This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: July 10, 2008 - This profile of Kenny Hulshof, the Republican candidate for governor, has been updated and revised since it first ran in July, before the August GOP primary election.
When U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof began his campaign for the GOP nomination for governor this year, he didn't put forth many positions on how his election would help Missouri. He offered few plans about how he would govern, focusing instead on his fight to beat Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman in the GOP primary.
With that election behind him, Hulshof is now putting forth several proposals - so many in fact that his spokesperson, Scott Baker, is arguing that Hulshof is the only candidate offering "real solutions to Missouri's problems."
"It's one thing for candidates to talk about change, but only one is producing detailed map for change, and that's Kenny Hulshof," Baker says. "He has put forth 40 detailed solutions and (Democratic opponent Jay) Nixon has put forth only eight."
Baker also says Hulshof is upbeat about his chances of winning in November in spite of entering the race late after Gov. Matt Blunt decided in January not to seek re-election for a second term. Some of the enthusiasm comes from the boost the McCain-Palin national ticket could give to the governor's race, Baker says.
Holshof has offered proposals on issues ranging from agriculture to illegal immigration, but his biggest concerns, like Nixon's, are health care, economic development and higher education.
While Nixon is promising to restore Medicaid benefits eliminated by Gov. Matt Blunt, Hulshof offers a different route to affordable health insurance. Called HealthMAX, his plan would help the uninsured obtain coverage through health savings accounts and a combination of tax incentives and state subsidies. Hulshof's office says the plan could ultimately cover as many as 500,000 of the estimated 700,000 Missourians who lack health insurance, would cost less than $50 million a year in general revenue and would require no tax increase.
Hulshof's approach to economic development includes pushing for better secondary school preparation for a 21st -century high-tech workforce. Among other things, he proposes that Missouri help school districts hire 1,500 new math and science teachers. He says this would require subsidies of between $2,000 to $4,000 for each teacher either for higher salaries or student loan forgiveness.
He also is proposing to shore up Missouri's higher education system through more funding. One of Hulshof's most striking comments was his indirect criticism of Missouri's political leadership, including Republicans and Democrats, that has allowed the state to sink to 47th in state funding for higher education.. Up to that point, he'd refrained from attacking the spending priorities of lawmakers.
In any case, Hulshof is proposing to lift higher education by raising funding by 2 percent, plus the rate of inflation, beginning in 2011. In a statement, Hulshof said this funding formula would mark "an aggressive, yet affordable, way" for Missouri to keep pace with higher education investments being made in neighboring states. Again, he said this boost would be achieve without new taxes.
In addition, Hulshof wants to increase Missouri's needs-based scholarship assistance, which jumped from $25 million in 2004 to about $100 million in 2008. Hulshof wants that to continue -- but with a requirement that some money be targeted to math and science scholarships. Finally, he is proposing to set up what he calls the Missouri Prosperity Initiative, a public-private partnership to generate more money to fund key college degree programs - especially in the sciences. Under his proposal, Missouri's contributions would be leveraged by requiring a 2-to-1 match from businesses and philanthropic interests for key degree programs. Part of this money also would be used for an endowment to attract world-class researchers to Missouri. That in turn could bring millions of dollars in federal research grants and boost business development in the state, he said.
Too nice for politics?
When Hulshof set his sights on winning the U.S. House seat in northeast Missouri, he sought his mom's advice.
Her response? "You're too nice for politics."
Then, when Hulshof told her he wanted to run as a Republican, she wondered, "Whose son are you?"
Unintentionally perhaps, this anecdote, told in a humorous, self-deprecating manner, says something about the man who hopes to becomes Missouri's next governor. During the GOP primary, it was a bad time for Hulshof, 50, to have a nice-guy image. Steelman, also 50, tried hard to convince voters that his folksy, accommodating demeanor translates into a man who's not tough enough to be governor.
But the record shows that Hulshof can be, well, steely, and has been far from a toe-the-line Republican during his six terms in the House. Indeed, his occasional willingness to say no to the party's leaders must have prompted them to ask a variation of the question his mom put to him years ago: "What kind of Republican are you?"
He's an engaging, and on occasion, close-to-the-middle Republican who can hold an audience's attention whether he's recounting humorous incidents about favorite swimming holes and 4-H Club events when growing up in Bertrand, Mo., or telling stories about the times in the U.S. House when he voted his conscience instead of the party line.
What's remarkable is that Hulshof won the elephant's share of Republican endorsements in the primary in spite of behaving at times like a political independent. Some observers said the primary endorsements were repayment for Hulshof's gesture toward party unity when, four years ago, he stepped away from the governor's race in favor of Blunt. This time, Hulshof entered the governor's race after Blunt decided not to seek re-election.
The DeLay controversy
A review of Hulshof's record since 2005 shows that he abandoned his party's position and sided with Democrats on a few important measures. These included a bill to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and a resolution to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees held by U.S. forces.
But Hulshof's most highly publicized breaks with his party involved his role as head of a House ethics committee inquiry that led to an unusual rebuke of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. Hulshof headed the ethics committee panel that found that Delay had offered to back a congressional bid by the son of Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., provided Smith voted for the party's Medicare prescription drug bill. It was a rare victory for ethics but a political setback for Hulshof. He won a battle, but lost his seat on the committee.
When asked about his independent streak, Hulshof says, "It's about leadership, which is doing the right thing when nobody's watching and doing the hard thing when everybody is watching."
He added, "When I stood up to my own party's leaders, when I wrote the report that exposed Tom DeLay's conduct, I was kicked off the ethics committee. But that's exactly the type of leadership I would bring to our state."
Reaching Across the Aisle
During the primary and the general election, Hulshof has promised to work across the aisle even more to help Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, rural and urban lawmakers find common ground to solve some of the problems awaiting the next governor.
One such problem, he says, will be transportation. With the federal highway trust fund facing bankruptcy, he says Missouri, like other states, will have to find other sources of revenue to finance its transportation needs.
As he does on so many issues, Hulshof refuses to say how he might address funding. He simply raises questions about some of the options -- such as devoting potential budget surpluses to transportation or turning to private companies to help build and maintain Missouri highways.
"I think I can help bridge the divide," he says. "It's going to involve bringing people together, the key to reaching a consensus. I'm willing to take this on to help the state move forward."
During the primary, Hulshof tended to be vague about the spending policies he would embrace as governor and his views on national issues, such as the cost of the war in Iraq. He was asked about projected drops of as much as $500 million in general revenue, for example, and what he would do to make up for a loss of that magnitude. In place of a direct answer, he said he wasn't sure there wouldn't be increases in revenue growth.
Though Hulshof gives himself credit for standing up to party leaders and disagreeing with some Bush administration initiatives, he has not raised any questions about Bush's policies in Iraq, a major national campaign issue. Hulshof was asked whether, given this country's own unmet needs, it made sense for the administration to spend $3 billion a week to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no end in sight. He avoided criticism of Bush by talking about the need for Iraq's government to "stand on its own two feet" and added that "the Iraqi military is finally doing much, and I wish this had happened three years ago."
On most issues, ranging from the war to Medicaid cuts, Hulshof and Steelman shared similar views. His biggest difference with her involved her position on tort reforms. Steelman's husband, David, is a lawyer who handles personal injury and product liability cases. When she was a state senator, Steelman was the only Republican to vote against a bill to curtain damage awards in medical malpractice lawsuits. She said the bill would have put the public at risk by protecting drunk drivers from liability.
A Tight Primary Race
During the primary, political experts focused on Hulshof's advantages on the campaign trail. They regarded him as a better speaker who could engage audiences a lot more effectively than Steelman could. But Ken Warren, a pollster and political scientist at St. Louis University, said at the time that one of Hulshof's biggest disadvantages was being less known than Steelman who already had run statewide.
After the primary, Hulshof and some GOP leaders acknowledged that problem, and Hulshof promised to campaign in every corner of the state to boost his name recognition. George Connor, head of the political science department at Missouri State Unversity in Springfield, said before the primary that one big problem for both candidates was that they wasted political capital by trying to be as conservative as they could in the primary.
"That's going to make a difference in the primary," he says. "But the Republican voter is more conservative in the primary than the Republican voter is in the general election. The problem is that they may have a hard time moving back to the center in the general election."
Whatever Steelman might have said about Hulshof's behavior, there was at least one case in which he could be forgiven for straddling the fence. It involved a House resolution congratulating the University of Kansas Jayhawks for winning the 2008 Fedex Orange Bowl.
Rather take a stand with the 396 House members who favored the resolution, Hulshof simply voted present. So did the rest of the Missouri delegation. Maybe he shouldn't mention this to Steelman.