How Missouri’s Grassroots Mobilized to Defeat GOP Governor’s Agenda

FEATURING KENTON WRIGHT - Missouri’s Republican governor Mike Kehoe urged his party’s legislators to put two constitutional amendments on the state’s August primary election ballot to further his political agenda. Both lost badly. 

Amendment 4 would have redefined what a majority is for the purposes of amending the state’s constitution. And, Amendment 5 would have phased out the state’s income tax in favor of future increases to the sales tax. 

A massive grassroots effort swung into motion to defeat Kehoe’s agenda. Participating in that effort was organizer Kenton Wright, a 23-year-old Black bagel worker and barista at Meshuggahs and a leader with Missouri Workers Power. Kenton started organizing with other service industry workers in Kansas City because of their struggle to pay bills and access transportation. They spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about what it took to defeat Amendments 4 and 5.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: What are, just briefly speaking, Amendments 4 and 5? Or what were they, I should say, since they are effectively dead. What were they, and what was the governor's agenda to get these two on the ballot? Because on the surface, it's not necessarily clear until you extrapolate what Kehoe has really wanted in the long term for his state. 

Kenton Wright: No, absolutely. With politicians like these, you always have to look under the belly and look under what they're actually trying to push forward. So Amendment 4 was all about trying to change the Missouri petition process, which has been going on for over 100 years already, by the way. But Amendment 4 was going to require a majority vote in each congressional district and a majority statewide. So if it just lost in one district, then it loses in all of them. It was terrible, in my opinion. Thank goodness that, with the help of Missouri Workers Power, of course, we were able to stomp that out. 

Kolhatkar: So basically, it was an anti-democratic effort. 

Wright: Oh, absolutely. The petition process that Missouri has is amazing. It's been giving us abortion rights, paid sick days, a $15 minimum wage, of course, which has been life-changing for so many people, including some of my own friends. 

And that's just another thing why I love organizing with Missouri Workers Power, because the fact that we're able to stop terrible bills like, or excuse me, terrible amendments like these.