in for the 14th round of a bout with Sonny Liston. The topic of the day was the omnibus education bill, a 200 page tome. Think of it as a shoe box filled with dozens of scraps of paper, each one proposing some small change to how education works in this state. Many of them have majority support, but almost every one of them is a deal breaker for somebody–or several somebodies. So the larger the tome, the tougher it is to get passed.

Each new amendment brought more wrangling, and Rep. Mike Spreng, D-Florissant, fed up with it, was just waiting for the bell to end the round. He says he didn’t come to Jefferson City to score points against Republicans or defend Democrats. He came to do some good for Missourians, and he didn’t think the arguing tended toward that goal, whether it was about accepting federal funds to pay for informing parents fourteen days before the start of the school year if their child’s school is failing or about instituting a quality rating system for pre-schools.

Rep. Steve Brown, D-St. Louis, was less disgusted. True, he didn’t see the talk, talk, talk as productive, necessarily. But he did think it was important for Democrats to stay on their toes in the fourteenth round, lest Republicans manage to sneak another end of session Village Law or midwifery licensing provision past everybody. At the same time, the arguments at least serve the purpose, Brown said, of eating up the clock, using time that Republicans might otherwise employ for some mischief.

For all I know, that was what he thought Rep. Vicki Englund, D-St. Louis, was up to when she rose to question Rep. Tim Jones, R-Eureka, about his adamant support for accepting federal funds to inform parents about failing schools. Actually, she wanted an answer. Why, she wanted to know, despite his frequent contempt for federal funds, did Jones want this money but not the federal dollars for “poor, sick children”?

“Apples and oranges, lady,” said the gentleman from Eureka. “Apples and oranges. I take it on a case by case basis.”

Well, OK, but that answer begs the question of why in one “case” he wants the federal money and in another (even more deserving case, Englund would argue) he doesn’t. So she asked twice more why he wanted the dollars for education but not for poor, sick children.

And got the same refrain. “Apples and oranges, lady. Apples and oranges. I take it on a case by case basis.”

That amendment was batted around for half an hour. Another passed so quickly that I missed the debate because I sneezed. As Spreng pointed out, the leadership allows extended debate and delaying tactics when they want to. But they can cut it off in a nanosecond when it suits them.

Turns out that all the amendments debated on that bill, whether passed or failed, were moot, because the omnibus education bill failed. It sank under the weight of too many amendments. Presumably, the leadership is now looking over the vote results, ferreting out which amendments played the biggest part in sinking it. Once they get a handle on that, they’ll decide whether and how to take another stab–in the short time at their disposal–at passing it.

By that time, members of both parties may be feeling punch drunk.

Photo by Michael Bersin

Is new House Speaker, Republican Ron Richard, less partisan than Rod Jetton? Hell, yeah. A raging bull would probably be less partisan than Jetton. Less devious, for starters.

Take the “special committee” issue, for example. The difference between standing committees and special committees is that standing committees work on issues that need attention every year, whereas special committees deal with one-time topics. Usually, a House Speaker appoints one or two special committees per session. For example, a special committee was formed in 2005 when the school funding formula had to be decided.

And the rules specify that the Speaker appoints all the members to a special committee. Standing committees are different: each party decides which of its own members will serve on them. When it came to creating special committees, Jetton was a sailor on a drunken spree. He had 26, almost all of them converted from standing committees. Those moves allowed him to shuffle Democrats off of any committees where he thought they might prove inconvenient.  

Ron Richard has reduced those 26 to 8. Much better, don’t you know. But even so, six of those used to be standing committees. Democrats tried to get those six changed back, to no avail. But Richard did allow Minority Leader Paul LeVota to choose his own appointments to the special committees, subject to Richard’s approval. And in “subject to his approval” lay the rub. He ousted Democratic members off five of what used to be standing committees and substituted other Dems.

For example, one low profile committee regulates professional registration. It deals with licensure for doctors, lawyers, anybody that needs to be licensed. Big deal, you might say. But actually it is, because the members get to know a lot of professional people around the state and that makes it easier for them to raise campaign money. Jason Kander and Vicki Englund, both freshman legislators who are on the House Democratic Campaign Committee, were blocked from the professional licensing and registration committee. They were replaced by Democrats Charlie Norr and Michael Spreng, who is term limited out in 2010. Finish Richard’s line of reasoning for yourself, then: Kander and Englund will work to raise money for House Democrats, therefore ….

Richard also knocked LeVota’s choice off The Special Standing Committee on Emerging Issues in Agriculture (read: Committee on CAFOs). Tom Shively, who opposes CAFOs, was replaced with Rachel Bringer, who supports them.

The Special Standing Committee on Workforce Development and Workplace Safety (formerly the Labor Committee) lost its union Democrat, Mike Frame, in favor of Democrat Terry Swinger from Caruthersville. Not exactly a hotbed of union sentiment, Caruthersville.

Richard took T.D. El-Amin, from the city of St. Louis, off the Special Standing Committee on Urban Issues and replaced him with Vicki Englund from South St. Louis County.

And finally, Jeanette Mott Oxford, of St. Louis City, was removed from the Children and Families Committee. Oxford has twenty years experience addressing childhood poverty and public health issues. She is being replaced by Belinda Harris, who doesn’t want to be on the committee, because it’s not her area of interest and her plate is full already. In fact none of the other Democrats on the committee have served there before, so institutional memory will be sacrificed.

Oxford is appealing that decision. We’ll see. But let me just ask, what is the point of keeping someone with experience and interest in children’s issues off that committee?

Look, Ron Richard and Charlie Shields got bent out of shape–like the press–about Nixon banning cell phones in his office.

Richard told reporters he doesn’t like Nixon’s rule but will respect it — for now.

“But I didn’t stage a walkout like the press” was going to do [when asked to leave their cell phones outside], Richard said. “I’ll stand by this. I’ll work with anybody until I can’t work anymore, and then I can be a pretty bad actor. But I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m still pretty open-minded.”

Could we have a little perspective here? Speaker Richard, if you’re going to profess your interest in bipartisanship, then quit already with the power plays on special committees that shouldn’t be special. Or if you won’t go that far, at least ease up on the tough talk over cell phones. It’s a non-issue.

Last December, Jake Zimmerman said:

Perhaps you’ll remember Jim Lembke, the diabolical, despicable Jim Lembke, who’s now running for the state Senate, and who must be stopped at all costs. But for purposes of the House, the diabolical, despicable Jim Lembke leaves that seat open. And suddenly you don’t have the hard-working creature of Satan, who’s been there for, like, six years, you’ll have some new creature of Satan, who nobody really knows who they are yet. And that’s potentially four or five percentage points of difference with a good Democratic candidate. Thank god we have a good Democratic candidate, whose name is Vicki (Englund), and she’s been working hard and raising money early. I like that district. Republicans’ll probably invest some money there because they’ll try and force us to work for it.  But, you know what, I think the odds are very good we’re going to win it.

The latest creature of Satan, as Jake would put it, is, from what we can tell so far, much less colorful than Lembke. His replacement on the ticket is Cloria Brown, who–like Vicki–thinks that property taxes shouldn’t go up when the housing market is on the skids. Brown also wants to make sure that illegal immigrants don’t get government benefits. Just your typical Republican, who got the nod to run because she’s been a good footsoldier and it’s her turn.

Ms. Brown, though, finds herself digging in her fingernails in an attempt to hold this district for the Rs, because the area is no GOP stronghold. Before Lembke took it in 2002, it had been in Democratic hands. It’s considered a 50/50 district. Both Kerry and McCaskill won there. And although Lembke won solidly when he was first elected, the subsequent two Democratic opponents each came within four points of unseating an incumbent. Bob Burns lost last time partly because of Lembke’s underhanded (hard as that may be to believe about a Republican) tricks.

But Brown may find herself victory-challenged on November 5th. Conventional wisdom has it that incumbency is worth about five percentage points, so that four point lead Lembke had in the last two elections just got erased. The playing field isn’t quite even, though. Here’s the story on money: As of September 5th, Vicki had taken in a total of $52,732 and had $17,170 on hand. As of the that same date, Cloria had taken in $26,567 and had $16,293 on hand. Whoa, we have not just parity but a situation where the Dem has actually raised more money? Ha! When I said things weren’t quite even, bet you thought I was going to repeat the usual line about how the opposition has stinkin’ tons of money but our gal is knocking on those doors.

Not that she’s being careless about knocking on doors. Of the 12-13,000 homes in her district, she and her people had knocked on 8,000 by primary day, concentrating on Dems, undecideds and the slew of unknowns that have resulted from all the newly registered voters.

And then there’s Vicki herself. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything world shaking to say about her. She’s just … normal. Hard working. Interested in good governance. Honest. Well-informed. You know, all that boring stuff. Which we’d be delighted to settle for.

She’s a good fit for that district. It’s true that even though she’s Catholic in a district with lots of Catholics, she’s pro-choice (has endorsements from Planned Parenthood and NARAL). But the Catholics there are mostly moderate. They voted in favor of stem cell research a couple of years ago, a stand Vicki shares with the majority of voters. Her attitude about abortions is that we need to prevent unintended pregnancies by having sex ed programs in schools that cover more than just abstinence only.

And like all her Democratic brethren, Vicki is interested in restoring the Medicaid cuts. She would like to see emergency rooms used for emergencies again, instead of as holding pens for uninsured sick people. These days emergency rooms have infinitely long waiting lines–for the most expensive kind of treatment per square yard of space that there is. Treating people there is driving up insurance costs for all of us.

So. It’s looking good for Englund and the Dems in HD 85. Englund and her people will hang in and do their jobs in this final six week push. But let’s not risk letting this seat elude us. Help her out.