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Politically Speaking: Rep. Rowden on ethics, the Rams and Columbia City Council

Bram Sable-Smith I KBIA

This week’s Politically Speaking breaks some new ground. Through the magic of radio, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies joined with KBIA’s Bram Sable-Smith to interview state Rep. Caleb Rowden.

The Columbia Republican and Rock Bridge High School graduate was first elected to the Missouri House in 2012. Rowden had a somewhat unconventional road to Missouri state politics: He was a successful Christian rock musician before running for a vacant House seat in 2012.

That year, Rowden defeated two former state senators to capture a seat that includes areas of Boone and Randolph counties.Since then, Rowden has been involved with some major bills – including legislation that passed last week to reconfigure the state’s ethics laws. He’s also become the chairman of one of the Missouri House’s economic development committees – which makes him a key player in approving incentives and tax breaks. That makes him a key player in the efforts to keep the Rams in St. Louis.

During the show, Rowden said:

  • He’s optimistic about the chances for an ethics bill to cap lobbyists’ gifts at $25 and require departing legislators to wait a year before registering as lobbyists. But he’s unsure whether the General Assembly will pass his bill to require nonprofits known as 501C4s to identify their donors if the nonprofits spend more than a quarter of their money on political campaigns in Missouri.
  • He’s wary about Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s intentions. If the Rams move west, Rowden predicts another NFL team will move to St. Louis within 10 years.
  • He defends his push for bills to restrict or overturn actions by the Columbia City Council, such as a new ordinance that bars public or private employers from asking job candidates if they’d ever been arrested or convicted.
  • He doesn’t see the Missouri General Assembly reconsidering Medicaid expansion any time soon.


Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: @jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter:@jmannies

Follow Bram Sable-Smith on Twitter: @besables

Follow Caleb Rowden on Twitter: @calebrowden44

Music: “All I Need is You” by Caleb Rowden & “Reinventing Your Exit” by Underoath

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit 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.
A curious Columbia, Mo. native, Bram Sable-Smith has documented mbira musicians in Zimbabwe, mining protests in Chile, and the St. Louis airport's tumultuous relationship with the Chinese cargo business. His reporting from Ferguson, Mo. was part of a KBIA documentary honored by the Missouri Broadcasters Association and winner of a national Edward R. Murrow Award. He comes to KBIA most recently from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine.
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.
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