Just as the Missouri Freedom Caucus appears on the cusp of its biggest legislative victories, half of its members in the Senate have quit.
Missouri lawmakers are poised to return to Jefferson City next month to redraw the state’s eight congressional districts in order to gerrymander the Kansas City-based seat of Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. They’re also considering changes to the initiative petition process to make it harder for Missourians to change the state constitution.
Both have been longtime priorities of the Freedom Caucus, a group of hard-right GOP state lawmakers whose quarrels with party leaders led to years of Missouri Senate gridlock.
Yet after years of holding outsize sway in Missouri politics, the Senate Freedom Caucus is down to only two members.
State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and former caucus chairman, quit in June following a break with the group over a $1.5 billion incentive package to finance stadiums for the Chiefs and Royals.
State Sen. Brad Hudson of Cape Fair, who also voted in favor of the stadium bill, soon joined him. He told The Independent last week that his differences with the caucus focused on tactics, not policy.
“I’ve got nothing but respect for my friends in the Freedom Caucus,” Hudson said.
The departures mean only two state senators from St. Charles County — Nick Schroer and Adam Schnelting — are still aligned with the Freedom Caucus.
Schroer, who took over as caucus chairman after Brattin stepped down, insists the group is “stronger than ever” despite the loss of half its Senate membership.
There are 11 members of the caucus in the House, Schroer said, and numerous candidates likely to join the group who are running in GOP primaries for open Senate seats next year. Not to mention, he said, Missouri’s secretary of state and two congressmen are Freedom Caucus alums.
“I’m not concerned whatsoever that at this moment we only have two very strong senators,” he said. “And I think those numbers are going to grow. But just like in years past, there are going to be senators who may not be wearing the Freedom Caucus insignia, but they are going to be with us on 99.9% of issues.”
But the caucus’ dwindling numbers in the Senate, where its influence was always most acutely felt, has some wondering if its days in the center of the Missouri political spotlight are drawing to a close.
It began in 2018, when a group of GOP senators formed what they called the conservative caucus.
The group’s formation set off an escalating war with Republican leadership that culminated four years later when acrimony became so bad that the Senate adjourned a day early for the first time since a fixed adjournment date was set in the state constitution in 1952.
Soon after, the conservative caucus announced it was disbanding.
A year later, six Republican senators — most of whom were part of the conservative caucus — announced the formation of the Missouri Freedom Caucus.
And the Republican civil war resumed almost immediately.
The 2023 legislative session saw Freedom Caucus members using near-daily procedural maneuvers to gum up the Senate. Republican leadership responded by stripping caucus members of committee assignments and musing about their expulsion.
The 2024 session saw no improvement, resulting in fewer bills passed than any year in living memory, including the COVID-shortened session in 2020.
Throughout the turmoil, the group kept losing members.
State Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican, quit in 2021, telling The Independent at the time that she grew tired of the group’s disruptive tactics. She went on to become majority leader and president pro tem of the Senate, routinely squabbling with her former caucus colleagues.
GOP state Sen. Jill Carter of Granby left the group last year, saying she could no longer in good conscience be a part of “actions behind the scenes that defame grassroots and violate the needs of my constituents.”
Tensions in the Senate cooled this year, with term limits pushing key figures on both sides of the fight out of the chamber. The detente led to a much more productive session, marked more by partisan squabbling than GOP infighting.
That changed after Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe called lawmakers back into special session in June to pass incentives aimed at keeping the Chiefs and Royals from moving to Kansas.
The Freedom Caucus vowed to oppose the funding scheme, which it decried as a “handout to billionaire sports team owners.” But Brattin and Hudson voted in support of the plan after a provision was added making changes to local property tax bills.
Both were accused of betraying the caucus’ principles, with the group’s longtime political adviser publicly calling for the Freedom Caucus to “disband and join the uniparty that runs Jefferson City.”
Brattin quit soon after, saying he opposed the stadium funding but voted in favor after the property tax provisions were added that he believed would benefit his constituents.
Hudson quit a month later.
“I agree with the caucus probably on 95% of the issues,” Hudson said, “and I intend to continue to be allies with them and work with them on issues that we agree on. There have been sometimes where tactically, there may have been some disagreements where I may have wanted to go a different direction.”
Schroer said the fact that the legislature is poised to debate a congressional map that seeks to eliminate the Democratic-leaning seat in Kansas City shows the Freedom Caucus is anything but dead.
“Back in 2022, the Freedom Caucus pushed for a 7-1 map and couldn’t get enough Republicans to help us,” he said. “Now we’re going to do it.”
The overarching goal, he said, is that the Freedom Caucus will pull the party to the right so the caucus will no longer need to exist at all.
“When we’ve got enough of these strong-willed conservatives that are able to stand up to the establishment and stand up to special interest groups, hopefully at that point we’ll have a majority of the majority,” he said, “and there will be no need for the Freedom Caucus.”