Mike Carter, a municipal judge from Wentzville, said he filed to be Missouri’s next secretary of state because he thinks it’s the most winnable job on the ballot.
“I identified the secretary of state's office as having the least amount of competition, the least amount of dollars dedicated to it, and the largest opening for me to repeat what I did in the past and just ascend right to the position,” Carter said.
However, the day Carter filed, two other Republicans joined the race, bringing the number of GOP candidates for secretary of state to eight.
Other Republican candidates include House Speaker Dean Plocher, state Sens. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and Denny Hoskins, Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller, state Rep. Adam Schwadron, St. Louis County resident Jamie Corley and St. Louis resident Valentine Gomez. House Rep. Barbara Phifer is the most well-known Democrat candidate who filed.
During an episode of St. Louis Public Radio’s Politically Speaking, the attorney and businessman said if elected, he wouldn’t be beholden to anyone except to voters since he’s put his own money in the race.
“If I get in there, I'll have to answer just to the folks in the voting booth, I got nobody who's helped get me there or that I have to answer to,” Carter said.
Carter has previously run for statewide and statehouse positions.
In 2020, he ran for lieutenant governor, amassing 26% of the vote in the Republican primary. Carter ran to be the next state senator for the 10th District in 2022. In a crowded Republican primary, he lost by a little less than 3%.
Passing constitutional amendments
Carter agrees with his fellow Republican candidates that it should be harder to pass a proposed constitutional amendment once it gets on the ballot.
He said he would like to see a model similar to that of the federal government, which requires approval from two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and ratification by 38 states.
For Missouri, Carter would want to see two-thirds or three-quarters of Missouri’s counties approve a proposed amendment.
Alternatively, he also wouldn’t be opposed to seeing the voter threshold increase to 55% to 60% to pass an amendment at the ballot box.
“It should be more of a lift to make a constitutional amendment,” Carter said.
However, Carter also said it should be easier for an amendment to get on the ballot in the first place.
“Trying to run around and get that amount of signatures for your regular citizen … to put it on the ballot is a monumental, Herculean task that is basically insurmountable,” Carter said.
Here are other topics Carter talked about on the show:
- He believes the more relationships he has with local election officials across the state, the better he can communicate his priorities.
- Carter is not sold on the idea of hand counting ballots as opposed to using machines. He said while ballots could be hand counted, “You can also trust the machinery at a very basic level because all it is doing is tabulating the dots that roll through it.”
- While Carter said he isn’t opposed to making Election Day a state holiday, he said he would worry about the logistics, including making sure there would be enough poll workers.
