Missouri 44th District State Representative candidate interview: Dave Raithel

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

ABC 17 News is interviewing candidates in the August primary ahead of the election. Below is an interview with Dave Raithel seeking election to the 44th House District seat being vacated by Cheri Toalson Reisch (R-Hallsville). He is the only Democratic candidate running.  Bryce Beal and John Martin are running against each other in the Republican primary.

The district encompasses most of southern and eastern Boone County outside Columbia.

Mitchell Kaminski: Why do you want to run for this seat?

Dave Raithel: For the same reasons I had to run in 2022. In large part this campaign is very much a reprise of of issues and points then with different emphasis. So at the time, it was the issue of election deniers. It was the issue of the issues of government meddling into personal private affairs, whether one's decisions to have a child or have an abortion or who you marry. The medical decisions that parents have to make for their children. And that's all still here. It hasn't gone away. So those are the issues that provoke me as a citizen, what I'm doing as a candidate, as a Democrat, is working under the theory that Democrats have to run everywhere in every election. If we're ever going to break the supermajority in the Missouri legislature because of the problems, the issues that we're just referring to have been caused by their government, their governing for the last 20 years now

The things about which we are unhappy have been mostly given to us by the Republicans, who now having thinking they vanquished the Democrats entirely, are now turning on each other and accusing each other of being communists, communists and cop killers and all this kind of stuff. If you watch the commercials and what they do with each other. So I'm running in 2024 because what should have been fixed in 2022 didn't get fixed.

Mitchell Kaminski: Kind of going off of that, this district went red last time, obviously, but do you feel like you have a little bit more of an advantage this time around now that you do have two Republicans also running against each other that might split that vote? Or do you feel like it's the same uphill battle as the last time you were running?

Dave Raithel: Well, I'm pretty sure the Republicans are going to rally behind whichever Beal or Martin wins. I am personally amused that they have a real primary and and watch the mayors of Huntsville or Ashland and Hertzberg endorse Bill Overmars. And that's all entertaining to me. They like to take swipes at each other. That's entertaining. By confession, I sense a bit more personal animosity and motivation to get rid of Cheri Toalson Reisch. In 2022 that was motivating people. That I don't sense now. Now, other things have been going on. You know, I haven't been campaigning out knocking doors like I was two years ago. You know, two years ago I was out doing doors in late April. Other things have been going on in my life. I just now got started knocking doors.

So I don't really have a sense of that from there. But it's just a general media sense. You know, I would have thought that because the abortion rights amendment is on the ballot, it should be on the ballot in November. And because of the other ballot issue to raise minimum wage and things like that, that there would be enough people coming out to drag the 44th across the finish line. A lot of money and energy coming into the county for Steven Weber, his campaign. If there's any kind of coordinated campaign at all, I should do better. Now, there's still no real expectation that I'm going to win. But you know, I want people to get numbers up. I could get above 40%. Then maybe the next guy who comes along is... I'm pretty sure this is the last time, I don't think I'm would do this again. The next person who comes along, they might get a little bit more help from, for lack of a better word, the Democratic established, which for lack of a better word, those are the people who turn on the money

Mitchell Kaminski: What would you say the biggest issue is currently facing the 44th district that you would think would be if you did happen to get elected? Like the biggest thing you would like to see addressed.

Dave Raithel: The threats to school funding. One of my opponents, well, both of my opponents, as I understand it, want to get rid of property taxes. And one of them, John Martin, was explicit in saying he wants to get rid of property taxes and fund the schools entirely with sales taxes, which means everyone else's everybody's sales taxes are going to go up if he has it his way. And people point out to me, what sense does it make for a guy to say in the 44th to choose the three largest employers, something like that in the 44th of the school districts? Are they going to vote for a guy who's talking about essentially cutting their funding? This whole property freeze scheme is a long-range plan to squeeze funding to the public schools and to the libraries.

So there's there is that concrete, aggressive assault on the local local schools in the county. And then it's I guess, it's just, the failure to deliver what people outside the city limits Columbia need, and the broadband still does suck and give some of the roads really do need fixing.

It's things like that you know you hear it when it's practical. It's just those practical issues that people want to talk about. And all the distraction is, the meddling and trans health care issues or the people who were simply dogmatic and will not accept we've got to start regulating firearms some way better than we are if we're ever going to stop this. There is no other country, no other civilized Western country, Europe doesn't have this problem, only America has this problem with guns. And just by coincidence, today, I was looking at incarceration rates and how many people in America wind up in jail as compared to the United Kingdom or Spain or France. It's like, you know, three or four or five times as many. We're a violent people and we lock a lot of us up. And I can't figure out why we can't do something about that.

Mitchell Kaminski: Getting into attacking some of these individual points, I'll start with education. Charter schools have been a hot topic of discussion. I know one of your opponents also said they would like to put more choice in the hands of the parents as far as what their children are learning in schools. How do you feel the state of Missouri education is? And what would you like to see? Is there anything you would like to see done differently? Or how would you like to see education?

Dave Raithel: Okay, so my kids went to Columbia Public Schools and I can't say they were perfect, but we were pretty happy with how their educations went. They went to, what was then the Express of arts is now the Locus Expressive Arts School, which, like Ridgeway in the Columbia district, has a lot of autonomy in how they organize their programs. I am all in favor of letting school districts do that. You know, I'm familiar with a program called the Waldorf School. It's similar to what the Outdoor Nature Schools of Columbia wants to start. Great. What I can't support is a program where people outside the school district run their schools and have no accountability for financing. They have no accountability to prove that people are learning. We have a lot of historical evidence out of the urban areas that, well, they do a lot of those models. Charter schools took a lot of money and then nobody learned anything. And the charter school shut down. So can't have that. So we want the people who said they want school choice, but they got to have charter schools to do it.

It's ironic that John Potter, who is running in the 47th, is a fan of the Ridgeway School, and he and I have had a conversation about, 'Hey, wouldn't it be great if every school could organize itself to suit the community that it's serving?' Yeah, but have more lottery schools don't need charter schools to do any of that.

Mitchell Kaminski: Going off the gun point you also brought up. Missouri does have some of the loosest gun laws in the country. I did see that on your campaign website you are a gun owner. What do you think the balance is between protecting Second Amendment rights and some sort of gun legislation to maybe help some of the crime numbers go down?

Dave Raithel: The general principle is unless we can track that scene right there, it's going to lose some people because tracking is a conspiracy theory to disarm the populace. Unless you can track the firearm from the legal manufacturer to the legal possessor's chain of custody, there's never going to be a way to stop firearms from getting into the hands of people who either have ill intentions or have no responsibility for using them. Now, people can see that this is a fact or not all right, then. So if that's the fact, then it's just now a matter of how inconvenient are we going to be? Well, universal background checks, maybe you should be able to buy certain grades of weapons until you're 21, because it's hard to check someone's background if they haven't got one yet at 18.

Little piecemeal things like this, more aggressive ideas would be to say, sure, you're great. You want to carry a concealed weapon anywhere you want to go? You want to stand your ground and shoot somebody? Fine. You need to have some bonds and insurance. It's like it's not like you as a Second Amendment gun owner have a right to have a gun. You have a right to have a gun if you can buy one. And no one's going to give you one. Right? It's not like you have a right where is my gun? And so well, okay, I've got a right to shoot. People I think are threatening me. But man, if I make a mistake, do I have an obligation to pay their hospital bills? Which is a real question to the victims in Kansas City. Responsible doesn't want to talk about this. They want to they want to they go get grenade launchers and blow up boxes of evidence. That's that's what the responsible adults of the Republican Party do. That's how they act. Give me a flamethrower.

Mitchell Kaminski: One of the talking points for Republicans is the counterargument to hear is guns don't kill people. Do you do you feel like with some tighter gun restrictions, maybe some of these crime numbers would go go down? Do you think there's a correlation?

Dave Raithel: Yeah, the historical evidence is that the more roles, the fewer gun deaths, and if Republicans want to double down on the position and say, well, you know, dead people are just the cost of freedom, we're all for punishing people after the fact. Okay. If that's what the public says they want. I don't think that's what the public wants. I think that's what some gun dealers want. And there are certainly a lot of political groups who want to scare people into buying guns all the time. Yeah, someday, if you want to ask me why do I have firearms? I will tell you, it's as much a matter of accident as just, you know, historical tradition. You know, guns just float around

Mitchell Kaminski: What do you mean by matter of accident?

Dave Raithel: So, like, my kid. The assault weapon that he couldn't take to California because it was illegal there. So it's my house now. I don't want that out in public. You know, I inherited a little pistol from my father when he passed away. That's an heirloom. Bought a shotgun a long time ago because people two blocks away had the front door kicked in a drug thing.

And then, you know, it's like, well, OK, maybe I need to make a little noise. And then even I got to the point when I was traveling a whole lot and things were weird I wanted to have a little 38 in my glove compartment in the car, just in case. I was doing a lot driving. My father passed away. That's guns. Guns in America. All right. I keep my locked up. I don't go to the range, and I'm from the time in America when guns were out in public, when you were going to the range, you're going hunting. It was there. But I left you left alone, right? This was not braggadocio.

Mitchell Kaminski: Two-pronged question. How big of an issue do you feel crime is in Boone County and what would your plans be to either address it or fund some of these public safety concerns that you see popping up? Or do you feel like the crime issues is overblown?

Dave Raithel: You know, I only know what I see in the paper and there's always is terrible, terrible particular stories you read and then you read the general data where things are and you have to ask yourself, you know what, what's more real? So I don't have any specifics about that. What I try to take away from reading about the criticism of policing that came out of the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter movement was it isn't that we want smaller police forces, okay? We want different kinds of police forces that have to have different kinds of people with different kinds of training to address the different kinds of problems out on the street. And that does all that does mean spending more money. It does mean if the homeless population is a source of a significant portion of the crime, what are you going to do except get them into a place where their problems can be addressed or arrest them and put them in the jails.

I don't think the sheriff here really wants that. Right. So it does always come down to the willingness to spend money. There is the big dispute about, you know, homeless. Do you put them into a facility first, housing first and then deal with the problems or do you dangle the housing over over getting treatment of some kind? You honey, I don't know how you regulate the treatment if you don't have people work where they can be observed. So I'm generally in favor of, you know, spending the money and listening to the people who actually started the issue, not the critics who, you know, make a living, you know, making noise in their Facebook pages about everything that's wrong with Columbia. I mean, that so there's that I've been told there are you know, there is a gang problem there. I've had people all say out loud, you have the guns they get are illegal guns that come from elsewhere in the county, elsewhere in the state. Let the police do their job, give them the facilities they need to do their job.

I know, when people talk about local policing and having beat cops and this kind of stuff, should the police in your neighborhood always be dealing with strangers? I always have to ask that question. You know I can't say I know their names, but I think I recognize the same faces as they're driving through my part of Boone County. I'm not an expert. I just know it's true that a lot of the problems we have are caused by the fact we don't want to spend the money to fix them.

Mitchell Kaminski: So if you were elected to that seat where would you like in the most amount of money funneled? Any particular issue? I guess Where would your funding priorities lie?

Dave Raithel: Again it's a matter of recognizing what the general issues are. You can start with the observation that you know we have a school-to-jail pipeline and remember that what people try to tell us about that. If you spend money earlier in the school walls, you can measure, there are going to be fewer people going to jail, you know, 10, 15 years down the line.

So, I mean, I'm not sure if I'm just me going through a list of all the things I should have already memorized as a public policy prescription when actually my campaign is about trying to remember the basic principles of representative democracy and living in a republic, you know, And that does include the immunity, the humility to accept are experts who know things.

It's always better to spend money earlier in any causal chain to stop the ill consequence. But I have no specifics on that either. One thing, a couple of different industry people have pointed out to me, and this came from my questions when I ran for school board a bunch of years ago, of the principals told me that he'd been collecting data for a long time that showed if kids stayed in his school, they always did better than the kids who came in. When the kids who would show up, you know, be there two years, know they'd be gone. And this led to an observation that some people would say once the school district redraws lines, well, new kids to a district, they got to go to the new school. But if you're in a school, maybe you just should stay there

Some people say, well, that might lead to a circumstance where school becomes more segregated. As neighborhoods may change, schools Rock Bridge may become less mixed, some people say. Is that necessarily the bad thing, if that addresses the needs of those kids in that neighborhood? There's a whole lot of nuance that I have picked up on in conversations with people when it comes to local control that people in Jefferson City have no clue about.

I think, they're I think they're pandering to the people who give them money. And those are the charter school lobbyists. But when you have a conversation with the locals, it's more like the one John Potter and I had. I don't know that if you go into him and said, 'Could you have the kind of organization of schools that would give more Ridgeway's, would you really need to have charter schools take private puts, private persons I don't know that you'd have to have that.'

Mitchell Kmainski: So going back, to the initial question, would you say education would be something that you would want one of your priorities to be spending-wise?

Dave Raithel: Well, look, I don't know. This is from John Martins's perennial thing that got in my mail. Who can disagree with supporting the zoo and quality education? What does that mean? So okay, reading and writing and arithmetic. But how about some history-making all this noise about the CRT propaganda? I mean, is that quality education code for you can't have any knowledge of Jim Crow and the history of slavery? What is that?

So, yeah, poverty. Poverty gives people problems that they carry for a long time, maybe forever. And given that you can correlate some criminality to some level of poverty in the schools that are available to poor neighborhoods and poor communities, spend some money in the schools, doesn't solve every problem. That doesn't explain why people wind up living on the street. You can be someone who actually, you know, comes here. You know, the number of reasons people fall out into the street. I once had a job that included occasionally shoveling human feces up out of an alley. You know, it was hard. So it's not like I'm oblivious to what with the homeless, you know, cause the community.

But you've got to be able to take the resources to find out what you know, people need. And you're almost asking you to be like, What about that person that was sleeping outside the Boone County office the other day? The funny thing about it was she was passed out next to the collection box for the property tax returns or something like that. And oh, isn't this funny? The tax box next to the homeless person sleeping on the street? Yeah, well, I don't know. It really was funny about that. And, since I don't know that person's circumstances and I'm not a trained professional, I can't tell you what to do for that person. I can't just say again, you spend money to help them or not

You can spend money to address problems of the schools or not that will address some of the criminality. And maybe they just are some people who are antisocial. We'll never figure that out. Maybe they always will be. Some people have to be locked up. Again, in reference to the numbers I saw about incarcerations in the United States being three or four times what they are in some European countries. I guess that data would prove there are some people who will always have to be restrained. They are a threat to others, right? Unfortunately, I guess I'd have to spend money on that too.

Mitchell Kaminski: So I guess you wouldn't have necessarily like a priority area on your campaign. It would just be more of like, Hey, we got to address the issues as they come?

Dave Raithel: It's more it's more important that I make the point we have to quit cutting taxes, quit cutting corporate taxes, which we did again, and throwing, you know, the burden on sales tax is more important. I get down there and make that point then I make any particular point on where to spend money on these issues. It's more important that I go down there and remind everybody.

Once upon a time, we passed a council amendment that said conscious amendment that said we'll spend as much as five and a half percent of your income. No more than that. But take five and a half percent of your income. And that's what the state of Missouri will spend for the good of the public because that's what we were taking at the time. But the data shows we don't tax ourselves as much as we used to regardless, the propagandists will tell you we are overtaxed. Well, the tax distributions and burdens are different, but we are richer than we were when Hancock was passed, and we don't tax ourselves as heavily as we did back then. All right. That that I will stand on the floor and talk about, you know, until I fall down. I'm not going to talk I'm not going to stand on the floor and talk about we need to spend exactly this amount of money on this specific prison program. I'm not. That's not what I can do.

Mitchell Kaminski: You did mention the homeless issue. Is there anything you would like to see done to address that homeless issue? Or I guess what would be the ideal approach moving forward on how to handle that?

Dave Raithel: Well, I went to a couple of the different housing hearings that Boone County Commission was having on their housing planning, the hearings they had, where they came up with the conclusion, I need to add something like 37,000 houses to Boone County and by 2050 or something like that. So I've been listening. And what do people say? Well, of course, we have to build more houses so there's a greater supply. Well, what do we need to build more houses? People say it's actually a shortage of shortage of labor, not a shortage of investment capital. I don't understand exactly why the housing industry did not recover after the bubble that burst. So, it's paradoxical. It may indicate that there was just a hesitancy of people to reinvest. But I also understand supply chains were disrupted. You know, again, it's a matter of I know this. I know, I know. The general answer is you have to increase the supply of housing. There is some concern about the coherency of regulations. At one of these hearings, I learned that a subdivision could not be built where the developers wanted to put it on an account.

In fact, the local water district wouldn't approve the expansion of the water district infrastructure sounds like something that could be fixed either at the county or state level. So although I generally don't like to hear well, the problem with, you know, a shortage of housing or a shortage or anything is there's too many rules because I, I like regulated foods. You know, I like regulated products. I like regulated things coming into my house. I don't like stuff that I don't like. I can't, I presume, were responsibly made or produced. Okay. And the same thing about houses or roads or neighborhoods, right? So a coherency of rules is different from, you know, we just need to have fewer rules. You know in the course of this, I've been sympathetic to people in Boone County who point out, well, with development comes the infrastructure and we as landowners, you know, have the easements that get taken up. And the utility companies are not very friendly. I hear some of that. I'd like to help that. Maybe that would make it easier for people to accept housing development.

I would prefer to have to follow the strategy that I've heard from the city people. That is, there's more empty, undeveloped space closer to town than we might realize. It should be filled. I do question things like why is that nice array of solar panels on the south side of Highway 70 there, just east of the Lake of the Woods Road exit because that's the kind of close housing place you might want to have.

And I'm not anti-solar but even I have wondered when I'm running in the county and then county people there used to have big open spaces and, may not even be necessarily opposed to solar power in principle. Convince me it's a good thing here we get a coherency of policies. You know, I don't control inflation. I can help people deal with it by not raising their taxes and stopping people who would rate who would raise their sales taxes. So I can't control the interest rate. You know, I don't know to what extent low income, you know, interest rate assistance can be delivered to people.

So, you know, you know, one of the things I have fun doing is Republicans like to object to what they call environmental, social and governmental investment strategies. But the state itself turns around and invests, you know, more than $1,000,000,000 or so this last round at less than market rates, you know, in banks in exchange for which these banks make special loans to business. I don't oppose deposit in principle. But I oppose the double-dealing and how you talk about you know well it's just wrong not to, you know, get every nickel you can get out of investment. If you're not doing that, then you're being irresponsible. You know, other things can be pursued with capital investments, right? So I don't know what to what extent similar programs can be developed for housing.

Some people always talk about the inefficiency of housing credits. Well, of every dollar that the state of Missouri was spending to get a house spent $0.60 went for the actual housing and $0.40 went to all the middle hands in between. I know there's been some kind of reform process that will let people what, discount faster and get their money quicker which within lets circulate more bonds in the process. And I don't know what point that doesn't become some kind of churning for some bond company. Right. So those are the kind of piecemeal things you can look at. But I'm running for the House of Representatives just to talk about the general rules by which we associate and the general values we are to protect and pursue. And that how I have a plan to get 37,000 houses built in Boone County by 2050, you know, don't have that particular plan. But I don't doubt that government help is going to be needed. I don't doubt that. And there are people who do.

Mitchell Kaminski: Shifting gears to immigration, I know that's something that affects a lot of these other states besides just border states. Governor Parson sent a bunch of troopers down to Texas to help. You hear a lot of claims that, you know, these immigrants are bringing fentanyl over across the border. And that's been a big issue in Missouri. I'm curious what your thoughts on immigration are if you think it's having a big impact, specifically illegal immigration in Missouri.

Dave Raithel: Again, it's it's the conflict of the particular stories one hears about particular episodes, which are terrible. And the general trend of things. I came across the fact that in 2022, there were 62 homicides in all of America that could be attributed to an illegal, unlawful, undocumented alien in the country, 62 of 21,000 in some murders. So I don't really know that the immigrants are here killing a lot of people. Right. Even though you can pick up the paper or look at what's online. Yeah, some poor girl got killed by somebody who is in the country illegally. It's terrible. Is that really what's wrong with America? You know, you listen to the big business community, people, you know, okay, you know, I got to listen to the people who control investments, who to decide where money goes. They say the problem in Missouri is a shortage of labor and people to hire nationally. I will say it's just true that the 10 million people who have showed up here over the last few years is there filling jobs that Americans didn't fill. I mean, we'd be worse off without them. Okay. That's what those people have to say.

I have to look at the big, big numbers, picture things, and say it would be better if we didn't have anyone walking around undocumented. It would be better if the border could be fixed. I have no good faith belief that's what the Republicans want to do, given they sabotaged the Lankford bill. So I called bad faith on all of that. The general data is, is that the overwhelming greatest majority of people who come to America want to have a better life, and they don't want to bring bad attention to themselves. And about the only illegal thing they'll probably ever do their entire life is the one of coming to America.

Mitchell Kaminski: Finally, is there anything you would like to add that you would think would be important for people to know either by you or the campaign or just some issue that we didn't touch on that you think would be important?

Dave Raithel:
You know, I just want to say again, I'm astonished that the deniers have to have taken the Republican field this is this is truly overwhelming. I am 68. This is frightening.

Mitchell Kaminski: When you say deniers you're talking election deniers?

Dave Raithel: The election deniers. Yeah. The people who have there is no integrity in the Republican leadership whatsoever. And none of the people who have integrity have been driven out. It's it's it's it's shameful that that McConnell and Lindsey Graham and everyone have just crumbled up and become rags of rags moral character. All right. So you know I had wanted to put, you know, the first thing on the campaign list here. We're deciding what kind of government we're going to keep this this November. Right. And to again, to my astonishment, that only does so well in the polls. You know, people still have to deal with the daily grind of life, Right? The daily grind of life. And they don't want to hear or any, you know, even if it's true, they just don't want to hear the explanation.

Inflation was a worldwide thing, right? Joe Biden did not cause all of that. You know, they just don't want to hear it because they're angry. And so then you compound that with, you know, the Republicans, you know, baiting issues that make people feel creepy, like transgender care. You know, that's nobody's business. And the Republicans use it as a foil to scare people, you know, think, you know, if anything, I the issue is whether or not people are going to be honest, whether they're going to have any integrity.

Neither John Martin nor Bryce Beal, to my knowledge, have put any distance between themselves and anything Cheri Toalson Reisch ever promoted or defended. I know, they have endorsed every bit of policy that she does, and they will compound it. And from what I hear, I've got no reason to think they won't. It's just vacuity. Or I could bring up my cell phone and show you the message I got from Bryce Beale, Christian, conservative constitutionalism. I don't know what that means, but we live in a republic. We don't you know, we're Christians are free to have their religion and and and Muslims and everybody else. I don't know. There's nothing in the Constitution about it being a Christian document. Even the declaration says that the troops that we grant grant ground ourselves upon or self-evident. There are like rules of axiom. You know, maybe you might think God wrote them, okay, well, that's your story, how they were there. But you know, I have no other reasons, reason itself to bring that to me. To have a republic and a Christian republic is a threat to everybody who doesn't agree with the people who decide what their Christian is or what a Christian Republican has to be like. That's a threat to everybody else's religion.

Mitchell Kaminski: Well, thank you again for the time.