Supporters of Amendment 4 say it would give rural Missouri a stronger voice.
Antwann Rhodes says it would take one away.
Rhodes lives in Waynesville, a Pulaski County town of about 5,600 just outside Fort Leonard Wood, where he settled after retiring from the U.S. Army. He is a Realtor in south-central Missouri and treasurer of the Missouri Association of Realtors, the organization bankrolling the campaign against the Aug. 4 ballot measure.
To Rhodes, Amendment 4 is not rural Missouri’s answer to urban political power. It is a proposal that would make it harder for Missourians in small towns and big cities alike to use the initiative process when politicians in Jefferson City refuse to act.
“You basically are giving it up,” Rhodes said. “If you give up your constitutional right, your voice would not be heard.”
That argument is emerging as the central fault line in the final weeks before voters decide Amendment 4: Who actually speaks for rural Missouri and the small towns outside the state’s largest cities?
Missouri voters passed a sales tax cap. Under Amendment 4, it would have failed
Supporters, including rural Republicans and the Missouri Farm Bureau, argue the initiative petition process has allowed expensive campaigns powered by out-of-state money and urban voters to rewrite the state constitution over the objections of much of rural Missouri.
“When something only passes in St. Louis, Columbia, Kansas City and Springfield, that should tell you something,” said Doug Kerr, chairman of the Knox County Republican Central Committee. “And look at what it’s got us in the rest of the state.”
Recent citizen-led initiatives have expanded Medicaid, legalized recreational marijuana, approved sports betting and added abortion rights to the Missouri Constitution. Each passed statewide. Each was opposed by much of rural Missouri.
“Our voices are not being heard,” Kerr said. “We’re not just a democracy. We are a democratic republic, and the rights of the minority should at least be heard. And right now, they’re not.”
Opponents, including some small-town Realtors now campaigning against the measure, reject the idea that Amendment 4 protects rural voters. They say it would do the opposite — making it harder for them to use the initiative process when they disagree with lawmakers.
The proposal would require citizen-led constitutional amendments to win not only a statewide majority, but also a majority in each of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. That means an amendment could carry the state, win seven of eight districts and still fail if voters in a single district rejected it.
The requirement would apply only to amendments proposed by initiative petition. Constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by the legislature — including Amendment 4 itself — would still pass by simple statewide majority.
To supporters, that higher bar is the point. To opponents, it is the problem.
“You want to continue to maintain your right as a person that has a voice to be heard,” Rhodes said. “That’s what we’re here for.”
An underdog with a supermajority
State Rep. Ed Lewis, the Moberly Republican who sponsored Amendment 4, has spent months making the case that constitutional amendments should require broader geographic consensus.
He thinks the campaign is going to be buried in opposition money.
“If it’s going to be decided by who spends the most money on advertising, we probably will lose,” Lewis said, “because we know that the big-money donors have donated to fight it, because they want to still play with the constitution.”
Lewis said he is not running ads for Amendment 4. He cannot afford to.
“I barely have enough money to run ads for myself,” said Lewis, who is running in a crowded primary for a seat in the Missouri Senate.
It leaves the measure in an unusual position: a proposal placed on the ballot by Missouri’s Republican supermajority, endorsed by the state’s most powerful agricultural lobby and framed as a defense against big money in politics — preparing to be massively outspent.
On its most recent disclosure report, the main campaign backing Amendment 4 reported around $16,000 cash on hand. Opposition committees had raised millions, led by the Missouri Association of Realtors, which had contributed $4.1 million to Missourians for Fair Governance.
Lewis and his allies are betting on a different playbook.
“If we win this, it will be by grassroots efforts,” Lewis said. “It’ll be by people talking to another person and explaining why Amendment 4 is necessary.”
Amendment 4 was placed on the ballot last year during a special legislative session. Gov. Mike Kehoe moved it from the November ballot to the August primary, when turnout is expected to be smaller and more Republican.
The measure would also make the full text of initiative petitions available to voters with their ballots and add language to the Missouri Constitution related to foreign spending and petition fraud. But the campaign has centered on the district-by-district approval requirement.
The 2020 playbook
Lewis compared his campaign to the 2020 fight over a Republican-backed amendment that repealed key portions of Clean Missouri, the 2018 redistricting and ethics measure voters had previously approved.
In that campaign, supporters of the repeal were dramatically outspent. The Missouri Farm Bureau Fund for Real Representation spent about $45,000 supporting the measure, while the Clean Missouri campaign spent more than $7.1 million opposing it.
Voters narrowly approved the repeal.
“It’s going to be a lot like what the Farm Bureau did with Cleaner Missouri,” Lewis said. “Local representatives, local senators and the Farm Bureau, and the grassroots efforts, were able to explain to people why we needed a change.”
For Lewis, Amendment 4 is about forcing campaigns that want to alter the constitution to talk to more of Missouri.
“I think people understand why, at least in northern Missouri, in southern Missouri, in rural Missouri, why you’d want to vote for that,” he said.
Who speaks for rural Missouri
Missouri Farm Bureau, one of the state’s most influential agricultural groups, has endorsed Amendment 4. Its president, Garrett Hawkins, previously told The Independent the organization’s members have pushed for decades to overhaul the initiative process because they believe constitutional change has come to reflect money concentrated in cities rather than consensus across Missouri.
“These significant measures that ultimately are enshrined in the constitution, that have tremendous societal and budgetary implications, don’t start in rural communities,” Hawkins said in an interview last month.“We’re left out of the conversation until we start seeing multimillion-dollar ad campaigns on TV, or until we walk into the ballot box to take a position on them.”
Jason Soseman, chairman of the Adair County Republican Central Committee and the 18th Senatorial District Republican Committee, supports the measure — though he said he would have preferred a lower threshold, perhaps requiring an amendment to pass in six of eight districts rather than all eight.
“I would have liked to have seen at least a six-two majority instead of an eight majority,” Soseman said.
But Missouri, he argued, needs to respond to the money pouring into ballot campaigns.
“We have to do something to stop all of this out-of-state money that pours in on different subjects,” he said.
Derek Schriewer, a Realtor from Washington, Mo., said that argument misses what Amendment 4 would actually do.
Schriewer has lived in the Franklin County city of about 16,000 his entire life. He is the immediate past president of the Missouri Association of Realtors, and he views the initiative process as a way for citizens to hold lawmakers accountable when the legislature refuses to act.
“I view it as a politician’s power grab,” Schriewer said. “They are trying to take away a typical function that we have had for over 100 years for citizens to be able to hold politicians accountable.”
Because the measure’s district-by-district math cuts both ways, Schriewer argues, it would hobble rural voters the moment they wanted to use the initiative process themselves.
“When rural Missourians really have an issue that they want to bring to the initiative petition, all it would take is one district — whether it be urban or another rural district — to override all of the other rural districts,” he said.
The result, Schriewer said, would be the opposite of what supporters are promising.
Rhodes hears the rural framing and rejects it, too.
“Me being in central Missouri, not being from a big city, the impact is tremendous,” he said. “It will hurt us.”
Rhodes grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, joined the Army at 18 and served for 20 years. He retired near Fort Leonard Wood, started a family in Waynesville and entered real estate.
He said he stayed there because he loved the schools, the pace of life and the ability to see the effect of his work in a smaller community.
“When you’re really there to help them, you can see your impact, and they can see the impact,” Rhodes said. “And we support one another.”
That is why, he said, Amendment 4 concerns him.
He sees the initiative process as a tool for people who may not have power in Jefferson City but still deserve a way to act when they believe lawmakers are ignoring them.
“I’ve always been a person that’s going to be on the team and be in the fight,” Rhodes said, “and to go for people who are small that are afraid to voice their opinion.”
What would have failed
The debate follows a string of ballot measures in which Missouri voters approved policies opposed by Republican lawmakers.
Voters expanded Medicaid in 2020, legalized recreational marijuana in 2022 and approved sports betting and abortion rights in 2024, along with a minimum wage increase and paid sick leave requirement lawmakers later repealed.
A review of certified election returns by The Independent found Amendment 4 would have blocked every citizen-led constitutional amendment Missouri voters have approved since 2020. Each passed statewide. None carried all eight congressional districts under the maps in place at the time.
But the proposal would not only affect measures associated with progressive causes.
The Independent found that a 2016 amendment barring state and local governments from imposing new sales taxes on most services — backed by business groups, funded by the Missouri Association of Realtors and approved with nearly 57% of the vote — would also have failed. It won statewide by more than 375,000 votes but lost the St. Louis-anchored 1st Congressional District by roughly 31,500.
Nationally, states have used different rules to make ballot measures harder to pass, including supermajority requirements for some measures and geographic requirements for signature gathering. But no state currently requires voter approval in each congressional district.
Soseman said he regularly hears the criticism that Amendment 4 applies only to citizen-led amendments while lawmakers’ proposals still pass by simple majority. His answer is that legislators already answer to voters everywhere.
“They’re elected by the people already,” he said. “Their representatives in each and every district all across the state, they are elected, so there doesn’t have to be quite the threshold.”
‘Standing with my ancestors’
Missouri’s initiative and referendum process dates to 1908, when voters approved a constitutional amendment giving citizens the power to propose laws and constitutional amendments themselves.
That history is where Schriewer plants his flag.
“I like saying I’m standing with my ancestors,” he said. “We’re Missourians all of our lives, and I’m standing with everything they’ve decided in the past. I’m standing with the way we’ve been handling ourselves in Missouri for over 100 years.”
Lewis, for his part, is standing on the same ground — rural Missouri, suspicious of big money — and asking voters to reach the opposite conclusion.
“If we win this,” he said, “it will be by grassroots efforts. It’ll be by people talking to another person.”
The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story.