JEFFERSON CITY — It’s 12:30 a.m. on April 16, and the Missouri Senate is gearing up for a roll-call vote.
The body is in session unusually late, well outside the Capitol’s standard operating hours. Capitol tours have long since ceased operation for the day, the building’s doors shuttered to all new visitors. The only people in the building were there before 5 p.m., or have employee badges granting them access. A hardy few political geeks across the state are tuned in to the Senate’s audio-only web feed, but most ordinary Missouri residents are locked out of the legislative process.
What followed that early morning illustrates the dynamics of legislating in the Senate and changing approaches by members of both parties after contentious debate and votes last year.
The measure before the Senate is House Joint Resolution 173/174, which would ask voters in the November general election whether they’d like the state to continue collecting income tax. It’s likely the most consequential piece of legislation making its way through the General Assembly this year, holding the potential to upend Missouri’s known conventions of gathering revenue.
The move is a gamble to reverse Missouri’s stagnant economic growth and address projected budget deficits in the coming years. Republicans argue that shifting from an income tax to more sales-based levies would incentivize growth and make Missouri more attractive to business.
Democrats say that doing so would place more of the tax burden on low-income and middle-class residents, disenfranchising them while giving a tax break to the wealthy.
A matter of this magnitude would typically be expected to face hours of debate on the Senate floor, with kinks ironed out while dissenting senators kill time through filibusters. That’s how it played out last spring, when Senate Republicans spent months attempting to pass legislation that proposed a constitutional amendment banning abortion. The same played out last year when the body debated a House bill that repealed voter-approved paid sick leave measures.
Time and time again, Senate Democrats held the floor and blocked debate with filibusters, forcing bills to be tabled. It was only after Republican leadership invoked a rarely used motion to cut off debate that the bills were passed on the final day of the legislative session last May.
But the night of April 16 is different, unusually streamlined for debate on a consequential measure. The resolution’s Republican floor handler sponsor speaks on his legislation, calling on a Democratic senator to offer some mutual congratulations for achieving a compromise. Three Republicans opposed to the measure, and the manner in which it reached the floor, speak out, and two Republicans speak briefly in support.
And just like that, the resolution is up for a vote. It’s approved by a constitutional majority of 18-11. Just over an hour after HJR 173/174 was brought up for floor debate, it’s approved and sent back to be rubber-stamped by the House before appearing on ballots later this year.
The final resolution, approved by the Senate in those early morning hours of April 16, was the product of a day’s worth of intense negotiation across the aisle. Those were all behind closed doors, taking place as senators gummed up debate on other bills all day in order to buy time.
In the end, Democrats won enough concessions to begrudgingly let the bill go without speaking their minds on the floor — all eight Democrats present that night voted no — and Republicans saw the core of their effort stay intact. That was enough.
Becoming the House?
For the entirety of its existence, the Missouri Senate has served as the voice of reason in the Missouri General Assembly. It’s the upper house, where legislation that passes the House of Representatives is slowed down and tightly vetted, the final scrutinizer before a bill becomes law.
Individuality is historically preserved as the highest of its values — senators can speak their minds on any bill before the chamber, granting a large degree of individual influence on legislation.
The individual focus also preserves filibustering, or holding the floor to block debate, as a key tool to sink or stall legislation that a senator might take issue with.
The Senate is governed by a supermajority of Republicans, meaning that Democrats are not needed to muster a quorum or override governor vetoes. In theory, the business of the Senate would continue if no Democrats showed up.
As such, the filibuster is perhaps the most critical component in Democrats’ toolkit to stall legislation that they disagree with.
But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the chamber’s trajectory this session, echoing years of concern that the Senate is losing its individuality.
Democratic senators have criticized the chamber’s general direction, sparked by leadership’s decision last spring to cut off debate and vote on bills where a compromise could not be reached. Meanwhile, some Republicans have lamented that their caucus leadership too often appeases Democrats and has been ignorant to some of the most conservative bills.
The common thread between these critiques? Both sides say the Senate is becoming more like the House.
A not-so-subtle jab at the House, the claim makes reference to the restrictions that the Missouri House places on debate. The House has five times as many members as the Senate, meaning more bills introduced, more bills passed and more members wanting to speak their piece.
The House is far from short on strong individual voices, but those perspectives are necessarily limited to allow the chamber to remain productive. Representatives can speak for no more than 15 minutes on a particular piece of legislation, and the majority leader regularly cuts off debate to force a vote on contentious bills.
Senators from both parties have been vocal against similar infringements on debate in the Senate.
“No matter how great I think my ideas are, I recognize they’re better when they’re not crafted in a silo,” Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, D-Kansas City, said. “I think they’re better when they’re crafted together, when I get feedback and that constructive criticism.”
“I don’t think good policy is drafted in echo chambers,” she added.
While the concerns of Nurrenbern and others in the minority party are to be expected, some members of the majority have expressed fears that their party is shutting out voices.
“The rules that we have and the procedures that we have in place here are designed such that, whether Republicans are in control or Democrats are in control, you can’t just run over someone else,” said Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield.
Hough has long been a fixture of the Missouri legislature. He was first elected to the House in 2010, where he served three terms, and is now serving his eighth and final year as a senator.
First as a representative and then as a senator, Hough made a name for himself as an adept budget drafter and a shrewd negotiator, propelling him to the helm of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee in 2023.
But now, he’s been removed from the committee, the result of an independent streak that saw him break with the party line on several consequential votes within the last year.
This session, he’s been perhaps the most outspoken senator within the GOP’s ranks.
He frequently calls out his own party for actions that he sees as detrimental to the health of the Senate, such as the body’s refusal to prioritize education in the state operating budget.
One concern that Hough has shared frequently on the floor is his belief that the Senate moves too quickly through important legislation.
“Sometimes around here, especially recently, we’ve become too concerned with moving things more expeditiously than, in my opinion, we probably should,” he said in an April debate.
Hough was referencing four times over the past 12 months where Senate leadership has shut off debate and forced votes on bills, a motion known as the previous question, or PQ.
The motion is regularly invoked to end debate in the House, but its sparing use in the Senate has earned its nickname as the “nuclear option.”
The PQ had not been used since 2020 prior to last spring, when Republicans twice invoked it to pass a repeal of voter-approved paid sick leave and an anti-abortion ballot resolution.
A similar scenario played out in a September 2025 special session, as two PQ motions were made to pass a redistricted congressional map and attempt limitations on the initiative petition process.
President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, has expressed a clear willingness to use the PQ, but she hasn’t had to this spring.
Negotiations have been far more productive this session than in years past, a fact both Nurrenbern and Hough said is in part because the PQ threat looms large.
“I do think there has continued to be that fear that debate would be cut off at the end of session,” Nurrenbern said. “And so I think there’s more of a willingness to get into rooms to work around a conference table and start to negotiate differences.”
Hough put it simply:
“I think the other side is doing everything they can to not get put back in that situation,” he said.
Senate leadership generally agreed, too, saying that this session was marked by more intentional collaboration across party lines.
“We had a bunch of candid, honest conversations with Democratic colleagues,” said Senate Majority Leader Tony Luetkemeyer, R-Parkville, the chamber’s second-in-command. “We worked with them collaboratively on a few pieces of legislation that were important to them, and we were agreeable, too, as well, to get those across the finish line and come to our harmonious end.”
In an end-of-session media conference, Luetkemeyer credited Sen. Stephen Webber, D-Columbia, for spearheading negotiations and ensuring that relationships stayed functional between the Republican and Democratic caucuses
However, for some Republicans, the Senate’s departures from previous norms have not gone far enough. Missouri voters have overwhelmingly elected Republicans to the legislature, which several conservative voices argue gives them license to ignore Democratic demands entirely.
Following the PQ motions of 2025, Democrats vowed to bring future Senate debate to a halt until they felt their voices were adequately considered.
They followed through with that promise, beginning this session by blocking debate on the approval of gubernatorial appointments, stopping up the chamber and preventing a basic order of business from proceeding.
Democrats relented in early February after brokering a deal with Republicans to increase the threshold of consenting members needed to invoke the PQ from 10 to 18.
But that initial obstruction of proceedings was not forgotten by some Republicans.
Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, a longtime vocal archconservative voice in the chamber, was affronted to see in March that a bill sponsored by Nurrenbern had been granted a spot on a fast-track calendar.
The bill’s non-controversial subject matter — naming a Platte County highway after a fallen firefighter — did not, in Brattin’s opinion, justify rewarding a senator who had continually obstructed Republican legislation.
“We all have important legislation we would love to get done,” Brattin told Nurrenbern. “I find it ironic that you think that you get the golden pass on your legislation, regardless of the subject matter.”
While Brattin withdrew his objection soon after, his argument that Democrats wield an influence exceeding the size of their 10-member caucus is a sentiment shared by many on the Senate’s hard right.
Conservative legislation routinely passes the chamber, though typically following compromise with Democrats.
One instance of this was a bill from Sen. Brad Hudson, R-Cape Fair, that would explicitly protect infants born during a failed abortion procedure. It also vastly opened up civil liability in cases of an unsuccessful abortion and subjected medical staff to potential criminal penalties for failing to report an illegal abortion.
Democrats took issue with the bill, filibustering for an entire afternoon before Hudson announced a new version — the civil liability and mandatory reporter language was taken out, replaced with clauses dealing with criminal offenses for stalking, harassment and domestic violence that were lifted directly from bills sponsored by Democrats.
This was decried by Sen. Joe Nicola, R-Grain Valley, who criticized his party for letting Democratic amendments water down a Republican legislative priority.
“The party on the other side of the aisle, I like to watch them work,” Nicola said at the end of bill’s debate, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You do magical work. Now we have a piece of legislation … (where) now, there’s no way I could support this.”
Nicola has been an outspoken critic against what he sees as collusion from Senate Republicans to prevent his legislation from passing. His top legislative priorities — property tax reform and AI regulation — failed to gain traction with the body.
Nicola frequently has a sounding board for his gripes in Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, who is also strong in his individualist perspectives.
On the second-to-last day of the legislative session, Moon stalled Senate proceedings for about three hours by filibustering the reading of the journal, normally a routine start to the legislative day.
Moon spoke on a variety of topics throughout his hours-long oration, ending with a scathing critique of what he termed as authoritarianism from Senate leaders.
“The speaker of the House can be a tyrant, and I saw tyrant activity in every single speaker,” Moon said of his time as a state representative. “And I’ve seen them in the president pro tem’s office, too.”