No blue wave as Republicans maintain supermajority in Missouri General Assembly

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The much talked about blue wave during the midterm elections did not come to fruition in Missouri as Republicans retain a supermajority in the state House and Senate.

Nationally, Republicans lost 25 seats in the United States House of Representatives while maintaining the majority in the U.S. Senate. Missouri’s two U.S. Senate seats are now both represented by Republicans.

While Democrats did pick up three red seats in the Missouri House, Republicans also picked up three blue seats, flipping a seat Democrats flipped in the last special election, leaving the House with 116 Republicans and 47 Democrats.

House Democrats defeated two incumbent-Republican representatives and picked up one seat from a term-limited lawmaker on Tuesday night. Rep. Kevin Corlew lost to Matt Sain in HD 44, Rep. Mark Matthiesen lost to Paula Brown in HD 70, and Keri Ingle will be replacing term-limited Rep. Gary Cross in HD 35.

On the same token, House Republicans picked up two seats from term-limited Democrats and retook the single seat they lost during a February special election. Mary Elizabeth Coleman was successful in reclaim HD 97 from Rep. Mike Revis, who flipped the seat blue in February. Mike McGirl will be replacing term-limited Rep. Ben Harris in HD 118 and Bill Falkner will be replacing term-limited Rep. Pat Conway in HD 10.

The Senate held to the same party split following the election, with Republicans retain 24 seats and Democrats hold 10 seats.

The four contentious seats — SDs 8, 22, 30, and 34 — were all retained by Republicans amongst some hard fought battles.

In what ended up being a repeat of a matchup from the special election that propelled him the Senate, Sen. Mike Cierpoit defeated Hillary Shields by a 9-point margin.

While some polls showed SD 22 to be a tight race, incumbent-Sen. Paul Wieland came out with a roughly 20-point lead over challenger Bob Bulter.

The two closest races that drew statewide attention also remained in Republican hands. Tony Luetkemeyer came out with 52 percent of the vote compared to Martin Rucker’s 47 percent in a battle that resulted in a slew of allegations and ethics complaints. Lincoln Hough managed to gain 53 percent of the vote while Charlie Norr garnered 46 percent.