Interview with James Coyne, candidate for Missouri Senate District 19

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

James Coyne is a Republican running for Missouri's Senate District 19. He is a Missouri native and originally comes from the east side of the state. Coyne is a Columbia businessman who says he has a passion for legislative reform in the House and Senate.

Coyne has worked as an advocate in Jefferson City focusing on election integrity, the Second Amendment Preservation Act, religious liberty and more.

Missouri's Senate District 19 represents all of Boone County, including, Harrisburg, Ashland and Centrailia.

Erika McGuire: Give me a little bit of background about yourself, I know you own the agency.

James Coyne: Right. Probably around 1995 is when I got into the insurance business a little before that. But the agency was established then, and I've been pretty much in this building almost all of that time. The Agency specializes in group health insurance, employee benefits, individual coverage, both on exchange, off exchange, Medicare, Medicare supplement, Medicare Advantage, major term life insurance. I broker for a number of different companies. So the idea is to serve the people who are my clients and not the insurance company.

I like to do a lot of real personal stuff. I obviously I do things on the internet, but I like to sit like I'm sitting with you, and really be able to explain things. And, every option has good and bad to it. I think it's really important that people fully understand what they're buying and then I find that they're a whole lot happier as clients after that. And I have some people who've been with me for, oh goodness, some of them close to 30 years. They may have been with a number of different carriers like, I'll do their individual health or their group health, and then we'll do their Medicare, and then I'll do their kids. And so that's the part of it that I really enjoy, is the personal relationships and getting to know their lives and they trust me, and I appreciate that.

That's what I like. What I what I don't like, is having to deal with insurance companies right, being on hold for 20 minutes or half an hour and all that.

McGuire: Are you from Boone County?

Coyne: Originally, I was born in Webster Groves, Missouri, which is an old suburb of St Louis, and I lived down at Lake of the Ozarks. I went to school in California, in Michigan. I also lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a more of a work thing for a couple years. But yeah, I've been back here, well, at least 95 maybe before that.

I live south of Columbia, just right outside the city limits, with my wife. I've been back in Missouri for almost 30 years now. So quite a while. And I love, love, love the state of Missouri, and just the kind of people I think we have, some of the most beautiful people I'd see every day, just how folks are kind to each other and help each other and are just great people, great neighbors, and so I have a real strong affinity and feeling of protecting my state and the people in my state and their rights and their liberty and their property, their money, you know. I think for a lot of people, it's a real rough time right now, just surviving, and hopefully we can make that better for I won't have much control over.

The federal government, I think they're pretty much completely out of control, and I hope we can reel it back in, but at least we can, we can control our own state. And the state of Missouri has a lot of power in a positive way to really, like I say, protect the citizens of Missouri, so I'm very much wanting to help do that.

McGuire: What made you want to run for Senate 19 and represent Boone County, and what makes you such a great candidate?

Coyne: Well, my kind of, I think it kind of goes back to more of my background. I have worked with two Christ-centered organizations, youth organizations here in Columbia with two different churches. One is Royal Rangers, and the other is Awanas. And I Ireally enjoyed that, and I think I really got a sense of, because a lot of those kids are, they come from some real rough backgrounds, and to see how love and patience and time can can really help them, and you see those changes, and then the other the other part is probably around 2009 I got involved in, I guess you'd call it, the liberty movement, and with a number of different organizations in advocating for protecting, people's individual liberties. I worked with Mid-Missouri Patriots, which is a local group here in Columbia, and then I became president of that for a number of years. And the kinds of things that we did, we did deep dive into the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the founding documents around that kind of the philosophy around that of the time. And we did vetting of candidates. There's a Chris, I forget his last name, but he was a big politician here locally, and he came in, and we had Josh Hawley come in, and when he was running for attorney general here in Missouri, been quite a while ago.

But what we did was kind of what it sounds like. It's a round table, and we have big round table, and the candidate, or whoever would sit at the head of the table, and they would do a quick and emphasis on quick, kind of background on themselves. It wasn't a speech. And then each person would be able to ask a question and a follow up. And the only rules that we had were there were no rules in terms of subject. You could ask anything you want to ask, but no gotcha questions and no personal attacks, you know, so keeping it as a civil discourse, and that was great, you know, you could find out a whole lot about a person, about how they answer don't answer.

And so we would just keep going around the table until nobody had any more questions. And sometimes it'd be an hour or two hours, you know, and that you really, that I really enjoyed, that we would also work with other organizations down in Jefferson City for legislation that we felt like was helped the common man. And, the rights, liberties, the property of of citizens. We've worked with organizations like Missouri.

McGuire: Who's we?

Coyne: Mid-Missouri Patriots. And, yeah, I've developed a lot of friends, and I just doing, what we do in the one thing that's really cool Erika is when you go to Jeff City and you lobby for legislation, and any citizen can do it, you can testify in front of committees, which I've done, and a lot of people, and you'll go down there, and there'll be all kinds of people there, and there's, of course, the paid lobbyists with the silk suits and all that, right? But there's a lot of just people like you and me, yeah, and it's, it's beautiful, because that's, that's democracy, and going down and talking to their senators and their legislators and tracking legislation and testifying and all that stuff you can do, all anybody can have, anybody can have a voice. Yeah, and that's great.

And Missouri is amazing in that way. These are all people who just love their state. And they're, they don't have a dog in the fight, you know? They're, they're not getting ... paid a dime, and they're taking their own time, their own gas. Real good example of that, and he's done a lot more than I have, is Ron Calzone, who runs Missouri First, and he is completely unpaid, and so forth and so forth. And he was doing it way, way, way back.

So anyway, through that experience, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work in Jeff City. You run up against a brick wall so many times, and it's like, oh, I think there's a brick wall there. I wonder what we could do about that, which kind of brings me to the if I had to pick one issue that if I could, if I could get this fixed, obviously, with the help of other people, is the legislative process itself. Because, if you're able to have an open and transparent and participative, if that's the right word, process with all of the senators and all of the representatives that we elect, you get good laws, and people are accountable because they have to vote on legislation rather than, well, we're not going to vote on that. We're not going to vote on that. Why not? You know, it's a yes or it's a no, yeah.

So the way that we fix that [is] moleadershipproject.org, that's all of the details down to committee, how committees are formed, and everything else, and again, working on it many years. But the basic concept is to take the power, which is right now really, with a couple people at the top, speaker of the House, president pro tem the Senate, they control everything. And that's not right. I don't care if it's Republican or Democrat. That's anti-democratic. It's anti-constitutional republican form of government, period. It's like having kings and so to make it work the way it's supposed to work, you push that power from leadership down to the whole body of senators, the whole body of representatives, and let them be the ones who decide, by co-sponsorship, what legislation is going to make it to the floor for debate and vote.

Now, once it gets there, it's an open vote, and it can, it can be approved or it can be disapproved, and then, of course, the governor can veto it or not, but and that also fosters bipartisanship, because one of the things that really concerns me is the amount of division and hatred that I see. Missouri is not quite as bad as a lot of places, but, you get name calling and you get, "I'll never talk to this guy," or a Democrat will never have a good idea" or Republican will never have a good idea. If you are looking for co-sponsorships for your legislation, you'll go anywhere, right? They all count the same if you've got 20 or if you've got 30. It is very beneficial for your objective, which is getting your bill, which you love, whatever that idea is, and getting it to where it needs to go to get a fair shake.

McGuire: So you just want to have a voice in that?

Coyne: Yes, I want to change it, because it's not working. I won't go into any more detail, but again, it goes. We've looked at the whole thing all the way down through the how committees and committee chairmen are selected, and to just make it open and make it transparent, make it to where a person with a good idea can get their idea voted on.

It's so frustrating for these guys. I talked, we've talked to a lot of senators and reps. I mean, I've gone down with a small group of people, and we've spent the entire day going office to office to office, and Erika almost to a man, not everybody, but almost everybody that we talk to when we kind of present what we what we'd like to do, they say, "James, you're absolutely right. The system stinks. I've tried to get legislation, and it never go, it's never allowed to go anywhere. Then I have to try to put it on as an amendment."

It perverts the system. They say, "gotcha absolutely needs to be fixed, needs to be changed, but it never will," and I think that's the saddest thing I ever heard. They get to vote on what the rules are 100% so every two years, when a new class comes in, and if I get elected, I'd be in that new class, right? You get to vote. And what happens is, every two years, they take the rules that they've always had and they rubber stamp it, approved, go on to the next order of business. All you need is a few people with a plan and with honestly, a lot of backbone, yeah, a lot of backbone to say, hold on, let's slow down. Let's look and see if this thing is actually working the way it's supposed to. Why don't we do look at something a little different, right? Yeah?

What's wrong with that? The people in leadership. Not only does it pervert the legislative process, it perverts the power structure. Now you're under the gun with the leader of your party, whether it's Democrat or Republican, they hold a whole lot of power over you. Yeah, they can put you in a crappy office, they can throw you off of a committee. They can take any legislation that you ever come up with, if you cross them, it's never going to see the light of day ever. There's zero chance, zero chance. And, again, it's not right, it's not our system. So we got, got to fix that. But that's probably enough on that.

McGuire: Let's talk about Amendment 2. Are you in favor of sports betting? What are your thoughts on that?

Coyne: Well, you know, I think that betting, gambling, is not good for anybody. The house always wins, you know, and I've gone to Las Vegas a million times, but the only kind of betting I do is, you know, 50 cents at the bar with video poker and visiting with everybody, knowing that I'm not going to lose anything. I'm not going to gain anything that's just my own personal and I've seen people and families really hurt by gambling. It can become absolutely an addiction. You know, on the other hand, it's a free country, if people want to gamble, they should certainly be allowed to gamble.

McGuire: They should be able to gamble, like, going to a casino, but, sports betting, no, because it's at the palm of your hand?

Coyne: No, I really couldn't say no to that. I think the way they frame this a lot of times is kind of bogus, you know, like, oh well, we're gonna have gambling, or we're gonna have legalized pot, and it's gonna, it's gonna be so good for the schools, and all the money's going to the schools. And, you know, I've seen it over and over again, and it's like, give me a break. If you're gonna fund certain things for schools, do it, you know ... But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't really be against it,

McGuire: You're not against it?

James Coyne: No, I'm not against it, but I'm not like rah rah either. I, you know, it's one of those things that people should have a right to do, but I don't think it's a good idea. That's just me personally.

McGuire: Okay, now let's talk about Amendment 3. What are your thoughts on Amendment 3 and the initiative petition process that got it on the ballot for this upcoming election?

James Coyne: Well, first, let's go to the initiative petition. I'm in favor of the initiative petition in the sense that it's it's kind of like a failsafe for when things go totally haywire with the normal legislative process, the people have a backup to be able to hopefully solve that, and it really shouldn't, if things are working the way they're supposed to, it shouldn't be needed, right? The things I don't like about it is it's a simple majority, and it does not consider the different parts of the state. You know, Kansas City is very different from the Bootheel. St Louis is very different than, you know, I mean rural areas and so forth and so forth. What there was actually a proposal this last session to reform it and to make it what they call concurrent majority. And what that means is, and I forget, if there were four or five or six different sections of Missouri, and each one of them would have to be majority for it to pass, not just a raw population vote, and the I would be in favor of that, and again, it never got voted on, because the legislative process is not working. So we could have done that, but we didn't.

The other thing that I don't like about it, and I think that it is a constitutional amendment, and our Missouri Constitution is, it should be about that thick, and it's about that thick. And I mean, legalized pot is in the Missouri Constitution, okay? Well, that should just be a law, you don't want to legalize dope, do it, you know, right? But part of the Constitution, you know? I mean all kinds of crazy stuff. And then once, like with Amendment 3, once it becomes part of the Constitution, it's just like the United States Constitution, like the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, or whatever. It's very, very difficult to ever change it, because any law that is currently on the books having to do with women's health, with abortion, with any of the things that Amendment 3 touches on, and it actually touches on a lot that people are not aware of. Any of that is null and void, right? Any future legislation that the state of Missouri may want to pass that touches on any of those issues is also now unconstitutional, just like if First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, freedom of speech, well, if you pass a law in some state that, well, you can't talk about this, it's unconstitutional. Doesn't matter if it's passed. It's passed.

It's the same thing with Amendment 3. It'll it's the supreme law of the land. It is part of the Constitution. It's very, very different than than just a law, and I don't think a lot of people realize that, so I'd like to reform that in those ways. Now, as far as the amendment itself, I've read it in detail several times, and the thing that you have to think about is, what do the words on the page say? Not what anybody says it's about or you know whether for or against, because what's going to happen is, if it passes, a judge is going to look at every one of those words and what's the plain meaning of it. What would a normal person, you know, reading that word, say?

One of the things that I noticed immediately was it used the word person was talking about, a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, abortion, blah, blah, blah, blah. It said person. It didn't say adult. You say, "Well, person, adult, same thing." No, it's not. Is a 12-year-old girl or 14-year-old girl? She a person? Yeah, she's a person. Is she an adult? No, she's not an adult. Okay, plain meaning, right? So does that mean that a 12-year-old girl can get an abortion without parental consent? There's nothing in it that says anything about the parents needing to know a thing about it without parental notification. There's nothing in it that says anything about that. And I think that's something that everybody if they understood it, whether they're for it or against it, was a hold on not with my kid. You're not right, yeah?

McGuire: What are your thoughts on it in general? Are you like for or against it?

Coyne: No, I would, I would, I would be against it, for sure, and but what I wouldn't be against is, in our normal legislative process, let's have a debate on it, you know, if the Democrats have a good idea for, you know, changing the abortion laws in Missouri have a public debate on it, and, and I think you, you would, you find that, when you really get into the details, that people are much closer together, much closer together than you would think, because it gets, it gets kind of crazy where, like the pro-choice people are saying, "well, you hate women, and you want to keep them all in bondage," and, you know, all this kind of bull crap. And then you've got the pro-life people just saying, "well, you're, you're baby killers, and you just want to kill babies." And neither one of those is true, right? If you really get down to what exactly are we talking about? And I've done this, I have a couple sisters that are as pro-choice as they come, and we've talked about it, and we actually agree a lot, maybe, the one thing we would disagree about a little bit is the timing, you know, whether it's five weeks, or whether it's, you know, the first trimester, or whatever.

McGuire: What you think the timing should be?

Coyne: I really couldn't say on the timing, except for and actually, the folks that I've talking with talk to that are pro-choice agree with me 100% on this, and that is, aborting a baby at eight months is straight out murder. There's no other way to look at it, I'm sorry, but, and they're like, "Yeah, of course."

I had a lady that I talked to here in town that, I'm door knocking and stuff. And I asked her No. 1 issue, women's reproductive freedom, you know, abortion, obviously. And we started talking about it, and she said, "yeah, oh, absolutely, that's murder," you know. So it really comes down to, at what point is that a human life? I'm sorry, at what point does that become a human life? And when it becomes a human life, it has its own rights, just like you and I do not. Might not be able to speak yet, and it might not be able to say, "hey, whoa. I don't want to die." But that doesn't mean it has any right, any less rights than you and me.

But where is that point? I spoke with the gal who runs the crisis pregnancy center here in town, and by the way, they provide unbelievable services for the whole I mean, way beyond just doing an ultrasound, like they really help these women, which is a beautiful thing, because they're in crisis. But when I talked with her, I said, at what point does a baby have a heartbeat? And she said, absolutely, by six weeks there's a heartbeat, and sometimes by five weeks. Now is that the point where we want to cut it off and then, like the Amendment 3 says viability, but it doesn't really define what is viability. That's a whole nother discussion. You know, what is a premature baby viable, if you have to put them in an incubator, is that you know undue, medical intervention or whatever, that is something that needs to be debated and compromised on, so that we need to come together on it. I mean it. This has been tearing people apart, turn the country apart for 50 years, and it's ridiculous, you know, and so I would be in favor of having that open discussion about it.

McGuire: I just want to be clear on it, so you're against it?

James Coyne: I'm against Amendment 3 for and, I mean, I could keep going on that. There's a lot in there that people and this is not what I heard from anybody else, is, this is me reading it and looking at the wording and knowing what it says on the paper that's going to be supreme law of the land. You better dang well know what's in that. And most people don't. I mean, who's got the time, but so, yeah, I would be in favor of that, being there, being an open process, and, you know, coming to a consensus.

And, you know, I don't necessarily think that the abortion law in the state of Missouri right now is, you know, where it should be. You know, I think you have to consider the mother. I think you have to consider the rights of the baby. And I think you have to consider, in a broad sense, our own social ethic about the value of life. You know whether it be very old people or whether it be disabled people, if you're, if you let your heart get hardened to a certain point, you can start to get into really eugenics, which is, that's a whole other subject. But you know where human life is of basically no value unless it, unless they determine it's a value to society at large. Every life, every human being is equal. Every human being has God-given rights and value is equal before God and before the law. That is a fundamental principle of our country, and it's beautiful and it's unique. We never want to lose that.

McGuire: I'm just gonna combine these two questions, and I got one more because I got nine minutes. We know Columbia's in District 19, so we know homelessness and crime is a big issue. What do you think needs to be done to address that?

Coyne: Sure, on crime, I think it comes down to one thing primarily, and that is the the support and the respect that we give the people who are doing the job, those are the police officers, right? Like, if you and I were police officers, of course, everybody wants more money, and, you know, you want them to be well paid, but that's really down the list. What's top of the list is feeling like you're able to do your job properly. And what police officers come up with? They don't get called because things are going good. They get called because there's a problem that people can't just handle among themselves. So they're walking into a situation they don't know what the heck it is, and they have to make split second decisions, you know, life or death decisions, their own life and the people that they're dealing with.

And if a police officer makes an honest mistake, they should not have their lives destroyed. They should not have their family destroyed, their careers destroyed. And I'm not specifically talking about Columbia, but that happens. And the places where that happens, two things happen. No. 1, the police officers like, "Okay, well, got a call. I'll just, I'll just mosey over there, and I'm not going to be in a real big hurry, because when I get there, whatever I do is probably going to be somebody's going to say it's wrong, or they just say, I'm out of here. I'm going to retire early, I'm going to go I'm going to go to another community where I'm supported and respected."

Now, obviously, if there's corruption or something like that, you have, that has to be dealt with, and that's generally internal affairs, so I'd say that's the No. 1 thing is backing your police officers. I think that they should have a limited immunity.

McGuire: You think this will deter a crime?

Coyne: Absolutely, because you get more police officers and you give them the backing they need to do the job, that's, you know, that's why they're there, is to do the job, I think, like the training that they're doing in in Boone County, they have, from what I understand, a brand new training center where they're going to be training people from all across the state. And I think is, is good, and you know, more police officers, but you have to have, they have to be able to do their job, and they have to be supported.

So on that, on the homelessness issue, we can, let's broaden that out a little bit, because the basic problem is that young people, or people who don't already have a house, see it as impossible that they ever will. Why is that? It's because No. 1, prices are so astronomically high for the most basic thing you can buy, if you're making 20 bucks an hour, how are you ever going to be able to swing that? And No. 2 is getting financing. It's very difficult to get financing, and the the interest rates are high, the payments are very high if you can even get a loan.

So what I've developed with a number of people is what we call an opportunity zone, for basic first-time homebuyers, where, you know, two-bedroom, two-bath, no, no garage, carport, small and all the same, but decent and the the other thing that makes housing so expensive is building code, right? I built a spec home with a friend of mine number of years ago, big mistake, and it was like, whoa, like every time you turn around, somebody's up in your business, and, do it this way, and then the next guy comes in, no tear that out, do it a different way. And so for the opportunity zone, you would have to have the city or the county or whatever agree to a simplified building code, just the basics, it's not going to fall down. It's, it's decent and it's a just to pare those, those building codes way down and make them much more simple to get through that, along with making the homes very basic.

I think you could get one out the door for $100,000 again, very simple, but the whole point is to get that first ownership right. If you never get the first step, you'll never get to the second step. Then on the financing end of it again, you have to have standards. You have to have background checks and all and make sure that they've got the money to pay the mortgage and all that kind of stuff. But simplify that and fund it with seed funding from the State of Missouri, Boone County, whatever it might be, just to get it started. So you've got a pool of funds that that money can be loaned out of for people to get a mortgage and to get on their feet right, and to own, then to own a house, right?

And I, I really see no reason why it couldn't be self supporting where people are gonna, they're gonna keep paying that, that mortgage payment that's going to go back into the pool where it will go back into that fund as they pay those mortgage payments. So the money that's been loaned out is being replenished along with and you have to charge some interest, but it can be not so much. Or if somebody sells the house, okay, now, the money that they pay for the house, all of that goes back in the fund, or even if somebody defaults, because that can happen where somebody doesn't make their payments and then you have to take the house back. Okay, now you have another house to then turn around and make a loan on and on you go.

So there's, once you've got that seed money, if you do it right, there's no reason that it should ever have to be subsidized again. And you could, even after a period of time, you could even return the seed money to the state or to the county. So I think that would be a wonderful thing. My own son and daughter, they're young adults. They're like, "I can never afford to buy a house." That's terrible man. That's, that's awful, awful, awful, awful. I think it would work. Run it as a pilot program, and once you've got them all sold, it's up and running. It's working. And then take another area and take another area. Yeah, just keep going. Yeah. But you would have to have, you would have to have the blessing of the the county and the state as far as the building codes, and you would have to have that seed money to make it work. But I that's, I think that's the only reason it wouldn't work. It's unless somebody knows something I don't know, which is always a possibility, right, Erika?

McGuire: Alright, this is my last question for I have like, three minutes. So if elected, what would be your top priority?

Coyne: Well, you probably know by now, legislative process reform. No. 2 is for the State of Missouri to assert its sovereignty from federal intrusion or corporate intrusion on the rights of the citizens of Missouri. You know whether that be free speech, freedom of religion, property rights, etc, etc, and there's a lot that the states can do. People think the federal governments control everything, not at all, certain things they, you know, like the currency. But the State of Missouri can do a lot in that respect. And I think it's becoming more and more apparent that we need to.

And then the third thing is to everybody's heard the term the swamp, right? The federal government, you know, and it is truly out of control. We don't want to become the mini swamp, right? And what bureaucracy tends to do is, you know, it's a good idea. It starts off and then it grows and grows and grows and grows. It always wants more money. It always wants more authority. That's just the nature of the beast. So you have to be able to pull that back to and start asking questions of what is essential that the State of Missouri do. What do the people require of their state government? Look at it from that standpoint, and I think we need to pare back the state significantly. The budget of the State of Missouri has basically doubled in five years. I think that's shocking. And then, well, in the next five years, it's doubled now, in the next five years, is it going to double again? Is it going to double again? Well, if you're on that trajectory, it will, if somebody's got to pull it back in, you know? So I think that's really important.

And along with that, when you're, when you do that, then you're able to give people tax relief, right? You know, personal property tax. You've got to you own, you own your car. Okay, every year you have to pay tax on that car. Do you own it? Haven't you already paid tax on it? Right? Yeah, that's ridiculous to me. I think the state income tax can, be lowered. Heck, there's a lot of states who don't have a state income tax, Tennessee, Texas, a bunch of them, right? I think that'd be a great objective, yeah get rid of it. That weighs on everybody on the poor, particularly, you know, because all the the payroll taxes and the personal property tax. So I think that's really important as well, getting that under control.