On the surface, Umar Lee wouldn’t seem to be the type of voter who splits his ticket between Democrat-backed ballot initiatives and Republican candidates.
Lee spent the latter part of 2014 in Ferguson protesting Michael Brown’s death. And Lee vocally backed Democratic candidates running for St. Louis municipal offices.
But this year, Lee voted for GOP candidates like Gov.-elect Mike Kehoe and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley. He also backed a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights and a measure boosting the state’s minimum wage.
In Lee’s view, this type of voting behavior — which has become a source of befuddlement for some — makes sense. Lots of Missourians, he said, grew up during a time when Democrats not only held power in the state, but also were associated with policies that helped the working class.
“We are very much a state that has this FDR Dem ethos. But we are a state of largely people who are more religious, more culturally traditional,” Lee said. “When I look at the leadership or the punditry or the thought makers or the academics who are influencing the Democratic Party, I don’t see people that I feel I have a common worldview with.
“The George W. Bush line – could you sit down and drink a beer with them? I don’t think I could sit down and eat avocado toast with them,” he added. “There’s a cultural divide that’s emerged.”
For years, people inside and outside the Missouri political world wondered why the state’s voters gravitated toward left-of-center ballot initiatives and conservative candidates. Voters and political strategists point to a number of factors including:
- Ballot initiatives having advantages in raising money and organizing enthusiasm compared to candidates.
- Missouri Democrats not having the infrastructure to gain relevancy on a statewide or state legislative level.
- Adherence to familial or social pressures to support GOP candidates, even if voters like individual ideas from Democrats.
One of the strongest theories for this contradictory voting behavior may be that Missourians are not as ideologically homogeneous as political candidates. And having a strong initiative petition process allows for voters who largely identify with Republicans to have a check on the legislature that may stray from their issue preferences.
“I think it is 100% the case that the people, the voters, the populace, are not as neatly sorted as legislative caucuses,” said Sean Soendker Nicholson, who has worked on a number of ballot campaigns both in Missouri and around the country. “And that's because we are complicated people, and because people have a grab bag of positions.”
Missouri’s voting behavior received more attention this year after the state’s voters legalized abortion at the same time they elected GOP candidates up and down the ballot.
And this wasn’t the first time this happened. Over the past decade, Missouri Republicans steadily gained ground in the General Assembly and statewide office. And during that time, voters backed ballot items largely associated with Democrats — including initiatives that raised the minimum wage twice, expanded Medicaid, legalized marijuana and repealed an anti-union law.
Tim Davis is a teacher in Shelby County in northeast Missouri who voted for the abortion rights initiative and Kehoe.
Davis said he grew up with a family who embraced ideas associated with Democrats, such as protecting unions. And even though he holds a different view on abortion rights than the governor-elect, Davis said he appreciates Kehoe’s expertise on agriculture policy — something that’s particularly important to him.
“My outlook on how I vote goes to, ‘Is the policy beneficial to Missourians?’” Davis said.
“Voters are very complex, and we have a bunch of different reasons for thinking about the things that we do,” Davis said. “Even my wife and I don't agree on every single thing. And we're from the same town, and we’ve had some of the same experiences.”
Molly Bruns, who lives in Kansas City but grew up in Jefferson City, voted for Democratic candidates and for progressive ballot initiatives this year. But she is not surprised that the GOP still had a lot of appeal where she used to live.
Bruns says that many mid-Missouri voters tend to vote Republican because that’s how their friends or family vote. But that doesn’t mean that those voters agree with the party on everything.
“Something that is so core to Missourians as a whole is we hold tradition very close, especially in mid-Missouri and rural Missouri areas,” Bruns said. “Those are an incredibly hardworking group of people. And a lot of times, they don't have the time to educate themselves on what is actually going into these party policies.”
Ballot initiative advantages
Campaigns for ballot initiatives typically have more money to run ads across the state and to engage in door-to-door campaigning. Backers of the amendment that legalized abortion raised more than $30 million, dwarfing the resources of opponents. And supporters of minimum wage increases throughout the years have often run against nonexistent or disorganized opposition campaigns.
Nicholson said initiatives that go before voters are already popular ideas, otherwise supporters wouldn’t be able to obtain the thousands of signatures or raise the necessary money to get on the ballot.
“Ballot measures happen when there is a failure of normal legislative processes to produce an outcome that is in line with what voters want,” Nicholson said.
Ballot initiatives also tend to play up how the idea in question has bipartisan appeal. Ads for legalizing sports betting publicized endorsements from Kehoe and Quade. And the pro side of the abortion rights campaign featured testimonials from Republicans who supported the measure.
Maryland Heights resident Chris Spears said even though support for abortion rights may seem like a Democratic issue, individual people might support a ballot measure on the topic because of personal experience.
“The reason why Amendment 3 passed was because suburban and rural white women were correctly afraid for their bodily autonomy, and could see the clear and present danger to their current lives and circumstances that the lack of abortion and reproductive health care created,” Spears said. “That fear was personal.”
‘Double-edged sword’
State Rep. Ian Mackey said the availability of ballot initiatives is both good and bad for Missouri Democrats like him.
On the one hand, the initiative petition process allows Missourians to enact policies that would likely have no chance of passing in a deeply conservative General Assembly. But the Clayton Democrat also said it provides a disincentive for voters to turn away from GOP policymakers who aren’t looking out for their interests.
“It's a double-edged sword, because we've gotten those left-wing policies passed, but now those are issues that (Democrat) Crystal Quade, for instance, can't go out and run on to say she's going to do,” Mackey said last year on an episode of the Politically Speaking podcast.
The reasoning behind Missouri Democrats’ electoral demise are as complex and multifaceted as why Missourians are voting for certain ballot initiatives. Some of it comes down to national trends, including how voters who live in rural areas and don’t have college degrees have drifted toward Republicans in the past decade.
With the exception of Democrat Lucas Kunce, most of the statewide Democratic candidates were significantly outspent by their GOP counterparts. And Republican state legislative candidates often have much more money, given that donors tend to contribute to parties that are likely going to control the General Assembly.
Some Democrats were hopeful that the abortion initiative would boost the party up and down the ballot. But that didn’t happen. Not only did Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris perform worse in Missouri in 2024 than President Joe Biden did in 2020, Democrats failed to make any gains in the Missouri General Assembly — even in places like St. Louis County where the abortion ballot item passed easily.
That result mirrors places like Nevada and Arizona, states that voted for President-elect Donald Trump and measures to legalize abortion.
“Democrats have some real soul-searching to do in terms of how they're going to present their candidates, the kind of candidates they're going to recruit, the kind of messaging they're going to implement,” said John Hancock, a Republican political strategist who has worked on ballot initiative campaigns. “Because if they didn't learn a lesson in this last election, then I don't know when they're going to learn it.”
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Ulaa Kuziez, Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr and the production intern is Jada Jones. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
