Maggie Severns is a reporter for Politico.

SIKESTON, Missouri — On a Friday evening in late July, Catherine Hanaway stood before 50 attentive citizens of a small town in southeastern Missouri—men in slacks and sneakers, women with nicely done hair. Her 6-foot-tall frame swayed slightly as, with her usual frankness, she made a spirited case to be the next governor. The country is breaking down, the former federal prosecutor told the group gathered in the newly opened headquarters of the local Republican Party—police ambushed and murdered in Dallas, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Ballwin, Missouri—three shootings and eight dead in 10 days.

As people nibbled cupcakes topped with small American flags, Hanaway painted a picture of violence and decline every bit as dark as the vision Donald Trump had delivered in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland a day earlier. Then she brought it home.


“I think it started in Ferguson,” she says.

Nationally, “Ferguson” has become a byword for a new American civil rights movement. The protests that followed the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, by a white police officer, marked the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has pushed overpolicing to the foreground of national politics. Mothers of other police-shooting victims stood together on the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week.

But for many people in Missouri, especially the approximately 600,000 Republicans who expect to vote in the GOP primary Tuesday, the lesson of Ferguson is not that the police used too much force, it’s that it used too little. Ferguson, to them, was an embarrassment: preventable chaos that tarnished the name of the otherwise orderly St. Louis suburbs. Those nightly images of lawlessness, in their eyes, were an indictment of the weak-kneed way Democratic Governor Jay Nixon let protesters and outside agitators run amok, looting without apparent consequence. This governor’s race, the first major statewide contest since the unrest, is the first chance Missourians have had to register anger that has only grown since the summer of 2014.

As Americans seem to be having two different conversations about law and order, there may be no better place to see the divergence at work than Missouri.

As Americans seem to be having two different conversations about law and order—the fear-driven, paternal message of Trump and Rudy Giuliani; the concerned inclusiveness of the Democratic National Convention—there may be no better place to see the divergence at work than Missouri. In the increasingly conservative corners of Missouri, there has been far less interest in improving the relationship between police and minority communities than in making sure that the next governor has zero tolerance for violent protests. And that widespread sentiment has created a surprisingly consistent voice among the four GOP candidates who have struggled to separate themselves through a heated, troubled and extremely costly primary that has been marred by the suicide of one of the early candidates and a spending binge on negative ads.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon is term-limited. In the race to succeed him, the defining issue is anger over his handling of Ferguson and the protests that erupted in its wake. | AP Photos

But the defining issue of the campaign is the anger directed at Nixon, who is at the end of his term limit—over Ferguson and the subsequent high-profile protests at the University of Missouri. Republicans know that Nixon has made his party vulnerable and they are primed to seize one of the last statewide seats still in Democratic control. To do that, the Republicans are competing to prove which of them is the toughest.

After Hanaway wrapped up her remarks in Sikeston with her standard rallying cry—make Missouri “safe and strong”—she sat a few feet from the crowd and 130 miles from the site of the Ferguson protests. She returned to the theme that has defined her campaign. Missourians, and people across the country, she said, are feeling threatened by the recent jump in crime rates in cities. They are small increases compared with the decades of declines in homicides nationally, but a sudden spike nonetheless, and to Hanaway they signal an existential threat.

“I feel like the positions we’re taking are a response to Ferguson getting burned down [and] the protests at the University of Missouri—that’s our flagship university,” she said. “There need to be some basic operating rules.”

***



Lisa Ferrill lives 10 miles west of Ferguson in a predominantly white community called St. Charles. Two years ago in August, she watched Ferguson unfold on her television from home, night after night, slowly realizing that a national story was emerging just across the Missouri River in a town not far from where she grew up.

On August 9, 2014, a white Ferguson police officer named Darren Wilson had attempted to stop Michael Brown. They scuffled and Wilson shot Brown, who was unarmed, at least six times, killing him. Brown’s body lay in the street for four hours, angering the mostly black residents of the neighborhood. By nightfall, hundreds of people had gathered at the scene, upset that Brown had his hands up when he was shot. Later, that detail would be called into question, but that evening news cameras captured the beginnings of protests that would escalate over the next week and a half.

The next night, protesters turned violent. They looted and taunted police. Local police, dressed like soldiers and armed with M4 rifles, lobbed tear gas and fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

“I’m all about peaceful protest, but it’s kind of crazy the stuff they’re doing,” Ferrill, a mother of one, said recently while sipping ice water at her dining room table. “If it was just a peaceful protest, it wouldn’t be making the news and we wouldn’t be getting the bad rap we’re getting. It’s because they’re looting, and throwing Molotov cocktails … what is that supposed to accomplish?”

Demonstrators, marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, confront police during a protest along West Florrisant Street on August 11, 2015 in Ferguson, Missouri. | Getty Images

If nothing else, the Ferguson protests accomplished a nationwide debate on the role of race. And that debate fed the Black Lives Matter movement, a political force now capable of affecting the course of the presidential election. But in Missouri, the conversation was focused predominantly on Nixon.

And it wasn’t just Republicans who were enraged by his response to the protests. Anger was, and remains, pervasive on both sides of the aisle.

Republicans say Nixon seemed to fumble at every turn, and could have prevented Ferguson from becoming a national story had he acted more quickly and shown less tolerance for violent protesters. Often, critics say, his actions seemed geared at trying to appease President Obama and the national audience. Nixon waited five days to head to Ferguson after the shooting. He waited a week after Brown was shot to declare a state of emergency and put a curfew in place in Ferguson, and as criticism mounted that policing was overly aggressive, he handed control to the Highway Patrol, which is not geared toward policing urban areas, and failed to bring the situation under control. Similar criticism—from Democrats as well as Republicans—resurfaced in November, when Nixon announced that Officer Wilson would not be indicted and, once again, hundreds took to the streets, burning and looting businesses.

Some areas near Ferguson were also looted and other neighborhoods around St. Louis had broken windows. National Guard trucks lined the streets and there were long wait times for 911 calls. But for the most part, there were only small ripples from what was happening in Ferguson.

If nothing else, the Ferguson protests accomplished a nationwide debate on the role of race in the fatal encounter.



But in Missouri, the conversation was focused on Governor Nixon.

The fear of runaway protests never really diminished with time. A year after Ferguson, protesters shut down I-70, a 10-lane highway that stretches from the far western suburbs, past Ferguson and into St. Louis, to draw attention to racial disparities. But for residents of the communities around Ferguson the highway protest didn’t make them think more about the tension between police and minorities, it just made them feel the danger was getting closer to home.

Kathie Conway, a Republican who represents part of the area in the state Legislature, said complaints came into her office. “It didn’t last a long time, but I think my constituents were thinking, ‘How will this spill out to where we live?’” Conway said. “Law and order is important to them. It’s important to everybody.”

In the fall of 2015, as Democratic presidential candidates were pressed on national television on whether “black lives matter,” and the names of black citizens shot by law enforcement or who died in police custody—Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray—were becoming household names, Missouri was again a site of headline-grabbing protests. Black students at the University of Missouri began mobilizing after the student body president penned a viral Facebook post describing his experiences with racism on campus. The protests came to a head when black students on the university’s football team with the support of many white teammates and their coach, announced they would boycott the games until university system President Tim Wolfe resigned. The next day, he did.

Again, the protest’s effect on a national audience was much different than the how it looked to people in Missouri like Ferrill, whose daughter is enrolled at the University of Missouri. Ferrill said she thinks concerns about race on campus must have been overblown. “I’m not going to school there,” Ferrill said. “But they seem to get catered to quite a lot.”

In the communities around Ferguson, protests didn’t make residents rethink the tension between police and minorities; they simply made residents feel the danger was getting closer to home.

Justified or not, the university has taken a hit in the wake of the protests: This year freshmen enrollment will drop by 24 percent, and the school is facing a $32 million deficit. With the school’s prestige in decline, Ferrill said she doesn’t think it’s worth the costly tuition. She told her daughter she’ll need to enroll somewhere else.

Campaigns for governor were meanwhile being mounted off of Nixon’s failures, as well as the sense that respect for police had eroded amid the unrest.

Nixon has held office for eight years and is term-limited and his attorney general, Chris Koster, is expected to secure the Democrats’ nomination. Koster, a former Republican who switched parties, has also been critical of Nixon’s handling of the protests, though not as critical as his Republican counterparts. If Republicans can defeat Koster, they’ll once again hold all three branches of the Legislature. That steady shift rightward is due in some measure to the work of Catherine Hanaway.

Missouri long had a reputation as a purple state that voted, almost always, with the rest of the country in presidential races. Until the early 2000s, the Legislature was in Democratic hands. As a staffer for then-Senator Kit Bond, Hanaway watched Bill Clinton win the state twice.

Missouri’s steady shift rightward is due in some measure to the work of Catherine Hanaway. | AP Photos

But in 2001, Republicans won the state Senate. And Hanaway, who after a term as a state representative had been elected to party leadership, set to work recruiting candidates and raising twice as much money as had been spent in the past to get them elected. The work paid off: In 2002, Republicans took the state House for the first time in 48 years, and Hanaway was elected its first female speaker.

Democrats do still hold statewide offices in Missouri, including Claire McCaskill’s Senate seat. But the state has also become a hotbed for conservative activism. Republicans have pushed for a ban on stem cell research, anti-labor-union right-to-work laws and a new measure that allowed gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit, a bill Nixon vetoed.

After losing a bid for secretary of state in 2004, Hanaway took a post as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. She stayed out of politics for a decade until launching her bid for governor in February 2014, a decision she attributes to frustration with politics and encouragement from her husband. She drew big-name support: Megadonor Rex Sinquefield—a multibillionaire financial executive who is known around St. Louis simply as “Rex”—quickly kicked in $1 million to her campaign. Missouri consultant Jeff Roe, who managed Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, consults for Hanaway and Bond gave her his endorsement.

For a time, it appeared Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich would be Hanaway’s main primary contender. But after Schweich’s death, others stepped in to fill the void: Eric Greitens, who is running as an energetic outsider, businessman John Brunner, who ran a failed campaign for Senate in 2012, and current Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder.

Attacks, particularly between Brunner and Greitens, have become more and more heated. In February, an anonymous video, which Greitens accused Brunner of being involved with, accused Greitens of embellishing his record as a Navy SEAL. An anonymous super PAC later ran an ad saying Brunner dodged taxes in his business career, which Brunner says is a lie. Brunner, in turn, criticized Greitens for accepting $1 million in donations from a California man who had been accused of sexually assaulting a young woman over the course of several years—prompting the donor to file a defamation lawsuit against Brunner. Meanwhile, Hanaway has been attacked for voting against concealed carry in 2003, though she’s been a staunch supporter of Second Amendment rights.

But most days, the candidates are campaigning in the small towns that make up much of Missouri’s conservative base and promising voters a safer state, better jobs and protection from the dangers not just at home, but abroad. Even when it’s not the topic at hand, anxiety about Ferguson has a way of working itself into the picture.

Even when it’s not the topic at hand, anxiety about Ferguson has a way of working itself into the picture.

At a Hanaway event in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a retiree leaned in over his coffee to share with the table.

“Let me tell you something about Ferguson,” he said. “Michael Brown had two weapons.”

The notion that Brown was armed is clearly refuted by the Justice Department’s investigation of the shooting. There are other versions of events, some true and some not, that crop up during retellings of the Ferguson protests: Many say the protesters, especially the violent ones, were mostly “bused in,” which is true in the sense that people came to Ferguson from across the country, but ignores the strong community response. One Missourian suggested the protesters were sponsored by organizations funded by Democratic business magnate George Soros. Other details, one of which would provide protesters with a chant that traveled far beyond Ferguson, were also debunked. The words “hands up, don’t shoot,” allegedly uttered by Brown before he was shot, were never corroborated by witnesses. Missourians seized on that inconsistency as evidence that their state should never have been ground zero for America’s race debate.

***

In March of 2015, the DOJ released its report into conduct of the Ferguson Police Department. Investigators found “substantial evidence of racial bias” among police and municipal court staff. Ferguson police had been disproportionately stopping and ticketing black citizens, as well as using unnecessary force like dogs and Tasers. The municipal court system was meanwhile focused on collecting fines from tickets, a key source of revenue for the city, rather than fairly resolving disputes between citizens and the authorities. The department also found “overwhelming evidence of minor municipal code violations resulting in multiple arrests, jail time and payments that exceed the cost of the original ticket many times over.”

“Over time, Ferguson’s police and municipal court practices have sown deep mistrust between parts of the community and the police department,” the report said.

One of the more than 100 demonstrators arrested during a protest along West Florrisant Street in Ferguson, marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, August 10, 2015. | Getty Images

After Ferguson, there were numerous ideas on how to reform law enforcement and the court system in Missouri, most of which fell flat. A couple proposals passed: There’s a new cap on the revenue that St. Louis-area towns can collect via tickets and fees, and police training standards were upgraded for the first time in almost 20 years. Ferguson itself is putting a number of changes in place to its policing and court system, some of them as part of an agreement with the DOJ. Several city officials, including the police chief, have either resigned of been voted out of office. Some of the candidates for governor have called for further changes, like body cameras for police officers, but their ideas often take a back seat to denouncing riots and calling for renewed respect for police that energize Missouri Republicans.

Both sides agree there hasn’t been a productive conversation about race in Missouri, and the state feels as divided as ever.

There hasn’t been a productive conversation about race in Missouri, and the state feels as divided as ever.

“It feels like, if you want to reach out and compromise, you’re selling out,” said Conway, the Republican lawmaker. “And I don’t see another way but compromise on this, because both sides can’t be 100 percent right.”

Compromise though feels unlikely in this climate, where the unrestricted millions of campaign dollars fuel an amped-up, politics-as-sport atmosphere. Scandals are as common as the guns-and-God rhetoric that is standard among Republicans wooing their base.

Greitens—who once entertained a pitch from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to run for Congress as a Democrat—is campaigning in the primary as a “conservative outsider” and seems to have tapped into the same political mood as Donald Trump, to the chagrin of the GOP establishment. Greitens’ campaign ads, which feature him shooting a military rifle and training Rocky-style for a boxing match, caused an uproar and no small amount of amusement. Recent polls have shown him up a fraction over the other candidates, though by all indications the race is nearly tied. (In a rare move, the Democratic Governors Association, apparently nervous about facing the prospect of the energetic former NAVY Seal, has spent more than $500,000 in attack ads against Greitens during the five days leading up to the primary.)

Businessman John Brunner, a former Marine Corps Officer and Christian missionary, has been critical of Greitens, especially for accepting $1 million in donations from a California investor who has been accused of sexually abusing a young woman over the course of years. The investor, Michael Goguen, filed a defamation lawsuit against Brunner last week after Brunner referred to him as “the owner of a teenage sex slave” during a debate.

Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidates during a forum in Jefferson City on November 3, 2015. From left: State Sen. Bob Dixon, former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder. | AP Photos

Kinder, who considers himself a compassionate conservative, announced his run for governor in July 2015, in a parking lot just up the street from Ferguson, joined by area leaders whom he counts as friends. There he made a pledge: “No more Fergusons. Never again.”

Kinder prides himself on the inroads he’s made over the years with black communities in Missouri. He doesn’t win much support in places like Ferguson, which is largely Democratic, but he’s managed to pick up handfuls over the years that he thinks have helped him gain an edge in his lieutenant governor campaigns. But he also frequently boasts his top rating from the National Rifle Association, and after the DOJ found evidence of racial bias among the Ferguson police he denounced the agency as being “staffed with Marxists and black radicals.”

Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Ferguson activist and state senator, said this paradox “is pretty offensive to the people who live in the area.” And the idea that there should have been more force from police in Ferguson indicates the candidates “have no clue of what was going on on the ground,” Chappelle-Nadal said.

Hanaway’s first television ad featured her espousing her “faith in God” and shooting a rifle. (Some told her she’d need to soften her image after entering the race, but polling soon revealed that Missourians “want one tough broad for governor,” Hanaway said with a smile.)

After speaking in Sikeston, while sitting in the county GOP office as voters were gathered on the far side of the room, Hanaway said she hopes Missouri— and the country—can have a different conversation in the future.

“We have to continue to have a serious discussion about race in this country, and it’s unfortunate that it’s at such a fever pitch right now,” Hanaway said. “The temperature’s going to have to come down before we can make that happen.”

She’s just not interested in being the one who does that, at least not before she wins the primary.

At the pancake breakfast in Cape Girardeau, she spent some time dispelling myths from an attack ad launched against her and she talked about the ambush attacks on police—in Dallas, in Baton Rouge, in Ballwin. It breaks her heart she said, that a Missouri officer was shot and paralyzed during a routine traffic stop. Then she switched her attention to the current occupant of the governor’s office, the one person who is not actually on the ballot.

“It’s time we had a governor who will stick their neck out for law enforcement,” Hanaway told the crowd. “You saw what happened. You saw Ferguson burn.”