Missouri governor candidate interview: Bill Eigel

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

ABC 17 News is interviewing candidates in the major races on the August primary ballot.

State Sen. Bill Eigel (R-St. Charles County) is seeking the Republican nomination for governor against two well-funded opponents and a large field of others.

Lucas Geisler: How did you get your, let's go over just kind of like how you got your start in politics and kind of what you do for work now, what you did for work before that?

Bill Eigel: Yeah, actually. So you look at my background, I'm a combination of military veteran and small business owner. So I'm actually part of four generations of my family that served in the military. My grandfather was a cook for the U.S. Army back in World War II. My father was a pilot for the United States Air Force back in the Vietnam War. Both my wife, Amanda and I are, were, aircraft maintenance officers. Our last assignment was actually out of Whiteman Air Force Base, and most recently, my only son, Kevin, was one of the U.S. Navy's newest sailors.

So when we got out of the service back in 2007, when we moved back to St. Charles County, where my wife, Amanda, is from. And we ran a business there ever since until about the 2014, 2015 range when we got involved in the political discussion as a result of Obamacare being implemented in my my health insurance premiums kind of going through the roof. You know, I was very frustrated. And like a lot of folks that are getting involved in politics, maybe for the first time, they were frustrated. And so we got involved. And that ended in a run for the state Senate, which I've been serving in in the past eight years.

Geisler: And what made you want to run for this job specifically?

Eigel: Well, I feel like we're missing an opportunity in Missouri right now to be really a leader amongst the 50 states for conservative policy. And I felt like the reason we aren't seeing bigger red conservative ideas pass and be enacted into law is because we have a lack of leadership at the top of the ship. I feel like Mike Parson has really focused on growing government. The budgets that he's passed has made government bigger than it's ever been before. I didn't like his failed response to the COVID environment. And, you know, I look around the country and I see bold conservative governors in states like Florida, Texas and Tennessee leading their states. And so I feel like we're missing an opportunity. And if we could have the right leadership coming out of the governor's mansion, it could be a whole new Missouri.

So I'm excited to do that. I've always been one that's been willing to kind of confront the status quo down there in Jefferson City. And that's okay, because I think there's a lot more pushing on the status quo in Jefferson City is what's going to make Missouri stronger.

Geisler: You have, speaking of taxes, and kind of the state of the state of business in Missouri, I know lately [you have] been a very vocal champion of getting rid of the personal property tax in the state. Generally speaking, what are your priorities for taxes in Missouri and also your priority as far as government, we'll call it government spending or maybe the lack of government spending? What's your plan as the ... governor?

Eigel: Well, the economic plan it actually, you mentioned the centerpiece, the economic plan deals with lowering the tax burden. The first thing that I'm going to go after as governor is eliminating personal property tax. You know, the value of every personal property tax bill on every citizen in the state is about $1.7 billion per year. But we've increased state spending in Jefferson City just over the past four or five years by $25 billion. So, while Mike Parson, Mike Kehoe, my opponent in this race, have been growing government to a degree we've never seen before. In fact, Mike Kehoe and Mike Parson have increased spending more in the past five years than every Democratic governor combined, going back to the founding of the state. And that type of center-left leadership, I think, is not what Missouri Republicans are looking for.

So we're going to lower that tax burden. And when we do that, just by getting back to 2015 spending levels, we're going to be able to eliminate the personal property tax so that you don't have to pay rent for the crime of owning a car every Dec. 1. Twenty-nine of the states have already gotten rid of personal property tax. Missouri, under an Eigel administration, will be the 30th. In addition to that, we're also going to be getting rid of income taxes. And I typically choose economic plans that benefit every person in this state, not just the powerful few down in Jefferson City that hire the most lobbyists. So when we reduce the tax burden, we're going to have a Missouri that's competing every single day and exceeding what states like Tennessee and Florida, Texas can put forward.

Geisler: Do you have any cuts in mind when it comes to that?

Eigel: Well, I don't know that there's a department down in Jefferson City that doesn't need cuts. We had more than $2 billion alone in just earmarks for wasteful spending, pork items in this year's budget. We had, we have 7,000 state workforce positions that aren't even filled right now, but we're paying for anyway and nobody's really sure where all that money's going, hundreds of millions or more. We have big bureaucracies in Jefferson City, hundreds of millions of dollars for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, that I think a lot of Republicans have been talking for years about getting the waste out of. And we haven't seen anything. We have billions of dollars of waste in our Medicaid program. We did a third-party audit several years ago about the waste in our Medicaid program, and we haven't implemented a single change as a result. So Mike Kehoe and Mike Parson have been focused on growing government and as they have been successful doing that, the government has begun, it's gotten more and more wasteful. We can turn that around and get the Missouri that doesn't have personal property tax or income taxes and every citizen is going to be better for it.

Geisler: This campaign, as China has become sort of a central issue in this campaign and specifically the business that Chinese companies do in Missouri, what do you think is the appropriate relationship between the state of Missouri and specifically companies that are owned by Chinese companies? And I'll just leave it there. What do you think is the appropriate relationship between the state and Chinese companies?

Eigel: Well, we got to watch them very closely. They're an avowed adversary of the United States. I consider them one of America's enemies. So on this topic, I've been very straightforward that when it comes to the ownership of farmland in the state, I don't think that we should let any foreign country, including China, buy even a single square inch of our farmland. And because we've lost more than 50,000 acres of Missouri farmland to China and even more acreage to other countries, I think we need to get that land back and have it transferred or sold back to American hands.

You know, that puts me at odds with one of my opponents, Mike Kehoe, who said that he actually or not, he actually didn’t say it, he actually voted as a state senator in 2013 to allow the sale of more than 270,000 acres of farmland to China and to other countries. It was to facilitate the sale of one of Missouri's biggest food producers, Smithfield Foods, up in northwest Missouri. And now there what we, Missouri is actually one of the states that has the most Chinese ownership of farmland anywhere in America. I mean, that's incredible. And it's because of who Mike Kehoe has been on the record. So if you look at my other opponent, Secretary Ashcroft, he has said that he believes that some countries ought to be able to buy some of our land. He said that publicly. My answer to that question is I don't think we should have any foreign countries buying our land, and I think we should sell zero acres to anybody else. So I'm really at odds with my opponents on this particular issue. And folks understand that we don't want to lose control of our food supply. It's a national security issue.

Geisler: And how do you go about getting it back, whether it's through maybe negotiating a sale or for companies that are already established and working? I mean, would that involve having the companies leave or how do you foresee that happening?

Eigel: Well, I've sponsored a constitutional amendment as a member of the Senate that would actually require foreign owners of farmland in the State of Missouri right now to divest themselves within two years of passage of the amendment. So either through a transfer or a sale back to American hands, we're going to get control of that land back. And then if they refuse to cooperate with the new constitution, the requirement we're going to have we're going to empower the attorney general to intervene. So there are ways that we can do it. But you know that that bill, when I filed it, it was set aside in the Senate committee and didn't even get a hearing. So we really need leadership from the governor's office that's going to lead on this issue. We're seeing that happen in other states like Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is going after foreign ownership in that country, which I think is fantastic. I'd just like to see Missouri be a leader on an issue like this.

Geisler: I want to talk I want to talk about crime in Missouri. Do you think it's safe to live in Missouri?

Eigel: There are a lot of areas right now where it isn't safe. And as long as there's a single area where it's not safe to live and raise a family, leaders in those areas and at the state level aren't doing their job. I mean, I think that I'll go ahead and say it. I think you're primarily referring to our areas in St. Louis and Kansas City that we have seen descend into chaos. And, you know, the Kehoe-Parson administration really hasn't done anything about it. I've made a commitment that we're going to have some short and some long-term answers to this problem.

In the short term, I'm going to put more law enforcement where the crime is happening. I'm going to triple the highway patrol presence on the highways leading into and out of our soft-on-crime urban centers. And we're going to make sure that law enforcement is in a position to put bad guys in jail.

But, you know, the cities are also being used as gateways, not just for human trafficking, not just for fentanyl, but for the illegal immigration problem that we have in this state. I've come out and have been very forthcoming, saying that we're going to begin under an Eigel administration, we're going to be, again, one of the biggest statewide deportations of illegals that the country has ever seen. We have, estimated to have 77,000 illegal immigrants in the state of Missouri right now. The cost of those illegal immigrants, not just in the crimes that some of them are committing in our urban areas, but in our health care apparatus, our school system is estimated to cost the state more in tax dollars than what we pay from personal property tax to begin with. I mean, that's extraordinary if you think about it. So I'm going to begin what Mike Parson and Mike Kehoe should have been working on for the past four years.

But of course, Mike Kehoe came out last weekend and said that any plan to deport the illegals is foolish or impractical. Well, that puts Mike Kehoe at direct odds with Donald J. Trump, who has promised a mass deportation of illegals. And I never thought that I didn't have it on my bingo card that Republican gubernatorial candidates would be opposing the Trump administration vision. But Mike is a pretty liberal guy, so I guess it doesn't bother him.

Geisler: Are there any crime reduction or crime-fighting programs that currently maybe exist at the state level or maybe those that you see locally, like where you live or where you've seen that you'd like to see, maybe expand them or continue to invest in them further?

Eigel: Well, I don't know that it's a program, but an executive order from the governor putting the highway patrol, expanding the highway patrol presence on those highways that are being used for criminal, used as conduits of criminal activity, I think would be a great start. That's something that Mike Parson and Mike Kehoe could do today. But they just continue not to act. And again, it goes back to the real problem of the lack of leadership in Jefferson City.

There are some also some the legislative proposals that I would be supportive of that I think would help over the long term. One of those things I've been very supportive of the St. Louis police, St. Louis City Police Department, getting under state control so that we could make sure from the state level that the police officers would have the resources they need. I'm also supportive of something called known as concurrent jurisdiction. But basically that's a that's a legal term. But what that basically means is if you have prosecutors in those local areas that don't want to prosecute bad guys, that the attorney general of the state can step in and begin putting bad guys in jail. So, yeah, there's things that we can do legislatively, but there's no overcoming the fact that right now we just have a total lack of leadership from our governor and Mike Kehoe, along with Mike Parson (connection drops) part of the problem.

Geisler: I do want to ask about the immigration program as well. It's been another centerpiece of this election and certainly your campaign as well. Would you mind explaining how your mass deportation program would work?

Eigel: Yeah. Yeah, you bet. So on day one, we're going to declare an invasion under Article Four of the Missouri Constitution. So the governor has such an authority to declare an invasion and then the Constitution empowers the governor to actually go take what necessary steps to repel such an invasion. So that means that immediately after that declaration, the highway patrol, the National Guard and every sheriff in every county in the state will now possess the authority to detain people who are suspected of being here illegally and deporting them to the nearest port of entry.

So this should have been done years ago by the Parson administration. We don't actually have to wait until January and a new governor's administration to get this done, but they continue to do nothing. And of course, I mean, Mike Kehoe, who's been a part of this administration, when he calls it foolish to pursue a plan like this, well, he's for amnesty. I mean, you're either for deporting folks or if you're here illegally or you're for amnesty if you're okay with them staying. Mikey Kehoe has chosen amnesty. Donald Trump and myself have chosen deportation.

Geisler: And you think that the Missouri budget, as it stands right now, the money that the state has could absorb the cost of engaging in that?

Eigel: Oh, without question. For less than a week, right now, we spend less than $1 billion on our highway patrol and our National Guard, and we have a $52 billion budget. So I'm fond of saying that of all the problems we have in the state, none of them have anything to do with the lack of resources going to government somewhere that require these funds. Well, there's a lot of things we want to cut out from the budget. Of course, there's a lot of waste in there. And when we do, we're not only going to have room to make sure that we are lowering the tax burden, but we're going to have a lot of room left over to make sure that we're we're giving law enforcement the resources they need or it's part of the process of deporting all the illegals that are in our state today. There's plenty of money in Jefferson City.

Geisler: How do you ensure that a deportation program like that doesn't include people who are here legally? How do you ensure, like the accuracy or that this doesn't upend lawful legal citizens' lives?

Eigel: Well, it's not targeting lawful legal citizens for those that are suspected of being here illegally, our officers are going to detain those individuals and find out what their status is. And for those individuals that are here illegally, we welcome them with residents from other states. We welcome those individuals. But for those that have broken immigration law that are putting a burden on our state resources, are committing crimes in many cases, for those committing crimes, we're going to put those people in jail. And for those that are here illegally, we're going to deport them to the nearest port of entry of the country.

Geisler: We talked a little bit earlier. I know in our, in talking about spending, about education in the Department of Education, what is your current take on the state of public education in Missouri?

Eigel: Well, if you look at the outcomes we have in the state right now, they're not nearly good enough. I mean, a third of less than a third of our children are able to do reading, writing, arithmetic at grade level. This comes in spite of the fact that we're spending more dollars on public education than we ever have been before. And it's kind of a reminder that more money into government doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes. And so continuing to throw money at primarily a lot of which really is, just goes to the bureaucracy of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education isn't making anything better. Taking money from the federal Department of Education, which comes along with a bunch of mandates and a bunch of restrictions and including a lot of the left, leftist policies that we want to get out of our schools is not helping the problem either.

So as governor, I'm going to do a few things. I've always been a supporter of school choice programs that empower parents and offer more opportunities. But for one, what we're really going to stop taking all this federal money coming from the federal Department of Education that's coming with all the mandates to teach a lot of this nonsense to our kids. And then we're going to go after one of Jefferson City's worst bureaucracies. We're going to get rid of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education or so significantly curtail the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that they can't be this clearinghouse of bad policy and waste that really I think it's become today. So that's going to do that. Republicans have been talking about doing that for more than a decade. I'm going to be the governor, because I've always had a willingness to confront the special interests and the status quo institutions, I'm going to be the one that actually delivers on that.

Geisler: Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe you'd need a vote of the people to abolish that, to abolish DESE, who takes over in the case that there is no Department of Education, at least at the state level?

Eigel: You, let me let me clarify one thing. You're right. To officially get rid of the entire entity that would require a change to the Constitution. But right now it's an organization of more than 1,800 individuals, and most legislators have no idea what any of these folks are actually doing down in Jefferson City. So as the governor of the state, we could, without a constitutional change significantly, you could theoretically shrink it down to a single person down there at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. So we've got a long way to go in reducing the bureaucracy. There are, I suspect there are going to be some reporting mechanisms that are going to maintain as part of what we want to do down there, but we're going to get rid of all these mandates and requirements that have been created or passed down from Jefferson City from Washington, D.C., or who knows where. And we're going to free these these local school districts up to really start teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic that the kids, unfortunately, have gotten away from in today's government affairs.

Geisler: How do you ensure that the schools are are still performing well, are still teaching all of those things that you're talking about and just ensuring that student achievement is heading in the right direction?

Eigel: Well, we're always going to have requirements for schools to be reporting on certain statistics that demonstrate that academic progress, and there's no question about that. But I also think that our schools have gotten so many requirements from Jefferson City and Washington, D.C., that they're spending their time and energy trying to comply with an administrative state that's just gotten completely out of control. So, yeah, there are also some things that I think that we will well, we would like to see that the school districts are teaching about.

I'll give you an example. You know, the state of Louisiana just passed a bill that will require the Ten Commandments to be in every school classroom and every public school in the state. Yeah, I'm going to be supportive of doing things like that, bringing the Lord back into our public spaces and doing things, I'd like to see an emphasis on teaching American history in our schools in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic. And so the other, there is going to be some engagement there. But right now we don't have engagement. We just have wasteful bureaucratic oversight from Jefferson City. And we're losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of that.

Geisler: Briefly want to touch on health care as well. What's your plan on maybe on reversing kind of the trend we've seen lately of many hospitals, especially in rural areas, closing down, closing up shop? How do you reverse that trend?

Eigel: You know, it's just I'm sure it's not a coincidence, right? But the reality is, as government has gotten more engaged, as government has tried to subsidize more areas in our health care industry, things have gotten worse. Premiums have gone, gone through the roof, outcomes have been on the decline. The hospitals in rural areas with a smaller population have begun to close. And this is a real problem. In spite of the fact that we just continue to throw more and more money at fewer and fewer number of organizations that provide health care. Right now, the United States now has some of the most expensive health care of anywhere on the planet. That's crazy. And it's all been driven because of inefficient government that's really tried to take over our health care apparatus.

So the first thing we want to do is we need to go through our Medicaid program. That's our biggest government program, our biggest government bureaucracy, where we have some of our most vulnerable citizens and get rid of the waste that is actually creating a burden when you, where every dollar that goes into government-run health care, it's putting an additional emphasis and burden on those that are private paying, that those are getting their health care outside of government. So we can help that by making sure that government-run health care and there are citizens that we are going to continue to help, that most every rational, sane person believes that we ought to, those of us that are disabled, some of our senior citizens, we're always going to do that. But we're also going to make it an efficient system, which right now is already known to have billions of dollars of waste.

I'd also like to see work requirements implemented for those that are getting benefits if they're able-bodied, if you're able-bodied. And on one of the Medicaid programs on the state, I believe there ought to be a work requirement for that. So now not everybody in our program is able or on our Medicaid program is able-bodied. But if you are, I think you ought to work.

Geisler: As of us doing this interview, we will see if there is a November ballot question in Missouri regarding reproductive health care and abortion. I want to know your thoughts on that ballot initiative that's going through the process and generally speaking, your thoughts on when it comes to abortion in Missouri and reproductive health, what’s your stance there?

Eigel: Yeah, well, I've read these abortion initiative petitions that have been submitted for approval and submitted for the November general election. The reality, these should have been rejected from the ballot a long time ago. The myth, several of them have several subjects. They don't have a clear fiscal note and the reality, as our secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, has not rejected them from the ballot like he should have under Section 116.120 of the state code. So it's been disappointed and pretty disappointing. And if he lets those on the ballot, we're going to have a serious effort in the state of Missouri to make sure that the abortionists are beaten at the ballot in November.

Missouri is a pro-life state. Missouri has been a pro-life state for a long time. That's why we became a red state in the first place. And because of the lack of leadership from Governor Parson and Mike Kehoe to pass initiative petition reform, because of the lack of interest from our secretary of state in rejecting these things from the ballot, now we're going to have to beat them at the ballot box. And I tell you, if that fight comes, I'm ready for it because we're going to make sure Missouri is the first state in the union to defeat the abortionists at the ballot box. Let's go Missouri.

Geisler: And in your stance on just like the current, what the current law says about abortion, you're supportive of the situation right now?

Eigel: So so the current law, the passage of the heartbeat bill, which we did just a couple of years ago, I'm the only candidate running for governor that actually voted for the heartbeat bill that led to the prohibition of abortion in almost every case in the state of Missouri. I stand by that. I don't think that we need more exceptions. I believe that we need to protect not just the sanctity of life in those cases. But I've always been a believer that abortion harms women in our state. You know, suicide rates, mental health rates all higher for women who have undergone an abortion. So though the women in our society are sustaining mental, physical harm from being exposed to the scourge of abortion. And I grew up at a time where it was expected of men to protect the women in our society. So that's what we're going to do, and we're going to be bold about it here in the State of Missouri.

Geisler: Senator Eigel, that's all the questions that I have for this. I'll allow you anything else that you want to add that I didn't ask about.

Eigel: Well, if folks like what I'm saying, check out my website Bill Eigel dot com. It may be the best website you've ever seen and I would encourage you to take a look.