Interview with Dave Raithel, candidate for Missouri’s 44th House District

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

David Raithel is a Democrat running for Missouri’s 44th House District. He has been living in Boone County for four decades. The former Army veteran describes himself as a “pro-choice gun owner who believes in red flag laws and universal background checks. 

His platform includes protecting abortion rights, accepting that climate change is happening and fighting to prevent it, supporting labor unions and agricultural jobs and giving everyone in the state access to health care. 

The 44th District encompasses most of southern and eastern Boone County outside Columbia. Raithel will be going up against John Martin.

Mitchell Kaminski: First off, I appreciate you coming to take the time to talk with us again.  I know you just said you just got back from knocking on doors, so I guess we'll start there. How has the campaign trail been for you? 

Dave Raithel: I did stop for lunch.  I didn't just run back here and sit down from knocking on doors, so don't make don't make it sound like it was it's worse than it was.

Kaminski: Well to that point how’s the campaign trail been going for you to this point? 

Raithel: You know, I keep doing it. It's not gone as smoothly as I might have hoped.  I  can't say that all the things I wanted to fall in place fell into place.  Nevertheless,  I'm resolute. I'm going to do this to the end.  Pretty much broke.  But, you know, I've got enough to limp out of. I'm going to benefit from some coordinated campaign work. 

I haven't been able to knock as many doors this year as I did in 2022.  But on the other hand, I've done much more correspondence and mailing than I've ever done.  I'm not going to be able to do a last-minute kind of, one-sheet mailer like I had originally planned. But I've been hitting a lot of people who are Amendment 3 petition signers who either didn't remember to vote in 2022 or who might even not be Democrats but are Republicans.

The message is, if you are voting for Amendment 3, then you've got to also vote for me or else you contradict yourself.  So the the campaign is kind of, admittedly dependent upon the success of Amendment 3.  People need to pay attention to that because [Republican state Sen.] Mary Elizabeth Coleman has already gone on record saying they're going to try to do to Amendment 3 what they did do with Clean Missouri. That demonstrates they have no respect for what I want to call Madisonian conception of republican democracy. Which, oddly enough, goes back to one of the first conversations I had out knocking doors in 2022.  You know, what is the tyranny of the majority? How do we guard ourselves from the terror of the majority? And that's why we have things like the Bill of Rights. 

Well, people like Mary Elizabeth Coleman, they have no respect for that tradition. It's kind of like we want majority rule, except when the majority we want doesn't rule. And then we're going to, you know, threat or obstacles.  That's a long way of saying the campaign has kind of really wound up where it started. 

You know, Cheri Toalson Reisch had provoked a whole lot of people because she had been an ardent supporter of ending Roe v. Wade and a supporter of the Missouri legislation. In two years,  regardless of all the other stuff, all the other issues, all the real issues, all the other resources, I'm not trying to diminish them, although my opponents will sometimes exaggerate points. We're still kind of back where we started. This campaign is still kind of back where it started. The invasion of privacy, the intrusion of government into private affairs. I am still saying to people again, in the Madisonian sense of republican democracy, I was raised by Southern Baptist Republicans who were themselves not supportive of arbitrary abortions, but did not want the government making rules about it. 

This was, I mentioned before when we talked about the time when the Southern Baptist Convention, you know, had a plank in its doctrines that this was a matter of privacy and conscience. You know, emotions in one's own heart and conscience. Could have done better if they had more money. 

Kaminski: Has it mostly been a self-funded campaign?

Raithel: No, again, I know I've talked to different reporters and I don't remember everything I say to everybody because of simply a windfall. I was able to loan the campaign $10,000, and I've raised a little bit more than that in addition. So,  you know, I've got more money to use than I had last time. 

A lot of that has gone to advertising in the Centralia Fireside Guard and the Boone County Journal and then in the mailings. I did admit to another reporter that the one job I did not do that I'm supposed to do is sit down with a call list given to me of complete strangers and ask them for money and I did that about two times, about an hour each time. And this is horrible. I know how much I hated those kinds of calls. 

Now, I did write every one of those people a letter. I mean, it was like 435 known donors in the 44th District. And they got a letter for me and some money came back.  I would have done it, everything else pretty much if I'd had the personnel, the help. I have had some, I'm very indebted to the organized efforts of the Central Committee.  

I am not out here all by my lonesome, but I  can't do everything I could have had if I had more help. Even without the persistence of calling people up. So the next person that does this has got to be willing to subject themselves to that kind of misery. 

Kaminski: When you've been out on the campaign trail just talking with voters, would you say the abortion issue has been the biggest one that you've heard about? What would you say the biggest issue you’ve heard about? 

Raithel: No. Consistently since I wrote this a few days back last week,  the plurality, and not the majority, but the biggest chunk of people are people who are just fed up with political culture. They’re fed up with manufactured outrage and hyperbole and brinksmanship and just the dishonesty, you know, that’s going.

Now, different people have different conceptions of where they are on the spectrum of who is more guilty about this. Okay.  Who's more guilty? But that's the plurality of opinion. Other people then seem to have their own particular issues on their age, so people who are old enough to be my parents, they like the property tax freeze. 

I have assured them that although I think it's a bad solution to a real problem, I'm not going to make things worse for them. I've heard opposition to charter schools. I've heard people who are,  you know, agree that the state cannot keep cutting taxes and adequately fund social services. I've heard some sympathy to gun owners who say, yeah, we might need to have some kind of red flag procedures because there are some, they agree if over time the people who would prohibit firearms categorically are going to win the argument because those of us who still have firearms and have an advocate that we should be able to own them are not going to be able to prove they can be regulated safely and held society safely. Okay. 

So I, haven't run into any ardent opposition to that and some support for it.  To be fair, I'm knocking a bit different group of people than I did in 2022. In 2022, I didn't use the walk list provided by the Dems. I  looked at voter registrations and neighborhoods that I thought the people who live here are invested. I look for kids' toys on Google Pictures and our children live in this neighborhood.  These people take care of their houses. I was out looking for everybody who looked like they had an interest in the future,  whether they were Democrats or Republicans or independents, to say things are really out of hand.

I remember, as being a radical from the left a long time ago, I can remember things being also worrisome. But I myself never thought the form of government that we have is at risk. There was much more sympathy for that concern than because the January 6th events were still more in people's minds. Since I'm not reaching out to how can I say, the more hardcore MAGA Trump community? I don't bump into them as much as I do, although I just, I do still sometimes because they are classified as unidentified or undeclared, which means they don't show up and pull a Republican ballot in the primary or something.

So their identity is not really known. I'm getting a more friendly group of people, they're leaning towards Democrats rather than being all over the spectrum. Consequently, what I'm what I'm getting may be an accurate sample of the whole community out there. 

Kaminski: Going back to Amendment 3, which you brought up,  I'm curious on your thoughts, specifically because we talked about the abortion issue last time we spoke, but with an initiative petition because I know that's been used to help legalize marijuana in the state, expand Medicare and there have been some lawmakers that have wanted to increase what you need to do to get one of these petitions passed. I’m curious what your thoughts are on that. 

Raithel: I think I was on the record last time, again, I don't know. I don't remember everything I said to each reporter. But I have been opposed to their efforts to change that from the first time they started talking about it. Their whole complaint is grounded on the bad faith that they did not respect the decisions of the voters to begin with.

We review back with when voters wanted regulation of puppy mills by initiative petition and there were, you know, right to work off the legislature would refute what the Missouri voters had done with initiative petition. So in response to the Missouri legislature doing that initiative, petitioners upped the ante and said, "We'll go for constitutional amendments because that way the legislature cannot change what's going on." And rather than the Republicans in the Missouri legislature acknowledging, "Okay, we can't play this game of continuous escalation, sometimes tit for tat is wrong, someone sometimes has to make the first move to change behavior." They say, "Well, okay, we'll quit doing what we do to successful initiative petitions that are propositions and not amendments." They well, we don't have, you know, 40 pages or however many pages of regular, microregulation of the marijuana industry. 

That's not what a foundational document, a constitution is supposed to be about, that all of that is supposed to be all that kind of stuff is supposed to be in the statutory legislation which is grounded upon the authority and the Constitution. Okay. Well, if people, again, are not going to respect the Madisonian conception of republican democracy and say, well, we've got some rights that we're not going to subject to the democratic choice,  you know, God put them in the Bill of Rights and then we're going to have a judicial tradition which expands the interpretation of the meanings of the clauses of because communities change and have evolving senses of what liberty requires because relations change are rather than respect that tradition, we're going to change the rules when the other side gets what we don't want. So if the other side gets a choice, or if the other side prohibits the right to work,  we're just going to make it harder for people like them to change things rather than admit they might be in the wrong. 

Kaminski: Another big issue on the ballot is Amendment 2. I'm curious, about your thoughts on one, sports gambling coming into the state, and two, with this current amendment, because I know some have been supportive of sports gambling coming in, but they just don't like the way this amendment is written. I'm curious where you stand. 

Raithel: I said in 2022, the first person I talked to out campaigning asked me about choice and the relationship between democracy and rights. A year later, the first time I went out to a public thing to be a candidate, first question I got was "Do you support gambling online?" And so I am libertarian on that kind of stuff.

I believe in regulated vices. If you don't regulate them, they're going to go underground or, you know, people going to figure out ways to go around them. On the other hand,  I'm probably going to vote on 2 because I don't really understand how much money the school districts are supposed to get. I'm kind of stupid. So if you were to tell me,  well, 2% of all the money wagered,  right, is going to go to schools.  Okay? Two percent of you know, $100 million? Okay. Two percent of $1,000,000,000? That might be something.  But when you read it, there's clauses and technicalities about taxes. The tax is only levied on profits after certain kinds of expenses. And it's conceivable that very little money will go to the school districts. So I don't know. That also said,  people are reminding me that every time the Missouri legislature gets a funding source like this, whether it's accurate or not reliable or not, becomes an excuse for them to cut funding elsewhere or to cut taxes. 

[Republican gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mike] Kehoe is on record again, as I understood him from the debate the other night, wants to take income taxes to zero. I don't know how you run a state on zero income taxes unless you're raising sales taxes somewhere. I don't know. I don't know where it's going to come from or there's a lot of money going to come out of gambling that we don't know about that I can't understand from the legislation. So, you know, probably vote. I'll think about it more. 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I think, had an editorial saying, "Yeah, it sucks, but it's probably the best thing we can get and it can be fixed down the road by regulation." I don't know. Here’s the thing, there have been daycare services that have not been paid the money due to them for almost a year. But, let Parson try to regulate an unregulated, you know, high fructose corn syrup, THC, and the hemp industry can get in there and get that fix really quick. You know, it's like, "Oh, we don't want this happening," that that man's going to change his behavior. It's astonishing what people with money can't get done when you know. 

That’s just it. It's astonishing what people with money can get done. So the next question is, is what are what are they spending their time and efforts? Well, those daycare services have not been paid, but  Delta-8 is, they're still available at your local gas station.

Kaminski: The Southern Boone School District, which is in the 44th, they've been in the news the last couple of weeks with the school threats that have been going on there. Is there anything you would like to see done with school safety that you think might not be?

Raithel:  I don't know anything about what happened in Southern Boone except what was in the paper. I have bumped into a half dozen parents in Battle because that also covers the 44th. I cover four school districts, the Hallsville, Columbia and Southern Boone and I just do wonder if… I don't know. On one extreme, and I did put this on my candidate page, on one extreme there was the parent who said I'm glad my kids are done with Columbia Public Schools. On the other were the parents who say they do okay.  "You know, Battle's got its new school. It's got some of its own unique issues. My kids are fine."

So I wonder if we're going to, if I could bump into some parents out in Ashland.  You know, if I find out there's the same thing, there's going to be the parent who says, "Yeah, we all know that kid, he's always been kind of, you know,  twitchy,  you know," and not really worried. And the other parent who's just ...  who's going to be afflicted, you know, with fear. I don't enjoy any of that. That's parents should have to worry that I acknowledge all that. I am not at all pleased with the polemicists in this town who use those events to do what? I'm not sure. Incite people? I'm not sure what they're incited to do. I never hear any specific plans. What's to be done? 

Kaminski: Finally, is there anything that you would feel or you feel would be important for voters to know that we might not have touched on? 

Raithel: Yeah, that's such a broad question. You're going to have to edit some of that out. Things. I touched on.  There are some people  who have said it's just inappropriate that John Martin doesn't hang his hat, lay his head in the 44th. You know, the people who supported Bryce Beal in the 44th, there were some of them that wrote an editorial that made the argument that it was a kind of fraud or a pretense that Martin, you know, is engaging … he's never going to live in the 44th. It's inappropriate that he do this. And I have heard sympathy for this. I have heard that's another thing that I've heard knocking doors.  On the other hand, people don't really want to go on the record, you know, because they have to live in town. So no one wants to say on record.

Kaminski: I can give you a more specific. So you say if for people that are voting for 3, both vote for me.  Why why would you say that?

Raithel: Oh, well one of the mass mailings I went out, laid out the case, and this is why I think the ballot initiative wound up in court. It did not specify what laws would be repealed once it goes into effect. It was a bad faith argument to say that it should be rejected for that reason because there was a history of approving ballot initiatives that didn't specifically list. 

So I take the position that when this amendment is passed, I think it will be, the trap laws, the targeted reproductive access protocols that are on the books would make special rules about facilities providing abortions and special rules about physicians working there, needing privileges at facilities. All those will be on the books through the three-day waiting period.

Just run through them all.  And unless they are repealed by the legislature, every one of them will be challenged in court. And then women and families will wind up standing in court for several more years. For fear of using the word rational, the rational thing to do is if you're going to vote for 3, you have to have a sufficiently large number of Democrats in the legislature with somewhat cooperative executives. 

So maybe Kehoe will be cooperative if he sees he has a House that can do things he may not want to do. All right. But you can't say I want to have a woman's rights under Roe v Wade, restore and then turn vote, turn around and vote for people who will do nothing to make that happen, who will do everything they can to prevent it. 

I mean, [Republican Attorney General Andrew] Bailey, as I said to somebody, a reporter the other day,  Bailey has never met a bad law he didn't want to enforce. He's never met someone beat up in jail he didn't want to make him worse off. And he will do everything he can to hobble and thwart Amendment 3 unless those laws are repealed and new regulations are written. That’s my case you, either get it or you don’t.