Missouri Senate District 20 Republicans: Get to know the candidates

We introduced you to Brian Gelner and Curtis Trent last week. Now, let’s get to know them and find out what District 20 voters might expect from their next Republican state senator.

In the Hauxeda’s introduction to this race, we learned about Trent’s political background as the representative of Missouri’s 133rd District and Gelner’s career in beverage distribution.

Both attribute experience in their respective fields as reasons why they could be a successful senator — and both have different ideas on what needs to be done in Jefferson City.

Voters in District 20 that select a Republican ballot will have the options of Gelner, Trent or a write-in candidate to be the Republican nominee for the race.

As there are no other candidates of other political parties in the race, the nominee will face no opposition outside of write-ins in the general election. For all intents and purposes, whoever wins on August 2 will be the next Missouri senator for District 20.

Inflation

Trent and Gelner are hearing the same concerns our other Southwest Missouri candidates are hearing when it comes to the economy: everything is too expensive.

“The inflationary policies of the federal government are out of control, and they’re putting a real squeeze on the middle class and on the economy generally,” Trent said. “Until the federal government stops printing and spending money, it’s not going to abate.”

Additionally, Trent said that “anti-energy” policies from the [Biden] administration are contributing high prices in their respective sectors of the economy. In the meantime, however, Trent thinks there are measures the state can take to mitigate the effects of inflation such as becoming more business-friendly, investing in strong infrastructure and workforce development, and developing a good tax structure.

Gelner reflected Trent’s views on becoming a more pro-business state by providing incoming or expanding businesses with better infrastructure and a stable community.

“What the state can do is make us more attractive and bring more business, more competition,” Gelner said. “Where there’s more competition, that usually brings prices down.”

School board and teacher shortages

When it comes to the role of parents versus the role of local school boards in establishing and approving curriculum used in public schools, Trent and Gelner are, for the most part, on the same page. They both agree with the moniker that “local is best.”

Gelner said that if parents are not happy with a school board, then they voice their concerns by electing new members in the next election cycle. However, he did show support for a Parents’ Bill of Rights — a recently more prominent concept that has made its way in statehouses across the country that establishes the rights of parents in various aspects of their children's upbringing, primarily in education and health care. Missouri’s very own debuts on August 28, 2022.

“I do think a Parents’ Bill of Rights makes sense,” Gelner said. “…we’ve got state money going into the school system, we need that accountability and parents deserve transparency of what their kids are learning.”

Trent, much like Gelner, thinks that the closer the government is to the people, the better, regarding the role of local school boards. However, in support of a Parents’ Bill of Rights, he does think that the state should be involved to ensure that parents have access to curriculums, have the right to withdraw students from certain courses and financial transparency.

“The schools are the operation of the government, and it’s not the role of the government to tell the public what to believe, to influence the public’s political views,” Trent said. “The schools are meant to teach math, science, history, reading, writing, basics, and that’s what they should be focused on. Any of the political projects should be left at the schoolhouse gate.”

Regarding book bannings, Gelner suggested that younger children should be protected from certain content, but as students get older, the school board should be able to determine students’ access to certain kinds of books.

While teacher shortages are not a new phenomenon, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the problem. Earlier this year, the Hauxeda took an in-depth look at the causes of the shortage, and the effects its having on the public school system. While Gelner is supportive of continuing to raise teacher pay and promote programs that incentivize an educational career path, he thinks a major problem is how society views the occupation.

“When I was a little kid, you looked up to your teachers, you looked up to your police force, you looked up to firefighters,” Gelner said. “It feels like, for whatever reason, society has pulled all of those down…and so we need to give them the support we can.”

Trent believes a big reason public schools are experiencing an exodus of teachers is the decline in the quality of life at the job due to federal government regulations.

“A whole lot of their year is taken up in fulfilling government mandates and not in the basics of education, and many of them find that frustrating,” Trent said. “…that could be addressed fairly straightforwardly by just severing our ties to the federal government on education.”

He also understands that teacher pay is a contributing factor to why educators are leaving the industry, but said that it can’t be addressed as long as we keep experiencing record-high inflation because the state can’t keep up on state worker salaries.

COVID, health care and PDMPs

For some, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced similar questions for local health departments as it did for school boards.

“This is the people’s government, so the government should be accountable to them at all levels, and that includes public health,” Trent said.

While he showed support for public health, Trent thinks some of the measures taken and recommended by health departments at the onset of the pandemic should’ve been decided by the people at a ballot box.

Something that will soon be shifting from local to state is the operation of a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), which Trent said he believes will ultimately be ineffective. PDMPs are electronic databases that track prescriptions with the intent to improve opioid prescribing and provide medical personnel with information to make better decisions.

“You really need to crack down on the offenders; enforcement is the way to do that,” Trent said. “You go after the drug dealers, you go after the pill mill doctors. You have tough penalties and you dedicate law enforcement resources to tracking down and stopping these.”

The Hauxeda recently reported on the short life of Missouri’s enforcement-oriented PDMP, and why it failed.

When it comes to the role of public health departments, Gelner doubled down on his favorable opinion of letting local government bodies make decisions for themselves. He emphasized that decisions regarding local health should be left to officials who specialize in that field.

“I look at our public health people as an asset,” Gelner said. “They should for sure give us as much information and tell us what they think. They’re doing it for the right reasons, they’re telling us the issues and they’re giving us the best information out there.”

Additionally, in rural communities, which make up a large part of District 20, Gelner would like to see improvements made in telehealth, which, in turn, would require more widespread access to broadband that he would also support.