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Politically Speaking: Dissecting the impact of Missouri's election results

Campaign volunteers for VanOstran pore over results on a laptop during a campaign watch party at the Sheraton in Clayton.
Campaign volunteers for VanOstran pore over results on a laptop during a campaign watch party at the Sheraton in Clayton.

St. Louis Public Radio’s political trio – Jason Rosenbaum, Jo Mannies and Rachel Lippmann – did a postmortem of Tuesday’s election results on the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast.

The upshot is that Missouri Republicans did well, and state Democrats have some rebuilding to do.

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., was ousted by Republican Josh Hawley, and state Auditor Nicole Galloway barely won, despite a low-budget challenge from Republican Saundra McDowell.

One Democratic bright spot was Cort VanOstran’s strong – but unsuccessful – bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin.

Meanwhile, voters also passed ballot measures that:

  • Legalize medical marijuana
  • Raise Missouri’s minimum wage
  • Revamp the state’s redistricting process for state legislative seats


Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter:@jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter:@jmannies

Follow Rachel Lippmann on Twitter:@rlippmann

Music: "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" by Elton John

Copyright 2018 St. Louis Public Radio

Since entering the world of professional journalism in 2006, Jason Rosenbaum dove head first into the world of politics, policy and even rock and roll music. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Rosenbaum spent more than four years in the Missouri State Capitol writing for the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri Lawyers Media and the St. Louis Beacon. Since moving to St. Louis in 2010, Rosenbaum's work appeared in Missouri Lawyers Media, the St. Louis Business Journal and the Riverfront Times' music section. He also served on staff at the St. Louis Beacon as a politics reporter. Rosenbaum lives in Richmond Heights with with his wife Lauren and their two sons.
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
Lippmann returned to her native St. Louis after spending two years covering state government in Lansing, Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and followed (though not directly) in Maria Altman's footsteps in Springfield, also earning her graduate degree in public affairs reporting. She's also done reporting stints in Detroit, Michigan and Austin, Texas. Rachel likes to fill her free time with good books, good friends, good food, and good baseball.