The schizophrenic Missouri voter
Yael T. AbouhalkahWhat the heck, Missouri voters?
They did the right thing by re-electing Democrat Claire McCaskill as U.S. senator and rejecting Todd Akin’s extremist views.
They did the right thing by re-electing three qualified Democrats to statewide office: Gov. Jay Nixon, Attorney General Chris Koster and Treasurer Clint Zweifel. Then they elected a strong Kansas City-based candidate in Democrat Jason Kander to take over the secretary of state’s office from Robin Carnahan.
And then they rejected a stupid, GOP-inspired amendment on judges and approved local control for the St. Louis Police Department (which should lead to local control of Kansas City’s PD next year, but that’s another story.)
But then - on perhaps the most important statewide issue of the night - those same kind-of-liberal thinking Missouri voters narrowly rejected an increase in the embarrassing, lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax. It lost by 47,000 out of 2.65 million votes cast.
The tax lost big in rural areas, as expected, but did not get the kind of huge majority it should have in especially strong Democratic areas such as Kansas City.
The third straight loss of the cigarette tax means no extra money for schools and no incentive for people to stop smoking, to reduce the harm to their health and to cut medical costs borne by taxpayers to take care of people who get sick.
It was a very sad night for Missouri.
Anonymous
6 months, 2 weeks agoNews flash YA, not everybody agrees with you and you’re wrong!!!!!!!!!