By Amanda Lubinski
General Manager

Voters in Missouri Senate District 12 and House District 2, including those in Grundy County, have chosen to keep Republican leadership representing them in the General Assembly.

According to uncertified results from the Secretary of State’s Office on election night, Tuesday, Nov. 3, incumbent Rusty Black (R), bested Democrat Judy McNeese, taking nearly 70% of the more than 58,000 votes cast in the race for state Senate District 12.

Black was first elected in 2016 into the state’s House of Representatives. In 2022, he was elected as state senator. Before his career in politics, he worked as an agriculture educator for 33 years.

Important issues for Black include the state budget since ARPA funds will be ending next year.

“All those dollars will be gone out of the budget,” the News-Press in St. Joseph reported Black as saying in an interview last month. “As we continue to see increases in our social services budget, departmental health budget around Medicaid spending, we’re going to have to figure out a way to cut back in other areas so we can continue to feed that. The voters wanted Medicaid expansion, and with that comes a price tag. We’re going to be paying that price in the upcoming years.”

Voters in state House District 2 handily approved sending GOP candidate Phil Fox to Jefferson City to represent them, electing him to the seat being vacated by fellow Republican Mazzie Christensen.

According to uncertified results from the Secretary of State’s Office, Fox took nearly 75% of the 11,511 votes cast, beating Democrat Casey Scott and Libertarian Shelby Dreier.

In other state races, Grundy County voters voted in lockstep with others around the state in the re-election of Republican Scott Fitzpatrick as state auditor.

Fitzpatrick won 50% of the overall state vote to Wilson’s 47%. Libertarian Dustin Coffell won 3%.

“Fitzpatrick ran on his record of uncovering waste, fraud and abuse, particularly in local governments, and warning lawmakers about Missouri’s increasingly precarious financial outlook. The win gives him another four years to oversee the independent watchdog agency responsible for reviewing how state and local governments spend taxpayer money,” reports the Missouri Independent.

Fitzpatrick’s second term comes as Missouri faces difficult budget decisions.

“In a report released in December, he warned that state spending was outpacing revenue growth and could exhaust Missouri’s general revenue reserves by fiscal 2028 if existing trends continued,” reports the Independent. “The report found that the state’s general revenue balance, which peaked at $5.8 billion in 2023, had fallen to approximately $4.3 billion by the end of fiscal 2025.

“I do not see any prospects of a federal bailout coming to soften the blow of what’s about to happen this time,” Fitzpatrick told The Independent. “I think what we’re getting ready to encounter is unprecedented.”

In the race for U.S. representative to the Sixth District of Missouri, a seat being vacated by Republican Sam Graves, Missourians across the state also chose to keep a Republican in office, electing Chris Stigall with nearly 59% of the 257,824 overall ballots cast.