State Rep. Cheri Reisch on Thursday will raise money for her re-election campaign and to defend a lawsuit filed by what she calls “haters and bullies” challenging whether she can block Twitter users who criticize her.

In an interview last week, Reisch, R-Hallsville, said her choice is to use her campaign funds to pay her legal bills or take out a mortgage on her home. Reisch said she has been a target of harassment at events inside Columbia and the lawsuit filed by attorney Mike Campbell is a part of that campaign.

The fundraiser will be in Hallsville and will include a gun auction.

“It is frivolous, it is dirty politics,” Reisch said. “To pick on an old grandma like me, I am sick of it. I am sick of the left being dirty to me.”

Reisch is seeking a second term in the 44th House District. Her Democratic challenger is Maren Bell Jones, a veterinarian, who is making her first bid for public office. The 44th District covers northeastern Boone County including Hallsville, Centralia and most of Columbia’s Third Ward. The district also includes voters in the Clark area of Randolph County.

Whether Reisch can legally use her campaign funds to fight the lawsuit is uncertain. State law does not allow campaign funds to be used for personal expenses. The money can be used for “ordinary expenses” related to a campaign or “ordinary and necessary expenses” of being an officeholder.

The law doesn’t directly address legal expenses for a candidate and the Missouri Ethics Commission has a mixed record of decisions on the question. Opinions issued by the commission generally disallow such costs but a 2016 ruling entered with the consent of the commission allowed Kansas City Mayor Sly James to use his re-election funds to fight a challenge to his qualifications for the ballot.

The commission’s staff told her it was legal, Reisch said.

Jones said she called the commission after seeing the flyer promoting the fundraiser.

“It really sounded strange to me that that was permissible,” Jones said. “Their line of thinking is that it was at least, from what they could tell, without doing a formal inquiry, that it was permissible if it affected her standing in the race.”

Reisch could request a formal advisory opinion, commission Executive Director Liz Ziegler said. She declined to say what Reisch and Jones were told but added that only a formal request for an opinion or a complaint would put the matter before the commission for a definitive answer.

Reisch hasn’t spent any money so far from personal or campaign funds to defend the federal lawsuit filed June 27. Campbell accuses Reisch of violating his First Amendment rights by blocking him on Twitter. The filing by attorney Andrew Hirth cites a May ruling in New York, which found President Donald Trump violated the First Amendment rights of Twitter users whom he blocked.

Reisch blocked Campbell for retweeting a message posted originally by state Rep. Kip Kendrick, D-Columbia, who criticized Reisch for questioning Jones’ patriotism.

Along with a photo of herself, with a message of thanks for the chance to speak at the Boone County Farm Bureau’s Strawberry Festival, Reisch wrote: “Sad my opponent put her hands behind her back during the Pledge.”

Kendrick responded by noting the service of her father and brothers in the military.

“That's a low blow and unacceptable from a member of the Boone County delegation,” Kendrick wrote.

After the lawsuit was filed, Reisch unblocked Campbell and other users.

In a motion for dismissal, Reisch’s attorney, Lowell Pearson, argued that the Trump case was wrongly decided and that her account should not be considered a public forum where speech cannot be limited.

“Ms. Reisch might reasonably conclude that she would prefer no Twitter account at all to one on which she and her audience are constitutionally compelled to tolerate profane, racist, or obnoxious content,” Pearson wrote. “Closure of the very forum to which plaintiff seeks access would undermine, not advance, the First Amendment interests plaintiff purports to promote.”

The issue is whether a public official must be forced to listen when criticized, Pearson said.

“First Amendment speech rights do not carry with it an unconstrained right to demand that the public official listen on the precise terms the speaker designates,” he said.

In the interview last week, Reisch lashed out at critics and opponents who she said are engaged in a coordinated campaign of harassment and intimidation. Campbell has never attempted to call or speak to her to bring up his concerns, she said.

She can turn away from speech she doesn’t want to hear in person and she can hang up on callers who harass her, Reisch said. Blocking a Twitter critic is the same thing, she said.

“He is just being mean,” she said. “It is the intolerant left.”

Reisch just doesn’t want to hear people who disagree with her, Jones said.

“If you are willing to block people then you are afraid of what they are saying,” she said.

The lawsuit, Reisch said, is also part of a national effort by Democrats to put Republicans on the defensive. As evidence, she noted that Andrew Hirth, Campbell’s attorney, has been paid $2,500 for work by U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill’s campaign and that Hirth and others in his firm were employed by Attorney General Chris Koster until he left office in January 2017. She claimed they were fired by Republican Josh Hawley.

Hirth said he and others resigned because they didn’t want to work for Hawley and denied the lawsuit is part of any coordinated effort, either nationally or locally. The work for McCaskill was unrelated to Reisch’s campaign, he said.

“It seems like she sees a grand conspiracy everywhere she looks,” Hirth said.

Reisch also said the harassment is enough to make her fearful of attending events within Columbia city limits. In February 2017, a controversy over Reisch’s decision to bring her gun inside a legislative forum at Daniel Boone Regional Library forced the library to re-examine its policies and change its signs so concealed weapons are allowed if the gun owner has a valid concealed weapons permit.

“Now I have to have police protection,” Reisch said. “I have a bodyguard to go with me at all events in Columbia. Nowhere else in District 44 do I have to fear for my life.”

A Columbia police officer assigned as a school resource officer escorted Reisch to her car after two people shouted at her during a 2017 forum at Hickman High School, Columbia city spokesman Steve Sapp said. He is uncertain whether Reisch asked for the protection or the officer volunteered it, he said.

Reisch said she has asked for protection from the University of Missouri Police Department when she is on campus.

The request was made in “a very brief conversation with MUPD Chief Doug Schwandt immediately following the Sept. 11 wreath-laying near the Columns,” wrote Sara Diedrich, spokeswoman for the university. “She asked if MUPD would be available to provide her with security when she visits campus. Chief Schwandt told her she is welcomed to inquire about security next time she comes to Mizzou, and that MUPD considers such requests on a case-by-case basis.”

The district is not dangerous, inside or outside Columbia, Jones said.

“I am a gun owner myself but I have never felt the need to carry in those kind of situations because I do not live my life in fear,” Jones said. “If she is that terrified to represent the district, that is maybe a good indication she is not cut out to do that anymore.”

rkeller@columbiatribune.com

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