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July 17, 2024 | By: Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent
By Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent
Missouri State Treasurer Vivek Malek is facing a trio of Republicans running full-fledged campaigns to unseat him in the GOP primary next month, as the first-time candidate vies to earn a full term in the office he was appointed to in 2022.
Malek faces off with state Sen. Andrew Koenig, state Rep. Cody Smith and attorney Lori Rook, with all four doing their best to flex their conservative credentials in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since 2018.
The winner of the primary will face Democrat Osmack and Libertarian John A. Hartwig Jr. in November.
But while they all agree on many issues, how they would run the office if elected reveals key differences.
Malek touts growth in multiple programs in his under two years in office. Throughout this short tenure, he has reiterated the importance of promoting all of the office’s offerings.
In his first year, the treasurer’s office beat the previous year’s record for the amount returned in unclaimed property, with $51.8 million returned to people, up from $50.2 million.
Malek also set a record for the amount doled out to Missourians through MOBUCK$, a low-interest loan program advertised for small businesses and farmers using linked-deposit loans. After loaning $539 million in a year, with a cap at $800 million, the legislature passed a law at Malek’s request to raise the cap to $1.2 billion.
An application window for the MOBUCK$ program this January closed within hours as spots filled up with qualified loans. Malek said he is trying to ensure the program is open to smaller business owners by lowering the maximum loan amount available under MOBUCK$. Previously, the program offered $10 million loans. In August, the amount will be capped at $2 million.
He also touts growth in savings programs MO ABLE, an investment account for people with disabilities, and MOST, which invests savings for education purposes.
MO ABLE accounts grew by 13.7% in 2023, and the portfolio’s assets grew by 25%. MO ABLE is a growing program, first authorized by the state legislature in 2015. MOST’s assets grew by 13% in 2023, slightly below the national average of 15%, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve.
Malek took office months after the MOScholars program was established. MOScholars provides a mechanism for taxpayers to direct general revenue funds into K-12 scholarships largely used for private school tuition, and it is managed by the treasurer.
The program had $9 million in tax credits reserved in 2022 and $16.6 million in 2023, its second year of fundraising.
In 2023, the program struggled with a funding cycle out of pace with the school year and demand for scholarships overwhelming funds.
Malek believes he is the best fundraiser for the program, citing his own success raising money for his campaign.
“If (other candidates) think they are going to be such great fundraisers, why haven’t they been able to do that for their campaign?” he told The Independent. “I don’t have to prove myself on that point.”
While Malek boasts about his fundraising prowess, much of his war chest has come from money he loaned himself or from his former employer.
Malek has received over $1.6 million to his campaign, $800,000 of which is a loan from himself, and has $1.3 million on hand as of the April quarterly report. The pro-Malek PAC American Promise has received nearly $1.5 million in contributions, with $1.23 million on hand. Pacifica Consulting Services, which was registered to Malek before becoming treasurer, has donated $1.8 million to the PAC.
His campaign messaging has included promises to “stand up to the woke agenda” and prevent the state’s investments from being used for environmental, social and governance aspects. These concepts, often abbreviated as ESG, measure a company’s environmental and social impact and have received pushback from right-wing groups.
“The investment of money has to have the sole purpose of getting the best rate of return on investments,” Malek said.
A company with ESG policies wouldn’t immediately be ruled out if it is a solid investment, he said, saying there is a “ranking system” if he believes it would be a poor investment. But he worries that environmental, social and governance metrics have “tentacles” to “reach into the system.”
Malek has ideas for new initiatives, like working with the legislature to create a mandatory personal finance course for high schoolers. He would also like to create investment opportunities for small municipalities.
Before being appointed treasurer, Melek was an attorney, with his St. Louis law firm focusing on immigration, naturalization and asylum. In his latest campaign TV ad, shot at the Mexican border, Malek proclaims a strict stance on immigration and vows to support policies to fortify the southern border and continue divesting from foreign adversaries.
In December, he influenced the Missouri State Employees Retirement Fund to remove investments from companies based in China.
“It does not make any sense to strengthen our adversaries,” he told The Independent. “Anything that we are investing not only strengthens them but also puts our investments at risk.”
He was born in India and moved to Missouri to study business at Southeast Missouri State University. He holds an undergraduate law degree from Maharshi Dayanand University and, in addition to his master’s degree in business, has a master of law from the University of Illinois.
Smith, a state representative from Carthage, has been chairman of the influential House budget committee for six years, giving him massive influence over how Missouri spends taxpayer money.
“That has taught me a lot about the state’s finances, a lot about the management of the state treasury and a lot about appropriation law,” he told The Independent.
Running for state treasurer, Smith said, gives him the opportunity to “continue my work in public service and continue to implement common-sense fiscal policy that saves taxpayers money and increases transparency around the use of their taxpayers dollars.”
His transparency initiatives include enhancing the treasurer’s office’s website to make it “as user-friendly and detailed as possible.”
Smith also sees the potential for increased transparency in the low-income housing tax credits administered by the Missouri Housing Development Commission. The treasurer is one of 10 members of the commission.
“I think (the tax credits) would be more successful if more was known about how they work and how businesses and individuals are leveraging those programs across the state to build more affordable housing,” he said.
Smith is most interested in MOScholars, he said, and sees opportunity to increase awareness statewide of the program.
“There aren’t many folks that know about it,” he said, “and so I want to have those conversations and look for ways to cut through the noise.”
His knowledge of MOScholars, through his work in the legislature authorizing the program, and understanding of education finance will help him promote the program, he said.
Number two on his list of priorities should he be elected treasurer would be “fighting corruption and woke ideology.”
Smith defines “woke” as “the trend that we see in society to put politics ahead of taxpayers’ interests and do things like virtue-signal on a particular issue rather than focus on the fundamentals of good governance.”
As applied to the treasurer’s office, this would look like avoiding ESG in investments.
“I’m interested in investing with primarily financial institutions within Missouri that aren’t caught up in the modern political atmosphere where investments can be made for political purposes rather than for fiduciary responsibility,” he said.
In 2023, Smith proposed cutting state aid to libraries after the Missouri Library Association joined a lawsuit challenging a state law that placed regulations on how children can checkout books in an effort to avoid obscene content.
“The library conversation was one about the use of taxpayers dollars and if they were using taxpayer subsidies to fund the lawsuit that they were engaged in,” he said, adding that he learned taxpayers were not funding the library association’s involvement in the litigation.
He doesn’t anticipate a similar scenario happening to require intervention as treasurer, but he said he would prevent taxpayer funds from going toward organizations in active litigation against the state, should the occasion arise.
Smith’s campaign has raised about $723,000 in the past year, $176,000 of which was donated after he filed his campaign for treasurer. Ozark Leadership Gateway, the PAC supporting him, has raised $140,000 in the same time. Together, the two committees had $505,000 on hand as of their April filings.
Smith has a background in banking and currently operates a business providing ultraviolet decontamination to health care facilities. He is on the Missouri Children’s Trust Fund Board, a state-sponsored nonprofit dedicated to the prevention of child abuse.
Koenig, a state senator from Manchester, has been a top advocate for the MOScholars, sponsoring the proposal for years before finally winning passage in 2021.
If elected, MOScholars would be a “big focus,” he told The Independent.
During the 2024 legislative session, Koenig sponsored a bill that was signed into law expanding MOScholars statewide, giving larger scholarship amounts to students needing specialized services, raising the cap on family income to be eligible for the program and allowing more tax credits to be claimed for MOScholars donors.
He sees potential for additional changes, like removing the requirement for background checks for parents in MOScholars and adding a state grant to match donations to the program. Koenig also would like to make the program more transparent, he said, after he struggled during the legislative session to get data on MOScholars.
“I want to raise as much money as possible so as many kids can get their scholarships and really get that program up and moving in a faster way and create some transparency in the program,” he said.
Koenig envisions going to schools to help fundraise for MOScholars to get the word out about the program, he said.
His campaign messaging says he supports removing barriers to adoption, as he is an adoptive father himself. In the treasurer’s office, he could add a component to MOScholars geared toward foster children, he said.
Like his opponents, he is opposed to ESG investing — though it has been less of a focal point of his campaign.
Koenig would push to ensure pension boards were not using these standards in their investments, he said.
“Even though I am further to the right than most of the legislature, I’ve been proven to work with people and actually accomplish big, conservative things,” he said. “I’ve repeatedly proven myself to be highly effective.”
Koenig is an independent insurance adjuster and has served in the state legislature since 2009. He has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Lindenwood University.
His campaign has raised $196,000 in the past year and the pro-Koenig PAC Freedom’s Promise has amassed $983,000, though both committees’ fundraising in this campaign cycle is under $100,000. Between the two, Koenig had $181,000 on hand, as of April.
Rook is a managing partner and attorney at Ozarks Elder Law in Springfield who has never run for public office before.
Rook’s campaign leans on a promise to bring accountability and make state spending easily trackable via a new website. The state currently has the Missouri Accountability Portal, which tracks government office’s spending and employees’ salaries, but Rook wants a redesign that “calls out hidden spending.”
Pulling from her experience in elder law, Rook promises to lead a program to help protect Missouri’s elderly from scams.
She also wants to educate youth with a program for students on credit-card debt and predatory lending, according to her website.
Rook labels herself a “self-funded outsider” with $500,000 of her nearly $540,000 raised coming as a loan from herself. As of April, she has only spent $31,000 of those funds.
She has a bachelor’s degree in criminology from Missouri State University and a law degree from Oklahoma City University School of Law.
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