Missouri Scout Report led the blogger charge this week in reporting that State Sen. Chris Koster, who has been campaigning for attorney general as a Republican, has switched teams. This makes better sense of his clubbing with state Rep. Rodney Hubbard and state Sen. Jeff Smith, each of whom has been accused of playing for – or, at least, with – the other team. This could be the birth of the stealth white Democrat.
Insiders immediately made the move out to be canny on Koster’s part, to get out of the way of current U.S. Attorney Catherine Hannaway, who is expected to run for AG on the Republican ticket and would likely blow Koster and state Sen. Michael Gibbons out of the water in the primary.
Koster’s bona fides as a Democrat are, to say the least, questionable. Last session he co-sponsored two pieces of legislation honoring Ronald Reagan in this state – with his own day (Feb. 6) and his own bridge across the Mississippi. Let’s hope not too many of his new colleagues in blue share his swooning admiration for that particular president. On the other hand, Koster’s bill requiring the Department of Mental Health to perform a cost-benefit analysis before downsizing or closing any of its facilities seems to keep health in mind when crunching numbers, though he voted with the Republican majority to cut Medicaid.
Jeff Smith’s longtime girlfriend, Elisabeth Smith, is Koster’s PR person, and the junior state senator from St. Louis claims to have been wooing Koster to flip for some time. “Nice to pick up a seat without spending a penny,” Smith told the EYE, and as chairman of the as yet poorly funded Democratic effort to win some seats in the state Senate, Smith knows something about the importance of counting pennies. He also should know that state Rep. Jeff Harris and state Rep. Margaret Donnelly, the Democrats in the hunt for AG, now won’t want to sit on the same side of the cafeteria in Jeff. City with him.
But Smith stands to win in the flip. Koster is pro voucher and – more importantly for the cofounder of Confluence Academy – he is supportive of charter schools. As Democrats count a victory in Koster, and Republicans officially call for Koster to resign his seat in the Senate and stand as Democrat in a special election, Carl Bearden must be smiling quietly to himself.