Same story, different chamber.
Last week, a sprawling elections bill passed the Missouri state House Elections Committee, but saw a provision reestablishing a presidential primary in the Show-Me state and scheduling the election for Super Tuesday stripped out in the process.
Later on in the week, the Senate Local Government, Elections and Pensions Committee held a hearing on a similar legislation on its side of the capitol. And then the same thing happened in the upper chamber this week that happened to the House version a week ago: A substitute version of the bill passed the committee but without the presidential primary measure included.
Granted, comments from the Senate bill's sponsor in the initial hearing did not exactly bode well for the presidential primary section of the legislation. Sen. Sandy Crawford (R-28th, Buffalo), via Sarah Kellogg at St. Louis Public Radio:
"Crawford said that she wasn’t a fan of reinstating the primary, but that a lot of people want it back."'One of the things that I did hear that I thought was legitimate, if we don't have the presidential preferential primary, there's no way for military overseas to have any kind of a voice in the process,' Crawford said."
This notion of military personnel being disenfranchised by caucuses is not a new one in the on-again, off-again presidential primary dialog in the Missouri General Assembly. Rep. Rudy Veit (R-59th, Wardsville), who has a primary bill of his own still active on the House side, has raised it with regularity in the time since the Missouri presidential primary was eliminated in 2022.
However, once again, those concerns took a back seat to the price tag associated with the presidential primary. As Kellogg reported on the recent committee hearing on SB 836:
"Sen. Jamie Burger (R-27th, Benton), expressed concern over paying to conduct the presidential primary, especially with the necessity of a tighter state budget."
And those cost issues are often tied up with others in the context of these discussions, from the binding of national convention delegates to Missouri's open primary.
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Noteworthy: At the start of the 2026 session in Jefferson City there were five bills that had presidential primary provisions appended to them. Two of those bills, one in the state House and another very similar to it in the state Senate, have moved out of committee but without the sections devoted to bringing the presidential primary back in the Show-Me state. The sponsor on the House side has said that she will try to add the primary back to the legislation on the floor via amendment. Yet, it is not clear that the Senate sponsor will follow that path in the upper chamber.
Still, there are three other bills that remain active, two in the state House and one other in the state Senate.
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