Voters in Missouri’s 6th District say they never see Rep. Sam Graves. Does it even matter?

On a busy July day, a streetcar ran along Hannibal’s Main Street, providing a tour of Mark Twain’s birthplace, as the historic district slowly filled with visitors.

In preparation for doing business, Frank North organized novelty postcards in his store, Becky’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor and Emporium. The store is named after the fictional Becky Thatcher from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

“We’re a small business,” North said. “We’ve been serving Hannibal’s visitors for 24 years now.”

When he’s not serving ice cream, North is a member of the Northeast Missouri Conservative Club, but he’s hesitant to talk politics.

Kavahn Mansouri

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The Midwest Newsroom

“Being able to afford gas, groceries, things like that — that’s something people care about,” North said. “We just want someone to think of us when they’re making their legislation and overseeing the bureaucracy.”

A few doors down, Michelle Huseman stocks the shelves of her business, the Mark Twain Book & Gift Shop. Huseman, a Democrat and retired schoolteacher, said that when it comes to politics, education is an important issue for her.

“I’m a retired schoolteacher. I taught for 30 years,” Huseman said. “Making sure that public schools are properly represented and funded? That’s really important.”

North and Huseman agree on the opposite ends of the political spectrum: Most of Missouri’s political energy is concentrated elsewhere, in places like Kansas City and St. Louis.

They also agree that Rep. Sam Graves, their elected representative in Washington, is difficult to communicate with, though they have different perspectives on the matter.

“We don’t see him much — but we’re in the least populated part of the district and that’s OK,” North said. “We hear from him about what he’s trying to do in D.C. and we hope he does what he was elected to do.”

Huseman said she has contacted Graves’ office several times to express her concerns about education funding, but has only received canned email responses.

“If you call his office, if you call to talk to him: You can’t. You can never talk to anyone,” she said.

Big favorite to win

Hannibal is located in the northeastern portion of Missouri’s 6th Congressional District and accounts for approximately 16,900 of the district’s 770,000 residents. In total, the district includes 37 counties and stretches from the Kansas border to the Illinois border.

The 6th District wasn’t always this big. Missouri lost a congressional seat during the redistricting that followed the 2010 Census, in part because the population of several rural northern Missouri counties shrank. At that time, the 6th District was expanded to include most of the state north of the Missouri River.

Of the 12 voters the Midwest Newsroom interviewed in Hannibal in late July, many felt this part of the state was being forgotten by leaders in Washington.

“Our issues are completely different,” Huseman said. “It’s frustrating.”

In addition to her concerns about school funding in the Hannibal area (the school district is facing a budget deficit), Huseman said access to affordable housing is also an overlooked issue.

Kavahn Mansouri

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The Midwest Newsroom

Graves has represented the people of Hannibal and the rest of the district for more than 23 years, securing his seat 11 times. Voters here overwhelmingly chose Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.

On August 6, Missouri voters will go to the polls in a primary. Graves, a native of Tarkio in the northwest corner of the state, is running for the 12th time, with three candidates from the 6th District facing long-term challenges.

Brandon Kleinmeyer of the Kansas City area, Freddie Griffin Jr. of Marion and Weldon Woodward of Novelty are the contenders.

In the 2022 Missouri primary, Graves won the nomination with 75% of the vote and easily retained his seat. The 2024 primary will be Kleinmeyer’s second attempt at Graves’ seat. In the 2022 primary, Kleinmeyer received less than 8% of the votes cast.

Terry Smith, a political science professor at Columbia College in Missouri, said the chances of Graves not winning his primary are virtually zero, citing the Cook Report, an independent election reporting agency that tracks elections.

Two Democrats are running in the primary, but with the 6th District becoming increasingly red, neither Rich Gold of Mexico nor Pam May — like Graves, a native of Tarkio — have much of a chance against Graves in the November general election.

Kleinmeyer, who describes himself as a tax expert, said he is running against Graves because he feels the congressman is disconnected from the district and hopes his candidacy will send a message.

“Some of the people I’ve talked to just want someone to answer them,” Kleinmeyer said. “Even if they don’t like the answer, they don’t want to be ignored. And they feel like they’re being ignored right now.”

Griffin said he heard similar complaints during his campaign, even near Tarkio, the congressman’s hometown.

“I was in Rockport one night, which is only a couple miles from his house,” Griffin said. “And that was a huge complaint, even right there in his own backyard. They can’t get a hold of him, he’s not there, and they can’t get him to show up.”

Over the course of two months, The Midwest Newsroom made repeated requests to interview Graves. His legislative office referred us to his campaign office, which did not respond to our questions. In April, Graves appeared on the KCUR program Up To Date to discuss his call for a new postmaster general in light of customer frustration over mail delivery delays.

www.gravesforcongress.com

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Foot on the ground

When reporters from The Midwest Newsroom, STLPR and KCUR visited communities in the 6th District in 2022, voters shared similar sentiments about Graves. In the southern part of the district, one voter said she had never seen Graves campaign in her area.

“I just feel like he’s out of touch with the people in his own district because he’s not down to earth and he’s not reaching out to people,” Buckner resident Chris Earnshaw said in 2022. “Not just business owners, not just local politicians — people.”

Graves’ campaign website appears to be inactive, with no updates since 2020. The site does not list any campaign events in Missouri this year. His Facebook page is active and focuses on the congressman’s activities in Washington. The congressman’s official House of Representatives website is active and up to date, though it does not contain any campaign information.

According to Smith, it is precisely Graves’ dominance that can give the impression that he has nothing to do with the district.

“The stronger the district is for your party, the less essential it is to be in the district all the time,” Smith said. “He’s won a lot of elections with ease.”

Smith said it could be that Graves is taking the district for granted, which is dangerous for politicians in areas where the election is close. That’s not the case in the 6th District, where Graves is overwhelmingly favored to win.

He said the idea that a candidate is not present may just be a perception.

“It’s a huge district,” Smith said. “You could arrive in Hannibal and St. Joseph wouldn’t know it because it’s 200 miles away.”

Missouri State Rep. Louis Riggs represents Missouri’s 5th District, which overlaps with the U.S. 6th District. Riggs is chairman of the Marion County Republican Central Committee. He said critics of Graves’ connection to the area are placing too much stock in the congressman’s physical presence in the district.

“The size of the district also makes it impossible to be everywhere at once,” Riggs said. “I represent 38,000 people. Chances are, at some point, I’m going to see most of you in some way, shape, or form. You can’t do that with a congressional district that’s almost 40 counties long, it’s physically impossible to do that.”

Riggs believes Graves has been a good steward of the 6th District, particularly Hannibal. He said the congressman’s work on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee directly impacts the commerce that flows through the Mississippi River, which passes right by the city.

He said advocating for river maintenance and promoting commerce on the Mississippi is a boost for the area, especially for farmers who rely on the river to ship their goods.

A review of Graves’ official House of Representatives website shows that he recently introduced a measure that would authorize U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects “to improve the Nation’s ports and harbors, inland waterways, flood and storm protection, and other aspects of our water infrastructure.” Since 2022, he has sponsored or co-sponsored legislation on rural internet access, airport expansion, and rural hospitals.

For Riggs, the challenge for this area in northern Missouri stems from its population and its distance from Jefferson City. He said counties in this region are often overlooked by state legislators because of their shrinking populations.

“For us, the enemy is distance — and that’s a constant of where we live,” Riggs said. “But we shouldn’t be punished just because ‘there’s not a lot of us here.'”

This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism partnership that includes: Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio And NPR.

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