Missouri AG Andrew Bailey’s electoral victory foreshadows a civil liberties nightmare

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey delivers a victory speech to supporters in Columbia after winning the primary election against Republican attorney general hopeful Will Scharf on Tuesday (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent)

Andrew Bailey, the incumbent Republican Attorney General of Missouri, won his first election in a landslide over Democratic rival Elad Gross.

This was expected, given the remarkable success of now-President-elect Donald Trump and a “red wave” national victory with the Show Me State right in the middle of it.

Despite the true fear I have for a Trump return to the White House, I am more concerned over Andrew Bailey’s first full term as this state’s chief law enforcement official.

Bailey ran a bitter campaign during the primary against his GOP rival Will Scharf. Both had the endorsement of Trump, signaling to Missouri voters that the top line of the ballot had very little doubt of who would stump for him in courts at the state and federal levels. Again, this was all expected in a deep red state. Nevertheless, Bailey’s success on Tuesday foreshadows a civil liberties nightmare for specific communities in our state. Since his appointment in 2022, the attorney general has made a name for himself as a far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ MAGA litigator.

He has directly persecuted innocent people and their families, especially people who identify as transgender and members of BIPOC communities throughout much of the state. With four full years now allotted for him, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that Bailey will make life excruciating. 

Consider the success of Amendment 3, which instills a constitutional right to abortion. Planned Parenthood affiliates across the state have filed legal action in the Jackson County Circuit Court seeking to invalidate the legislative ban on abortion access and to resume reproductive care by December. The complaint also seeks to invalidate other restrictions to accessing abortion care. The lawsuit names Andrew Bailey, who is likely to defend the statewide ban and existing policies, or through Bailey’s solicitor general, Josh Divine. Bailey ran on an issue platform that included staunchly pro-life, Christian nationalist positions on bodily autonomy and reproductive rights for women. He and his office will be at the forefront of gutting Amendment 3, including by backing the efforts of the executive branch, under Governor-elect Mike Kehoe, and lawmakers who will advance future ballot measures that threaten the constitutional right to abortion and care.

He will do so under the guise of “upholding the law” and “defending” the people of Missouri. What Bailey has proven when he says he does those things is that he’s just a bully who has lost in court far more than he’s won. In many ways, Bailey is the most powerful elected official in Missouri at this point in time. He will wield unchecked power, unlike anything Kehoe will hold in a few short months. And, this was previously demonstrated in his conduct demonstrating racial bias against Black communities and immigrants.

In March 2024, Bailey announced an investigation into a school district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programming that he connected to an incident of a student beating. The school district, Hazlewood School District in St. Louis County, retorted Bailey accusing the attorney general of having an obvious “racial bias.” This claim derives from the fact that Hazlewood is a majority minority population. According to a letter sent by an attorney for the school district, Bailey’s “obvious racial bias against majority minority school districts is clear.”

AG Bailey’s so-called “investigation” derived nothing.

On top of that, Bailey’s racial bias is seen as it relates to cases of potential innocence among incarcerated people. Bailey worked overtime to keep Marcellus Williams in line for a lethal injection even as St. Louis prosecutors and the family of his victim urged a stay as new DNA evidence should be investigated. Bailey also went out in opposition to releasing people ruled innocent by state courts and kept those innocent people incarcerated. An additional high-profile case involves Christopher Dunn, a black man, and when he was held in prison for more than a week after a judge overturned his guilty conviction and found him innocent. 

The Missouri state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its leadership have noted that Bailey will stump for people, predominantly white men, who he believes were unfairly convicted. A clear case of this was documented in my work for The Pitch, which scrutinized whether Bailey’s office had standing to challenge a guilty verdict doled out to Trump in the so-called hush money trial in New York City involving Stormy Daniels. 

Not only did Bailey sue the State of New York at the U.S. Supreme Court, but he also filed an amicus brief with the court of New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge in that case. No matter how flimsy the case was in Manhattan, the high court declared that he had no legal standing and threw out the case. 

To culminate these biases, Bailey has gone after families of transgender youth and adults with impunity. The most high profile example of this was when he amplified unfounded claims about world-renowned gender affirmation care at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and other gender care facilities throughout the state. He did so in a way that further amplified transphobia and anti-LGBTQ+ bias in medical care, exacerbated by a suite of state laws that make Missouri one of the most dangerous places in the country for these individuals and their families. Bailey’s efforts are focused on infringing on the rights of people of all walks of life and protecting the rights for a select class of people. 

This might be the “will of the people,” but individuals like myself and those who simply want to be able to exist without fear disagree. Andrew Bailey is the personification of MAGA and offers more red flags than any statewide Republican who won on Tuesday. Missouri is Bailey’s fief and he will rule with no accountability.