While last Tuesday’s election saw Warren County’s state senator and state representative win their reelection bids by large majorities, other outcomes favored locally failed to secure the broader support needed to succeed at the ballot box.

Although incumbent Rep. Ann Wagner, representing U.S. House District 2, received 64.2 percent of votes in Warren County compared to 31.64 percent for Democratic challenger Fred Wellman, overall across the district Wellman defeated Wagner with 51.14 percent of the total votes.

“Thank you, Missouri’s 2nd District. I’m going to do the job the title says: represent the people. All of you. Tomorrow we go to work,” Wellman said in a social media post following the election. “We’re not done yet.”

A majority of Warren County voters favored the same outcomes as voters statewide on Proposition A and Constitutional Amendment 7, which both failed, and Constitutional Amendments 6 and 8, which both passed. While 56.58 percent of Warren County voters favored passing Constitutional Amendment 3, statewide that proposition failed, with 55.43 percent voting against it.

State Sen. Ben Brown, R-Washington, received 65.85 percent of votes in Warren County compared to 34.15 percent for Democratic challenger Vicky Wors. This was nearly identical to the 65.84 percent of votes Brown received overall across District 26, which also includes Franklin, Gasconade, and Osage counties and the city of Eureka in St. Louis County. 

Brown told the Record he wanted to thank everybody that continues to put their trust and faith in him, and his supporters both in his first campaign in 2022 and again this year, as well as during his time in office.

“As legislators, there’s only so much you can do on your own. In order to really accomplish things, it takes involvement by people at all levels, including a lot of grassroots efforts,” Brown said.

Brown also discussed what is being called a “Blue Wave” this election cycle: Democratic victories nationwide that resulted in the party retaking both houses of Congress. The trend also manifested in election outcomes in Missouri, including Wagner’s loss to Wellman and defeats of Republican-backed constitutional amendments.

“I think that for Republicans everywhere, this state included, that it needs to be somewhat of a wakeup call, because there’s obviously a disconnect,” Brown said.

“There were ideas that I think a lot of people were generally agreeable to, but the finished products that came out and that were sold to the voters just weren’t ones that they could get behind. A lot of people agree that maybe there were some things that we could tighten up about our IP (initiative petition) process, I think there’s a lot of agreement about like particular forms of outside money and things like that, and maybe it would have gotten more support with doing some kind of change.”

Brown noted that the Republican-backed initiative petition reform proposal that failed in the August primary election would have required support from a majority of voters in every one of the state’s congressional districts to pass a constitutional amendment, which he said was too extreme.

“For me, I thought in at least 50 percent of congressional districts would at least guarantee that there’s some buy-in from across the state, without going so far as to where you’re going to alienate some of the people that even originally created the idea of some kind of reforms,” he said.

“Instead of focusing on the areas that people would find more common ground on and that would have more widespread support, we pushed too far, and the voters were not shy to tell us exactly what they thought about that, and I think that if we don’t take this opportunity to listen and learn, then we’re going to continue seeing results that the Republican Party doesn’t like.”

Rep. Jeff Myers, R-Warrenton, received 66.12 percent of votes in Warren County versus 33.88 percent for Democrat Amy Pritchard. Myers, whose District 42 also includes parts of Montgomery County, received 66.85 percent of the vote overall in the district.

“I appreciate the support of the community,” Myers told the Record. 

Yet while he expects Missouri to remain Republican and communities in his district to continue to have “a rural, conservative lean to them,” Myers said, “I think everybody has taken notice of how things went in the election.”

Elected officials need to pay attention to the will of the voters or risk getting voted out of office, he said, adding that Missouri Republicans will be meeting and strategizing in the coming days and weeks about their plans and priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

“We will sit down in December and kind of go over what our priorities are going to be and we’ll have a better idea on what we’re going to, policy-wise, really focus on,” Myers said.

He added, though, that Republican legislators are already working to come up with answers to some of the questions that seemed to be on voters’ minds in last week’s election.

“What can we do to make things more affordable for families? What can we do to address some of their concerns about the technology boom that we’re going through, especially in our area?” Myers said. “And we pay attention to those things, and so then policy gets driven by that.”