By Rudi Keller
Ashcroft is the only statewide official elected in 2016 who still holds the same post that voters bestowed. In that time there have been two governors, two lieutenant governors, three state treasurers and three attorneys general.
“I don’t have any intention to run for office again,” Ashcroft said in an interview with The Independent. “I somewhat jokingly, but also truthfully, say I’ve done my time. I think I should be paroled after eight years.”
Before he leaves office Jan. 13, Ashcroft has one more public function to perform. On Jan. 8, he will call the Missouri House of Representatives to order and preside while the body elects temporary officers.
His personal plans for the future, Ashcroft said, are not settled. Katie Ashcroft, his wife, will be chief of staff to incoming Lt. Gov. David Wasinger, so the family will remain in Jefferson City.
Hopefully I will find something else that I will be able to make a difference and increase opportunity for other people to live their life to the fullest,” Ashcroft said. “I’ve had serious discussions but nothing concrete.”
Ashcroft’s entry card into Missouri politics was his last name. He’s the son of John Ashcroft, who was state auditor, attorney general, governor, U.S. Senator and U.S. attorney general.
Unlike his father, who was 29 when he filed for political office the first time, Jay Ashcroft did not run for the first time until 2014, at age 41, in a losing bid for a state Senate seat.
Trained in engineering and law, Ashcroft at an early age didn’t want to run for office.
“When I was a little kid, I made the decision that I wasn’t going to go into politics,” he said in an interview with The Independent after announcing his candidacy for governor. “I said, ‘I’m never going to go into politics. I’m never going to be an attorney. I’m going to have a real job.’ Famous last words.”
Mixed results
The most visible role of the secretary of state is overseeing Missouri elections. But the office also registers businesses; regulates the sale of investments; manages the State Archive and the State Library; and keeps state administrative rules organized and published.
Ashcroft hasn’t hesitated to put an ideological stamp on the work of his office. But he said he’s tried to use the authority allowed in law, not assume he can do things because he favors the action.
“As a public official, I need to live within the constraints of what I’m authorized to do by the Constitution and the statute, not what I can get away with,” he said. “I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, I’m still ugly, but at least I did the right thing.”
The courts haven’t always agreed with Ashcroft’s view of his authority.
A federal judge in August rejected Ashcroft’s attempt to regulate investing when it blocked enforcement of rules that would have required brokers to obtain consent to include a “social objective” or other “nonfinancial objective” into their investment advice. U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough decided the rule intruded on federal securities regulations and blocked enforcement.
Ashcroft did not appeal the decision but insisted he felt he was working within his authority.
“We didn’t say you couldn’t invest in that or you had to invest in that,” Ashcroft said. “What we said was there has to be disclosure, and that you as a company to protect yourself from someone coming back five years later and saying, ‘hey, they never told me this.’”
Libraries around the state grumbled, but did not challenge, a condition Ashcroft added to the rules for receiving state aid distributed by his office.
The rules require written policies on what materials are “age-appropriate,” to keep non-appropriate materials and displays out of areas designated for minors and post whether events and presentations are suitable for some or all age groups.
Parents must give permission for their children to borrow any material from the library, either in person by monitoring selections or by a blanket approval agreement tied to issuing the child a library card.
The rule also allows parents to challenge the age designation of any item in the library.
“We didn’t stop them from having anything,” Ashcroft said. “We just said, ‘look, if you’re gonna have it, you need to make sure that you’re responsive to the parents of your locality for how you provision those to children.’”
The rules could be reversed by a future secretary. Ashcroft said he doesn’t believe the authority could be used to require libraries to give minors full access to all materials without parental notification.
“I don’t think that the secretary would have the authority to say that a minor’s interest in what they read trumps the parents interest,” Ashcroft said.
Elections oversight
For the past two general elections, voters in Missouri have been required to present Missouri- or federally issued identification that includes their birthdate, photo and an expiration date. A Cole County judge recently upheld the law, a decision being appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.
Ashcroft has advocated for the requirement since his 2016 campaign. If the high court upholds the trial court ruling, it would be a final victory for a long-sought Republican initiative.
Despite arguments that hundreds of thousands of Missourians would be prevented from voting because they lack the proper credentials, Ashcroft said the law has been a success.
“People can whine and say whatever they want, but the facts are it worked just fine,” he said.
Republicans have dominated the General Assembly for two decades, leading Missourians who support liberal policies to use the initiative process to pass Medicaid expansion and abortion rights and force a referendum on a right to work law.
The secretary of state’s office receives proposed ballot measures and determines if they are ready for circulation. The office writes the ballot language voters see and checks signatures to decide whether petitioners have met the requirements for being on the ballot.
On several occasions, the courts ruled Ashcroft had not performed those duties properly.
A judge in 2018 rewrote Ashcroft’s ballot language for a referendum on right to work, and last year the Western District Court of Appeals declared his ballot language for an abortion initiative was “replete with politically partisan language.”
Ashcroft got the same result when backers of the proposal, which was passed as Amendment 3 this year, challenged his fair ballot language. In that case, the judge determined Ashcroft’s description was improper because it “sows voter confusion about the effects of the measure.”
And during an earlier attempt to overturn Missouri’s abortion ban, the courts ruled Ashcroft improperly decided the legislation was immune to a referendum effort because one provision had taken effect through an emergency clause.
Ashcroft isn’t the only secretary of state to have ballot language revised by the courts.
“What I strived to do was, I strived to follow the law,” Ashcroft said.
He’s worked to streamline the signature-checking process for initiatives. By scanning all the pages instead of making physical copies, local election authorities can begin earlier and share the workload.
Ashcroft’s replacement, state Sen. Denny Hoskins, wants to eliminate ballot counting by machine and replace it with hand counting. There is a role for hand-counting to double-check results, which is done in post-election audits, but Ashcroft did not endorse it as the primary count.
And he doesn’t support efforts to move municipal elections like school board races from April to November.
It would multiply the ballots each election authority must prepare because school district and municipal boundaries don’t always align with legislative district lines, he said.
“What seems like a great idea on paper and works in 70 of the counties doesn’t work in all of them,” Ashcroft said. “And you’re going to create a big problem if you don’t take into account what they’re living with.”
Political landscape
In every statewide election contested by John Aschcroft, Democrats won at least one office. Since Jay Ashcroft filed for office for the first time in 2014, Democrats have won a statewide office only once, in 2018.
“The state is changing,” Ashcroft said. “I think there are a lot of people that 40 years ago were Democrats that are now Republicans.”
He hasn’t, however, taken for granted that voters will continue that trend. Every year he has been in office, Ashcroft has visited every county at least once.
“One, it was an act of service to the people of the state,” he said. “It was a reminder that I might have a title, but it was my responsibility to act for them.
“Secondly, I think it sent the right message to them. I wanted the people of the state to know that I cared about their situation and I cared about what they were going through, because I hoped that would make them more likely to reach out to our office or to tell me so we could do something about it.”
The difference between today and when his father was in office is that voters now associate local Democrats with policies pursued by the Democratic Party leadership in Washington. There are no more Democrats who oppose abortion and support expanding Second Amendment rights in the General Assembly, he noted.
In 1976, the year his father was elected attorney general, voters put Democratic candidate Joe Teasdale in the governor’s office.
“I’ve got a picture from when I was four or five years old, in front of the (Jefferson City) News-Tribune, where I was handing him a flower in commemoration of him being pro-life,” he said.
His father’s legacy from those years has been an important asset, Ashcroft said.
“There are times when it was extremely beneficial because of my name that I had because of him, and it was a good name, and a good name is to be treasured because of what he had done,” Ashcroft said. And I’m not sure it still stands for integrity after some of the campaign ads this past year, but I was thankful to have a good name.”
The lessons his father taught him have guided his public life, Ashcroft said.
“I’m thankful to have a father that taught me about public service,” he said. “I’m thankful that I had a father that did what he could to teach me to act with integrity, to tell the truth.”
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