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News Brief

Oct. 30, 2018 |  By: John Coffey

Hegeman runs for re-election

12th district Missouri State Senator Dan Hegeman, a Republican from Cosby, is running for a second term in next week's General Election. Hegeman has previously served as a State Representative and Andrew County Clerk. One issue the Missouri General Assembly dealt with the past several years has been cuts to higher education funding. Hegeman says the past session restored some of the cuts to the higher education budget.

"I think many of us would like to see us continue to sustain the funding for higher education - maybe put some money into the performance goals and reward colleges and universities on obtaining these goals.  But then again, we haven't looked at some capital funds for some time now."

Hegeman has come out against Amendment One on next week's ballot. Amendment One calls for stronger ethics laws and for the creation of a nonpartisan state demographer to re-draw state legislative districts in an effort to eliminate gerrymandering of districts. Hegeman says he doesn't have an issue with ethics reforms but questions the efforts to re-draw district lines.

"Basically looking at 50-50 districts, my problem with that is that to gain a 50-50 Republican/Democratic district in many parts of the state, you will really be dividing communities of interest.  It is hard to get a 50-50 district in inner-city St. Louis and inner-city Kansas City.  There's just not enough Republicans to make that work, so they'll have to draw these long snake-y lines to be able to gain enough Republicans to get 50-50.  It's also very difficult to get a 50-50 district in southwest Missouri and maybe even northwest Missouri where there are a lot of Republicans."

Hegeman is being challenged in next election by Democratic Candidate Terry Richard of Holt, Missouri.