This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 5, 2013: Missouri’s latest presidential judicial nominee may not be well known on this side of the state, but Springfield lawyer Doug Harpool has had a significant influence on the state’s political process – and in the St. Louis region’s loss of legislative clout.
Harpool, 57, has been nominated by President Barack Obama for a federal district judgeship in Springfield. The post requires U.S. Senate confirmation.
Among many Missouri’s political veterans, Harpool may be best known as the “father” of the Missouri Ethics Commission, the agency that oversees the state’s campaign-finance regulations and laws.
All campaign-finance reports filed by any candidate in the state – local, legislative or statewide -- eventually end up in the commission’s electronic database, which can be viewed online.
The commission’s records also include all lobbyist registrations.
As a member of the state House, Harpool led the effort in the 1980s to craft the original law setting up the commission. He also was a supporter of campaign-donation limits.
Harpool, a Democrat, returned to his private law practice in the early 1990s. He went back into politics in 2006 with an unsuccessful bid for the state Senate against Republican incumbent Norma Champion.
Although Harpool lost by 15 percentage points, he still made his political mark with an innovative online campaign, dubbed “DougTV,” that featured a series of humorous web ads – at the time, among the first in Missouri politics. (Click here and here to view a couple samples.)
More recently, in 2011, Harpool was named by Gov. Jay Nixon to chair the redistricting commission that drew new lines for the Missouri Senate.
In that role, Harpool was upfront in his stance that population shifts would require that the St. Louis region lose one of its state Senate seats – among the reasons Republican Jane Cunningham of Chesterfield saw her 7th District seat move across the state.
