Missouri
The short version: Who won, what passed Nov. 5 in Missouri general election
Missouri voters have been casting ballots for more than a week, and many of the election results were known by late Tuesday. But not all.
Here is an overview of everything on the ballot in Springfield as well as the top leaders elected in Missouri and across the U.S.
Early Wednesday morning, former president Donald Trump appeared headed to the White House. Missouri was solidly red, supporting the Republican ticket Trump and running mate JD Vance. Trump was leading Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic ticket in projected Electoral College votes, though results were still being counted in a number of battleground states either candidate would need to win.
Republican incumbent Josh Hawley secured a second term in the seat he took from Democrat Claire McCaskill in 2018. His chief challenger was Democrat Lucas Kunce, a former Marine and military lawyer who raised significant money in his long-running bid for the seat.
Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe will be Missouri’s 58th governor.
Kehoe, a Jefferson City Republican endorsed by Parson, defeated state Rep. Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat who serves as minority leader in the Missouri House, in what was a comparatively frugal campaign.
With Kehoe running for governor, the race for lieutenant governor was open. Republican Dave Wasinger, a St. Louis attorney emerged the winner in a crowded GOP primary and won the position, which serves as the next in line to the governor and breaks tie votes in the state Senate.
State Sen. Denny Hoskins, the Republican candidate, declared victory late Tuesday, succeeding outgoing Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who lost a bid for governor in the Republican primary.
Incumbent Vivek Malek, a Republican appointed by the governor in 2022, secured a full term as the state’s chief financial officer, responsible for managing annual state revenues, directing bank services and overseeing the state’s investment portfolio.
Incumbent Andrew Bailey, a Republican, was appointed the Missouri Attorney General by Gov. Mike Parson, taking office in January 2023 after Eric Schmitt was elected to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate. He won his first election Tuesday.
In southwest Missouri, first-term Republican Rep. Eric Burlison retained the 7th District seat he won two years ago after U.S. Rep. Billy Long vacated the seat to run for Senate.
Missouri legislative races
All seats in the Missouri House of Representatives were up for a vote in the election, along with one of the state Senate seats in the Springfield area. Winners in Springfield-area districts include:
Senate District 29
- Mike Moon – Republican – winner
House District 129
- John Black – Republican – winner
House District 130 – Incumbent Republican Bishop Davidson was ahead in early totals but many votes remained uncounted late Tuesday due to delayed results in Greene County.
- Bishop Davidson – Republican
- Leslie Jones – Democratic
House District 131 – Incumbent Republican Bill Owen was ahead in early totals but many votes remained uncounted late Tuesday due to delayed results in Greene County.
- Bill Owen – Republican
- Ashley Cossins – Democratic
House District 132 – Democratic candidate Jeremy Dean was ahead in early totals but many votes remained uncounted late Tuesday due to delayed results in Greene County.
- Jeremy Dean – Democratic
- Stephanos Freeman – Republican
House District 133 – Incumbent Republican Melanie Stinnett was ahead in early totals but many votes remained uncounted late Tuesday due to delayed results in Greene County.
- Melanie Stinnett – Republican
- Derrick Nowlin – Democratic
House District 134
- Alex Riley – Republican – winner
House District 135 – Incumbent Democrat Betsy Fogle was ahead in early totals but many votes remained uncounted late Tuesday due to delayed results in Greene County.
- Betsy Fogle – Democratic
- Michael Hasty – Republican
House District 136 – Incumbent Democrat Stephanie Hein was ahead in early totals but many votes remained uncounted late Tuesday due to delayed results in Greene County.
- Stephanie Hein – Democratic
- Jim Robinette – Republican
House District 137
- Darin Chappell – Republican – winner
House District 138
- Burt Whaley – Republican – winner
House District 139
- Bob Titus – Republican – winner
House District 140
- Jamie Ray Gragg – Republican – winner
There’s was only one contested race for Greene County office, for the District 2 seat on the county commission. With half of the country’s precincts reported, incumbent John Russell, a Republican, was leading Democratic candidate Tim McGrady by a margin of more than 10 percentage points.
Other county races, all featuring Republican incumbents running unopposed, included:
Greene County Sheriff – Jim C Arnott – winner
Greene County Assessor – Brent Johnson – winner
Greene County Treasurer – Justin R. Hill – winner
Greene County Public Administrator – Sherri Eagon Martin – winner
Final results were not available by late Tuesday night but all the judges up for retention votes on Springfield-area ballots were poised to remain in office. They included:
- Judge Kelly C. Broniec of the Missouri Supreme Court
- Judge Ginger K. Gooch of the Missouri Supreme Court
- Judge Becky J.W. Borthwick of the Court of Appeals – Southern District
- Judge Jennifer R. Growcock of the Court of Appeals – Southern District
- Judge Derek A. Ankrom of the Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 1
- Judge Kaiti Greenwade of the Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 2
- Judge Dan Wichmer of the Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 3
- Judge T. Todd Myers of the Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 4
- Judge Jerry A. Harmison, Jr. of the Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 5
- Judge Joshua B. Christensen of the Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 6
- Judge Andy Hosmer of the Associate Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 23
- Judge Kirsten Poppen of the Associate Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 24
- Judge Josephine (Jody) L. Stockard of the Associate Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 25
- Judge Ron Carrier of the Associate Circuit Judge – Circuit 31 – Div 26
A question asking Springfield voters to replace the city’s expiring 3/4-cent sales tax — which since 2009 has funded the shortfall in the city’s police and fire pension fund — with a new combination of taxes of equal amount appeared to be approved late Tuesday. With 46 of 56 precincts reporting, votes in favor were well ahead, with the tax garnering more than 62% of the vote.
Amendment 2, which would legalize sports betting in Missouri, was slightly ahead in the vote tally but results were not final late Tuesday.
Amendment 3, enshrining abortion-rights protections in the state’s constitution, was approved Tuesday.
Amendment 5, which would amend the state constitution and expand riverboat gambling in Missouri to allow a casino on the Osage River, had not been called late Tuesday but was trending toward defeat in late results.
This amendment, which would have allowed the state to levy court fees to support salaries and benefits for current and former sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys and circuit attorneys, was trending toward defeat Tuesday.
Amendment 7, placed on the Nov. 5 ballots by the Missouri legislature, alters the state constitution to effectively ban ranked-choice voting in the state, as well as stipulating that only U.S. citizens can vote. It passed decisively Tuesday.
Proposition A was approved Tuesday, increasing the minimum wage in Missouri — which currently stands at $12.30 an hour — and requiring employers to provide paid sick leave. It calls for Missouri’s minimum wage to increase to $13.75 an hour on Jan. 1, 2025, then to $15 an hour in 2026, with adjustments each year after that based on the Consumer Price Index. Employers would be required to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.
SHELL KNOB, Mo. (Edited News Release/KY3) -A Barry County man recently broke the Missouri state record after catching a yellow bass on Table Rock Lake.
According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, Danny Naugle, of Cassville, reeled in the record-breaking fish while fishing on Table Rock Lake on May 13. The fish broke the state record previously set in 1995.
The fish weighed 2 pounds, 7 ounces, and measured 16.5 inches. It was just two ounces shy of the world record, the department said.
MDC said Naugle normally casts for crappie, using an ultra-light rod and lights to draw baitfish.
The previous record was set in 1995 by a 9-ounce fish caught from a slough off the Mississippi River, according to MDC.
The department said Naugle plans to get the yellow bass mounted. His catch marks the first state record fish recorded for 2026.
To report a correction or typo, please email digitalnews@ky3.com. Please include the article info in the subject line of the email.
Copyright 2026 KY3. All rights reserved.
Increased fertilizer prices have farmers concerned
Let’s look at how economic and farming experts see this playing out in the coming months, and what that means for all of us.
While industries across the U.S. are experiencing shortages as a result of the war in Iran, it appears Missouri farmers could come out without much impact — this year, at least.
The conflict has seen closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway for one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas. All the shipping disruption has increased the price of fuel, vital to the production of fertilizer, and has limited the export of nitrogen-based fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf.
Ultimately, experts say, it could disrupt the supply chain for months to come and further drive up grocery prices. The World Bank has even warned that the conflict could threaten food security worldwide.
Most Missouri row crop producers — whose fields yield corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and peanuts — had secured the majority of the fertilizer they needed for the year before the conflict began, said Ben Brown, University of Missouri Extension’s state crop row economist.
“There’s probably about 15% of our fertilizer needs still left from the row crop space that would have been used in-season,” Brown said. “The majority of it was already here and already paid for. For this growing season, there’s not as much of a concern about fertilizer as it would be next year.”
Dr. Joana Colussi, research assistant professor in Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics, points to a late March survey of nearly 1,000 corn growers conducted by the National Corn Growers Association. Eight out of 10 corn growers said their 2026 corn acreage plans have not been impacted by the Middle East conflict, which has seen fertilizer prices spike as high as 45%.
In April, an American Farm Bureau Federation Fertilizer Availability Survey of more than 5,700 farmers and ranchers across the country plainly stated that “rising input costs tied to the conflict in the Middle East are adding strain to an already challenging farm economy.”
But the survey also found pronounced variance in fertilizer pre-booking rates by region. Fully 67% of Midwestern commodity farmers typically relying on soybean and corn — the nation’s two largest crops — reported having made fertilizer purchases ahead of the planting season that is now at its peak.
It’s a number more than twice as high as any other region.
“Given these crop rotations, pre-booking is more common in the Midwest, where fertilizer needs are typically larger and purchasing decisions are often made well ahead of planting,” the American Farm Bureau Federation stated. “As a result, a larger share of Midwestern farmers reported being able to secure the inputs they need before recent price increases.”
Looking ahead to this fall
None of this means the Midwestern farm economy is barreling onward and upward, impervious to the effects of the Iranian conflict.
Timing is everything in agriculture. The conflict in Iran broke out when farmers were on the precipice of their spring plant of corn and soybeans, typically used for livestock feed, food and biofuels. Fertilizers are applied just before or at planting time.
Most Midwestern farmers may have pre-purchased their fertilizers for this crop season — but farmers must plant with one eye fixed firmly on the future, said Brady Holst, vice chairman of the Illinois Soybean Association.
“Around 20% (of Midwest farmers) that put nitrogen (fertilizer) on (their farmland) in the spring or in (planting) season would be hit hard by higher prices because they are buying now or in the next month or two,” said Holst, who farms soybeans, corn and wheat on 3,600 acres in West Central Illinois.
“It has all farmers worried because usually they will buy fertilizer for this coming fall ahead of time. And fertilizer prices move slowly around the world, so it takes a long time for fertilizer prices to move down. So even if the (Iranian) conflict ended today, the price for fall fertilizer would still be elevated.”
Veronica Nigh, senior economist at The Fertilizer Institute, points out that the United States produces about 60% of its own total needs for the phosphate fertilizer used extensively in corn and soybean production.
The U.S. still imports a significant portion from Saudi Arabia, Nigh said during an April 23 seminar of the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Agricultural Market Information System.
“We have significant exposure from the Middle East,” she said. “From a timing perspective, however, those phosphate imports tend to come in earlier in the year, so much of that product was already in place prior to the Strait (of Hormuz) closure.”
But Nigh said one of the Fertilizer Institute’s members had reminded her that “we’re an industry that builds product for four months and then applies it for two.”
“So we’re now certainly getting into the time of the year where we’re looking and thinking and worrying about building those supplies for the fall application,” she said.
‘The whole world revolves around diesel fuel’
The war in Iran, in addition to issues with U.S. oil refineries, has led to record prices.
“Diesel fuel here in the U.S. is actually more expensive than it was in the run-up to the COVID-19 outbreak and the conflict that we saw in Russia and Ukraine. That’s how high diesel prices have gotten here lately,” Brown said. “It’s a combination of the Middle East plus some refinery issues in the U.S.”
Part of this is due to the fact that most of the oil produced in the U.S. is used for gasoline production, while heavy crude oil, which is used to produce diesel for tractors and trucks, is imported. This could lead to higher prices at the grocery store, Brown said.
“Any time we see higher oil prices, it increases the cost from farm gate to retail,” Brown said. “So much of the food dollar now comes from that part of the equation, that the real impact to producers is going to be the higher diesel fuel cost on all of this (and) the lack of production of agriculture commodities.”
Dairy farmer Jim Good, farm manager of Michigan State University’s Dairy Cattle Teaching & Research Center, pointed to a surge in diesel prices that, Good says, is putting the hurt on him.
Everything burns diesel fuel on a dairy farm — everything from tractors to semi-trucks, Good said.
“Everything is freighted in and freighted out (by semi trucks) on the dairy farm,” he said. “We’ve got feed coming in. We’ve got milk going out. The whole world revolves around diesel fuel, so when it goes from $3 a gallon to $6 a gallon, it gets to be pretty pricey.
“Some of our products — if you’re not raising your own grain products, those all have to be trucked in. We don’t have processing on site, so we’ve got to haul that milk out.”
The Iran war’s disruption of global energy production has led to steeper petrol, diesel and jet fuel prices. Diesel, which was averaging more than $5.70 a gallon in Michigan and Indiana as of May 1, according to AAA, remained above $4.40 on average following Memorial Day weekend. If the higher energy prices continue, that will also put pressure on Missouri producers.
“We are starting to see higher energy prices feed into the inflationary pressures,” Brown said. “Part of the expectation would be that if this continues, we’d see higher interest expenses for producers later in the year.”
During an April 13 visit to Michigan State University’s Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins brought some help for Michigan’s specialty crop sectors — an increase from $165 million to $275 million in Specialty Crop grants.
Taking the long view
If the war with Iran continues, there will likely be impacts on Missouri producers next season, Brown said. Higher fertilizer prices would result in producers having to make changes to their crops.
“We’ll probably see a bit of higher fertilizer prices if (the war is) still around,” Brown said, which will likely result in farmers shifting “to the less fertilizer-dependent crops; reducing fertilizer, which potentially has an impact on yield — those would be things we expect for next year.”
The Illinois Soybean Association’s Holst finds hope in a push within Congress to let gas stations sell E-15 — gasoline blended with 15% ethanol — nationwide and year-round to ease fuel costs without forcing stations to overhaul their equipment. The U.S. House passed the legislation May 13 but it faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued temporary emergency fuel waivers to allow nationwide sales of E-15 in past years, but Holst said he and other farmers want it to be permanent.
“They were worried about that becoming a smog problem, but there’s been lots of queries and studies with more modern vehicles and how the gasoline system is now,” he said. “There’s not really a concern for that, so it’s just kind of the slow grinding cogs of the government. Technology’s advanced a lot faster than we can advance the legislation that’s out there.”
If fertilizer prices don’t come down for farmers by the middle of summer or this fall, Holst said, there will be noticeable “acreage shifts” — a move away from planting corn to planting soybeans, which require less nitrogen fertilizer, meaning lower production costs.
That would be felt in Illinois, the nation’s largest soybean producing state and second-largest corn producing state.
In a recent survey of 4,000 farmers across 26 states, Chicago-based Farmer’s Keeper LLC found considerable sentiment for such a shift.
“Since March 1, 21% of farmers said they plan to decrease their corn acres,” Farmer’s Keeper CEO Nick Tsiolis said in a recent episode of Ag Marketing IQ in Depth.
The Farmer’s Keeper survey tracks with findings from a recent Farm Futures Q1 survey, which showed 43% of farmers planning to grow less corn. But it also clashes with a March 31 USDA Prospective Plantings report that predicted only a 3.4% decrease from last year’s corn plantings.
Tsiolis told Ag Marketing IQ in Depth that farmers must make future cropping decisions with great care.
“Soybeans could fall out of bed really quickly if oil prices drop and diesel costs come down,” he said.
“Farming is a long-term game,” Tsiolis said. “Profitability comes from balancing agronomic and budgeting decisions, not making drastic swings year to year.”
Looking ahead, Purdue’s Colussi and Langemeier say the U.S. and Brazil — the world’s largest soybean producer and exporter — must better protect themselves in the future from “external shocks” like the conflict in Iran. They called on the two nations to more aggressively expand their fertilizer production.
“This is a long-term challenge, but it is becoming increasingly necessary for both countries to remain competitive in the global grain market,” they wrote. “Greater supply security would reduce vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions and provide more stability in input costs for producers.”
News-Leader reporter Susan Szuch contributed to this story.
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