Interview with Elad Gross, candidate for Missouri attorney general

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

ABC 17 News is interviewing candidates ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Below is an interview with Elad Gross, who is a Democrat seeking election to the attorney general's office.

Gross' opponent in this race is Republican and current Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

Morgan Buresh: Elad, can you just start off by telling me about yourself and some background, knowledge and qualifications that you have to be attorney general? 

Elad Gross: Sure, yeah. So, I was born and raised here in Missouri, in St. Louis. I went to Clayton High School, grew up in University City before that, actually won a football state championship, it's the 20th anniversary of that this year. And then from there, I went to Duke University for undergrad, was always working here while I was there, so I knew I was coming back home no matter what, because this was always home for me. I went to Wash U for law school. I've been working with kids for a long time in St. Louis, which is what really got me involved in understanding our political system a little bit better and really wondering why we weren't doing a better job by all of our kids, no matter where they lived. So that's what got me motivated.

While I was in law school, I interned at the Attorney General's Office here in Missouri, fell in love with it. It was the one job I applied to out of law school, was very fortunate to get in, otherwise that would have been a disaster. But I was an assistant attorney general for our state for about two and a half years, worked in multiple divisions, did a lot of trials, appeals in federal and state court, lots of different things in the office with efficiency projects, that sort of thing, and I ran the internship program with a friend of mine over there too. So, after that, after I left the Attorney General's Office, I got involved in, I actually volunteered as a special public defender. Our public defender system in Missouri was, it still is, but it certainly then was severely overloaded and they needed volunteers to come help out. So, I did that, actually found some massive civil rights violations occurring in the city of St. Louis, where they were keeping people jailed despite dropping charges against them. So, they had no charges against them remaining whatsoever. And I litigated several of those cases to reform the system here in St. Louis and also to compensate those folks that they injured.

So my job since leaving the Attorney General's Office has been to sue the government when they violate our civil rights. And that's what I intend to do as attorney general in Missouri. So I think that there's a lot of reasons why someone would be qualified. The basic qualification is being able to represent the State of Missouri and the people of our state in court. But over my career, I've just been serving the people of the State of Missouri. I've done a lot of litigation on government transparency laws. I actually have the landmark case on that, it’s called Gross v Parson. I'm the Gross guy on that one. I argued that case and won a unanimous decision protecting our ability to be involved in our government. So I think that that's, you know, our attorney general should be the watchdog for the people of Missouri. That's what I've been doing my whole career, and I intend to do that as attorney general. 

Buresh: Remind me what years were you assistant attorney general? 

Gross: Yeah, so, while my internship was 2013, I want to say, and then basically continued after, so it was 2014 through the end of 2016.

Buresh: Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. And you kind of just hit on this, but my next question was going to be, in your eyes, what is the role of the attorney general? Do you have anything else to add to that? 

Gross: Yeah, no, I think it's pretty basic. The attorney general should be the attorney for the people of the State of Missouri, not the attorney for the governor or big government or big donors, but the attorney for you and your family. And I think that that's such an important role to play. And, you know, if we've got attorneys general who are more interested in promoting themselves and promoting the interests of the people of Missouri, that's a problem. If you have an attorney general who doesn't understand the importance of consumer protection -- the biggest complaint every year that comes to the attorney general's office are scam calls. We invented the Do Not Call list here in Missouri. You wouldn't know that today, but we were the ones who invented that years and years ago. I think we've got to get back to doing some of these basic things: making sure that we're testing rape kits, making sure that we're supporting prosecutors, but also trying to prevent violence before it happens, making sure to deal with human trafficking.

There's so much that this office touches on. And when it's not functioning in the right way, the people of Missouri suffer. But I think the basic, underlying responsibility of the attorney general is to represent the interests of the people of the State of Missouri. 

Buresh: You just said that there's a lot this office hits on. If elected, what would your spending priorities be?

Gross: Yeah, so well, I think right now we've got to get that office staffed to the right level. So when I worked there, we had about 200 assistant attorneys general working there. Now we're close to half of that number. And with all of the responsibilities that office has, if you don't have people to do it, and we've seen this in different public offices, when there's not enough folks doing that, when there's not the right leadership there, you get some pretty bad results to the point where we've got news stories now with the attorney general not sending anybody to court, just blowing deadlines, nobody's there to protect the people of Missouri in these cases. And that's a big problem.

So, I think it's less, you know, I'm more of a small government guy. I don't think it's about spending more money. I'm proposing to make that office work better, more efficiently. When you have a Consumer Protection Division that is fully functional, that brings money to Missouri, when you have a conservation or environmental division that's punishing people for polluting our water, that's bringing money to Missouri. When you have a civil rights division that prevents the government from violating the law and saves us money from all of the lawsuits that come after that, that saves taxpayers money. So, I like to say it, but it's true: I'm the biggest tax break on the ballot this year. So, it's less about spending more money. It's spending your money in the right way and making sure that you're getting the services that you're paying for. 

Buresh: I feel like when people think of the attorney general office, they often think of crime and consumer protection like you just mentioned. So, I wanted to start there. I guess, first off, how do you plan to address violent crime in the State of Missouri? 

Gross: Yeah, so, I mean, I'm unfortunately the only candidate in this race with a comprehensive plan to deal with that. So first, we have to support prosecutors. And that's one thing that that office is supposed to be doing right now. There's oftentimes, it's called the Public Safety Division – I think maybe he's renamed it to something else right now. But that division assists local prosecutors, especially when they're overloaded and especially if they're dealing with crimes that maybe they don't see in their county. Like, there's one murder every 40 years in whatever county it might be, then you have prosecutors who can help you do that from the Attorney General's Office. I think that we need to get in touch with all the areas. And unfortunately, it's not just, you know, a lot of folks like to pin it on St. Louis or Kansas City, where obviously there are some problems there, but it's happening all over our state, in Cape Girardeau and Columbia. Heck, I mean, even a lot of the rural areas too, of Missouri. So the first thing I want to do on this topic is really reach out to the prosecutors around the state, let them know what resources we have and be willing partners for them.

The second thing is to support law enforcement in their partnerships with prosecutors. A lot of violent crime right now that we're seeing is done by a very small portion of the population. It's a very small number of folks who participate in that. And there are a lot of methods to find those folks, set expectations for them, make sure that they are on the right path and let them know that if they're going to choose violence, there are going to be repercussions for that. And unfortunately, a lot of young people make those bad choices and we need to prevent that from happening. So I think that there's that partnership on that side.

But the other thing that we really need is a plan to prevent violence before it happens. Unfortunately, I've had kids that I've worked with who have been greatly impacted by gun violence, especially. I had a kid who was shot and killed in his backyard the day before he was supposed to start first grade. And it was just down the street from his school and his two sisters were right there with him and his whole family came out to watch him die in their backyard. You can prosecute that guy who did it and you can put him in prison, that's not bringing that kid back to life. And it's not helping that family. I mean, you know, maybe there's some closure, but that's never going to bring that kid back. And I think that we need to focus so much of our attention on preventing that before it happens. And make sure that folks have those resources, have the pathway to make right choices so that we aren't burying our kids. And so I'm a very big proponent of having the attorney general coordinate a very big plan throughout our state to prevent violence before it's happening. 

Buresh: I read a little bit about that on your website before this interview. You don't have to go into, I guess, too much depth, but can you outline just what that plan would look like, what that possible program would look like?

Gross: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, when we're talking about prevention and we've seen this happen in different places, so it's not like it would be brand new to Missouri. But the more that you can coordinate this statewide, the more resources you can get, especially the communities that are stretched thin already. Now you're bringing state resources to help with their problems. And we all live here in Missouri. This is our home and we should all take care of it together. So the Attorney General is in the best position to do that.

So, I mean, one of these methods from the law enforcement perspective, it's oftentimes called focused deterrence. That's one of the methods that's used. And actually, there are some folks who are trying to implement that in our state on a smaller scale right now. But when we talk about prevention, I mean, you're talking about making sure that you are getting involved, especially in our young people's lives here in Missouri, to let them know, "Look, if you don't, we can get you, what is it that you need? Is it housing? Is it education? Is it job connections? What is it that is making you fall into either a trap that's making a bad decision?"

You know, you're not going to be able to stop everyone. There's still going to be some folks who are going to make bad choices anyway. But everywhere where they've implemented these serious community programs to intervene in folks lives and make them better, you have seen dramatic reductions in violence. And that is true. I mean, Boston is a great example, but there's places all over, all over our country and all over the world really, that have seen dramatic reductions in crime when you really invest in children and in our families.

Buresh: You mentioned consumer protection earlier and the amount of scam reports that the Attorney General’s Office gets. What would be your approach to consumer protection? 

Gross: Yeah, No. 1 is these phone scams, right? And we've got to get a whole, I mean, I can't tell you the number of folks who have told me, "Oh, my goodness, these things are annoying." I talked to a student at Missouri State today who said that "I've changed my phone number because I was getting 40 of these a day on this number." So, I mean, it greatly interferes with folks.

But earlier today, too, someone told me, "Hey, you know, I was scammed last year" out of, I think it was $1,400. I've talked to families who have lost tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars because, you know, you're in the middle of a scam, it's embarrassing, you fell for someone's trap. And then they also there's a lot of folks who prey on people who are older, might not have full understanding of what's happening to them. Really think that, you know, somebody in Germany is in love with them and is building them a home and is going to bring them over. And it's sad because there are so many of these red flags, but folks aren't seeing it, necessarily. And then once that money's gone, it's really hard to find it again.

So, one, we have to get the Consumer Protection Division to be a major focus of the office again. That's when the Attorney General's Office works so well for people in Missouri is when that division was really strong, and we need to get that happening again. Two, is I think we need to modernize that system, too. The reason that we have fallen behind so much is because the technology of the scammer has gone way up and the technology of us trying to stop them hasn't moved at all. We're falling behind. So one is when big telecom, I mean, today a big change that some people remember is you get these calls and it says scam likely. That wasn't always the case and that was because of a lot of these lawsuits against big telecom brought by state attorneys general. The Attorney General in Missouri needs to hold Big Telecom accountable to the people of Missouri and make sure that they are stopping these things from happening in the first place.

But I think we need a lot of education on this issue, and we need a lot better coordination with the community to capture the evidence as it's happening. So, I propose starting the Missouri Attorney General App, as long as the acronym isn’t taken by a former president. And that app would allow folks to: If I'm getting scammed, I see this, I can send it directly to the Attorney General's Office. We collect the evidence right there. We streamline the prosecution and we can warn other people about what we're seeing, too. We can implement defenses and let folks know, "‘"Hey, this is a big red flag. Don't do this." You can get notifications on your phone about scams in your area. And right now we're seeing a development of AI and folks stealing people's voices. But there's ways to defend against that, too. And I think that if we basically have this Missouri Attorney General App acting as a shield for the people of Missouri against scammers, we're going to save a whole lot of money from folks that would have lost it. We're going to educate a lot of people and we're going to be able to prosecute a lot of folks, too. So I think we need to really beef up as many of these prosecutions as possible. 

Buresh: What would some other priorities of your office be, if elected? 

Gross: Yeah, so, well, quite a few. So we used to have a conservation division at the office, it was called the Agricultural and Environmental Division. Almost every other state has one. Missouri does not right now. We used to have it. It was a very strong one. It protects our natural resources, our land, our air, and right now, especially our drinking water. We have lots of problems with whether it's a meat processing plant or another polluter that doesn't do the right thing, they start leaking all of their waste into our drinking water and we're the ones who suffer. We have issues with lead pipes, a lot of them in Missouri. We have a lot of issues with these forever chemicals that are stuck in our water systems. And we have a big problem in my neck of the woods here in St. Louis and in the St. Charles area, nuclear waste left here by the federal government. And they knew. Now we know, because I've helped this community group of a bunch of moms find government records of all the poisonings that we've got cancer everywhere, like families, entire families that have had cancer. And they found that since 1949, the federal government knew that they were poisoning the people of Missouri, and they didn't want to tell anyone because they didn't want us to panic.

I think the Attorney General should be holding the federal government accountable. We got to bring them to court if they're not going to do the right thing and clean up this mess and compensate the people of Missouri for what they did. They need to pay, and we need to make them do that. So, I certainly intend to restart that division, to get litigation going, to make sure we're holding the government accountable.

I want to start a public corruption unit at the office to make sure our taxpayer money is going where it's supposed to and to make sure we don't have corrupt officials running our state right now. And unfortunately, we've got a few problems throughout all the levels of our government. And then probably one of the big things I talk about a lot is a civil rights division. Most states have one of these too. Not just Democratic states, Oklahoma has a civil rights division and the civil rights division would prevent government abuses of its power. It would protect the people of Missouri when some government entity doesn't want to show you the records that you're entitled to or wants to discriminate against you for one reason or another, or doesn't want to protect workers, for example. Workers deserve protections in this state, too. We need an Attorney General who is going to do that.

So, I think a civil rights division is very important, especially given the last few months now of our Attorney General, who is actively using our money to keep people who have been proven innocent in prison. Like, we're paying for that litigation and it's so sad. Folks who have been in there for decades and decades and shouldn't have been there in the first place. I will not fight to keep them in there. If you're innocent, you shouldn't be behind bars. If you aren't, well, maybe you should. And we're going to make sure that happens, too. But goodness gracious, I mean, we cannot have innocent people in our prison system and then expect folks to trust the justice system here in Missouri. We have to get that working, too.

And then, my dog will get upset if I don't mention this, but we're going to go after puppy mills in Missouri, too. We’re the No. 1, we’re the capital for abusive puppy mills in the entire country, been that way for over a decade, even though we passed a law. The people of Missouri went to the ballot and passed this, saying we didn't want these things in Missouri anymore. And the legislature just turned around and changed that, too. So, I think there's a lot of things that we need to do. We need to protect freedom, individual freedom. We need to make sure that folks can access health care. We need to make sure that big companies are accountable to the people in Missouri. And we need to make sure our government is working for us.

Buresh: You hit on this just a minute ago, as well, but my next question is, what role would your office have in the federal government, as well? It sounds like you will want to hold them accountable. 

Gross: 100%. Yeah, look. We shouldn't be politicizing this office, that's happened a lot lately. I believe that the Attorney General's Office should be nonpartisan. I don't think that it should be beholden to one party or another. We should be hiring the best attorney for the job who's going to represent us. And yeah, I don't care who the administration is over in D.C., if they're screwing the people over here in the State of Missouri, we're going to hold them accountable. And yeah, unfortunately, that's what's happening right now. That's a specific example, but you know, there could be others, and I won't hesitate to do that in any of those situations. 

Buresh: How do you plan to work with other agencies, whether it's local, state or federal, to accomplish these goals? 

Gross: Very well. Look, I think that is very important for government officials to talk with folks in all branches of government. I think that we need a lot more interaction between the Attorney General's Office and the auditor. Those two offices together can do so much to rid the state of corruption in so many government entities. I think that's a really big missed opportunity and we won't be missing it when I'm there.

I think that we need to work a lot better with our local county clerks and folks all over the state and especially our legislature. Unfortunately, there are times where our legislature is passing these laws that are entirely unconstitutional, and that's going to put the people of Missouri on the hook for all of these lawsuits, all of these stupid things that's not moving the state forward. So, yeah, I think that we should be working in a very collaborative way with folks in the government. But if we have people in our government, whatever level it is, and they're not here to serve the people of Missouri, well, we'll make sure we find some new folks to get in those offices, too.

Buresh: I wanted to give you a moment just to talk about what sets you apart from your opponent in this race. 

Gross: Yeah, I think there's a pretty stark contrast. One is I don't believe that we should be using that office as a stepping stone to something else. I don't think that that office, we've had so many folks and the last few who have been there, have tried to make some big national platform for themselves, insert themselves into everything and then move on. And I think that's sad because it's a beautiful place to work when it works for the people of Missouri.

So, one is I'm the only one who's offering to start a public corruption unit at the office. I’m the only one who's offering to start a civil rights division at the office to protect us from government abuses. I’m the only one who's proposed to start a conservation division to make sure that our grandkids can drink the water in Missouri. I’m the only one who has, unfortunately at this point, who has said and made this commitment: if you are innocent, you shouldn't be in prison, and I'm going to make sure to help get you out. You shouldn't be there. If you are, then you should be. I'm the only one with a plan to reduce violence in our state and actually protect our families.

And we have an attorney general right now who has put us on the hook for so many, so many stupid things. He takes money from all of these big companies. He drops cases against them. He gives favoritism to all of these folks who have inserted themselves into our attorney's office. And I think it's so unfortunate to see where that office is, where it used to be not that long ago, and all of the services that it provided the people of Missouri. And now if you ask this guy, how much money have you wasted on these lawsuits that have gone absolutely nowhere? The answer is, I don't know, I don't track that number. I think that's ridiculous. I think the people of Missouri deserve transparency. You deserve accountability in your government. And I think it's just so, so unfortunate to see where that office is now and how much money we have blown because our attorney general doesn't know how to be the attorney general.

Buresh: That just made me think, one kind of final question for you. You have all these ideas or these new programs, new divisions under the office. Do you have ideas yet of how those new divisions are going to be funded, even though you say it's kind of understaffed right now? 

Gross: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, it already is funded. And that's the weird part of all of this, is that that office is so mismanaged right now. There is funding to do all of these things, but nobody wants to work for our attorney general. I mean, our attorney general has filed lawsuits that have gotten folks who work for him in trouble for ethics violations. In Kansas City, in Jackson County, he brought this lawsuit on behalf of taxpayers because homeowners, their assessments were all going up. And I agreed with that lawsuit. I thought that the way that they were assessing those properties was wrong. And somebody had to represent the people there. And our attorney general decided that the ethics rules didn't apply to him, that he and one of his staffers was going to go talk to clients of the other side without their lawyers being present. And when he had to sit for a deposition, because the judge said, "Yeah, I think you violated the law, you're going to have to answer these questions under oath," he moved to dismiss that entire case, and that case was dismissed without prejudice, costing all of these folks so much money.

And he's done that kind of stuff time and time again where he's filed cases that go nowhere, or he's totally blown them. And we all lose on account of that. Right now, he's being sued for violating the First Amendment because he used the power of his office to go after a critic of Elon Musk, of all people. Like, I don't know why we're defending all of these folks with all this money when your job is to defend the people of Missouri, many of whom don't have all that much money. Like, that's why we have an attorney. Rich people can hire their own lawyers. Nobody can hire this guy.

And the farmers in the Bootheel are getting screwed because of this guy. There's folks all over our state who are so poorly served by our attorney general. So, it's not a question of funding. We have the money in the office right now to do all of these great things because we've done them before in Missouri and we can do them again. It's just we need someone who's going to manage that office in the right way. And like I said, having a Consumer Protection Division that works, having a civil rights division that works, having an office that works, brings money to the people of the State of Missouri. It's a tax saving. It's a saving to the people of Missouri when you have an attorney general who actually knows what he's doing.

Buresh: All right. Elad, any final comments? That's all on my list for you there. 

Gross: No, this is great. Thanks for letting me talk for a while. I got a little fired up because, look, I'm really passionate about this state. It's my home and I really care a whole lot about it. So, this means a lot that you're interested in this and asking these questions. And I think we have a really great opportunity in Missouri to get back to doing what we do best, and that's making sure that the people of Missouri have a voice in our government.