An Interview with
Larry E. Mead
At his office in Columbia, Missouri
03 November 2004
interviewed by N. Renae Farris
Oral History Program The State Historical Society of Missouri © 2004
Collection C3929 Politics in Missouri a.c. 317
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PREFACE
Larry E. Mead was born on March 1, 1938 in Avon, Illinois, the son of Ralph and Marie Mead. Early on he was introduced to politics, primarily by his Democratic maternal grandfather, George “Bud” McFarland. Mead graduated from Western Illinois University in 1961 with an AB in Agriculture, a minor in Journalism and a minor in Business Administration. At this stage of his life he combined these interests when moved to Columbia, Missouri to work for Sheep Breeder Magazine. His first elected office was that of Boone County Judge, serving from 1971 to 1973, whereupon he then entered the Missouri House of Representatives. Mead, a Republican, served as a state representative for ten years. In 1982 he ran unsuccessfully for U.S. representative against incumbent Harold Volkmer. For Mead‟s most recent biographical entry, please see The Official Manual of Missouri, 1981-1982, page 106.
The interview took place in the offices of Sheep Breeder Magazine in Columbia, Missouri. Numerous topics were covered, including Boone County politics, secret ballot legislation, campaign methods, the formation of the Missouri Association of Counties, the Equal Rights Amendment, the death penalty, and Mead‟s memories of his legislative colleagues. Although time constraints caused the recording session to be cut short, Mr. Mead graciously agreed to complete the interview at a later date. This may be found in C3929, a.c. 318.
The interview was recorded on a Maxell Communicator Series C60 audio cassette (normal bias), using a Marantz PMD-222 manual recorder (set on automatic recording level) and a Shure VP64 omni-directional microphone. Except for occasional paper shuffling noises and telephone ringing, there are no interfering sounds, and the recording is of generally very good quality.
The following transcript represents a rendering of the oral history interview. Stylistic alterations have been made as part of a general transcription policy. The interviewee offered clarifications and suggestions, which the following transcript reflects. Any use of brackets [ ] indicates editorial insertions not found on the original audio recordings. Physical gestures, certain vocal inflections such as imitation, and/or pauses are designated by a combination of italics and brackets [ ]. Any use of parentheses ( ) indicates a spoken aside evident from the speaker's intonation, or laughter. Quotation marks [“”] identify speech depicting dialogue, speech patterns, or the initial use of nicknames. Double dashes [--] and ellipses […] are also used as a stylistic method in an attempt to capture nuances of dialogue or speech patterns. Words are italicized when emphasized in speech. Particularly animated speech is identified with bold lettering. Underlining [ __ ]indicates a proper title of a publication. Although substantial care has been taken to render this transcript as accurately as possible, any remaining errors are the responsibility of the editor, N. Renae Farris.
[Tape meter, 001. Begin side one, tape one of one. Begin interview.]
RF: Today is Wednesday November 3, 2004. This is Renae Farris for the State Historical
Society of Missouri. I‟m in Columbia, Missouri interviewing Larry Mead who was in the
House of Representatives. He was first elected in 1972 and he served, what, ten years?
LM: Yes.
RF: Okay. Well, to start out with: When and where were you born; who were your parents?
LM: I was born in Avon, Illinois. My parents were Ralph and Marie Mead. Born in 1938,
March 1st.
RF: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
LM: Two younger brothers.
RF: What did your parents do for a living?
LM: Well, my father at the time I was born was a professional baseball player. He played for
the St. Louis Cardinals. When he left the Cardinals he went to Caterpillar Tractor
Company in Peoria, Illinois where he was Activities Director, which is essentially the
same thing as Athletic Director, and they used to have those industrial league teams. So
he ran those teams. But later, [he] went into the grocery business. He and his brother
bought from their father (my grandfather) the Mead Brothers Grocery business, and they
ran a grocery store the rest of his life.
RF: Was he ever involved in politics, or your mother for that matter?
LM: Yes, very much so. I‟m a hybrid. My mother‟s family were very strong Democrats. My
maternal grandfather was a very active Democratic politician. He was a postmaster, and
in those days, why, postmasters were all political appointments. He was an FDR
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 1
[Franklin Delano Roosevelt] Democrat and very active in his county and was president of
the Illinois Postmasters Association, which was a very political group, and was very
involved in getting Adlai Stevenson to run for governor in Illinois. So [I] had that
[background.] The Mead side of the family, they were Republicans. So that‟s why I say
I‟m kind of a hybrid thing, I got exposed to it. My father never ran for political office,
although he was a school board member for a number of years.
RF: Your grandfather who was so politically active on your mother‟s side, what was his
name?
LM: George McFarland. He was known as “Bud” McFarland. He was a Democrat in
essentially a Republican area, and I got very good training from him in what you might
call “minority politics.” When I came down here and started running as a Republican I
put that to good use.
RF: Who were your role models when you were growing up?
LM: When we were growing up…? Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois -- if you‟re talking about
political...?
RF: It doesn‟t matter.
LM: Yeah. That… A mentor that I had that was very important to me in my life was a man
named Carl Dunbar, who was a cousin of my father. He was involved in the sheep
business, got me into 4H. He and his wife did not have children, and they kind of half-
adopted me and I spent a great number of my summers with them. Got into a 4H project
with sheep that got out of hand and got me into the Sheep Breeder Magazine business.
So he was a very important influence in my life.
2 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
RF: Where did you go to school?
LM: Western Illinois University, which was in our section of Illinois.
RF: Did you study Journalism or English or…? What was your major?
LM: Well, I was an Agricultural major, but I had a minor in Journalism and a minor in
Business Administration.
RF: When did you come here to Columbia?
LM: I graduated from Western in mid-term in February, and finished my classes on a Friday
and came down here on a Sunday. (laughs) And came to work for this Sheep Breeder
Magazine.
RF: When did you become politically active in this area?
LM: Oh… (chuckles) You know, if you‟re talking about partisan politics probably, oh, it was
probably four of five years before I got real involved. But in our family we were
always… Not pressured, but certainly encouraged to be involved in community affairs
and community activity. As soon as I came to town I got into Jaycees and was very
active in that. I got involved in some local campaigns.
[Tape meter, 050]
Mayor John [H.] Longwell, when he ran for mayor, I helped with his committee. And
got involved with some campaigns that way. I was later appointed to the Columbia
Airport Advisory Board and was involved. And the Jaycees were the instigators of
getting the bond issue passed to create the new airport south of town. It‟s not new to
you… (laughs) But that airport was new at one stage. And so I was very much involved
in that. And that‟s what kind of got me involved in things.
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 3
RF: What was the first political office you ran for?
LM: Well, where I got involved in partisan politics… I managed the campaign in 1968 for a
fellow named John [W.] Bachmann, who was a local stockbroker for Edward Jones. He
did not win that race, but he came very close to winning it.1 He went on to become
president of Edward Jones and now he‟s [Chairman] this year of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce. (chuckles) So John‟s done pretty well. That was in „68. The following
election year (two years later in 1970) as a result of that I ran for what was then the
county court. We call it the county commission now. And I was elected to the county
court. Served two years there, and then ran for the legislature in „72 and was elected.
RF: Why did you opt to run for the legislature?
LM: Well, you know, you get involved in the county government and you saw all the
restrictions we had, and so, you know, you could only make so many changes. And I was
very much involved in some election reform matters. The seat came up or the seat was
open, and so I ran for the legislature. It was just a progression.
RF: What do you think were some of the biggest issues when you were a County Judge?
LM: Well, there were two of us that [were elected] in ‟70: Jim Butcher (who has subsequently
died), but Jim and I were the first two Republicans ever elected to the county court in
Boone County. We really were elected pretty much as reform candidates. Progressives,
I guess you would say. The county court had been -- and I don‟t want to say this in a
derogatory sense -- but had been basically older rural fellows that had been retired, really
didn‟t have anything to do but sit around, and they‟d sit up there in their so-called court
1 Referring to the 1968 general election for the Missouri Senate District 19 seat. It was won by incumbent A. Basey Vanlandingham [D].
4 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
all day long. In their mind their biggest task would be that of managing a county road
system. Essentially it was sitting there waiting for something to happen. Butcher and I,
when we ran, we said [if] we were going to be elected we weren‟t going to sit around
there all day, that we would have scheduled meetings, and… There were just a lot of
changes. We went from the old paper ballot. Elections, we put in new electronic… It
was punch card systems at that stage. We combined the city and county health
departments. Tried to do more work with the city on road maintenance. All kinds of
different projects. We bought the Daniel Boone Hotel as a county-city building. Tried to
combine lots of things with the city.
RF: What was the county road system like back then?
LM: Well, it was essentially the same as it is today, although we‟ve got a lot more money
involved in the county road maintenance today. We have approximately a thousand
miles of county maintained highway. And I think that‟s essentially the same as today.
We didn‟t have near as many funds. There since have been passed road taxes and so
forth that increases that. But it was pretty much strictly a gravel road operation.
[Speaking hesitantly] I don‟t want to sound too harsh on former officeholders, but it was
a more of a “react to problem” sort of thing. There was no advance planning that “we
ought to upgrade this road this year” or “two years hence we‟ll do these,” and so on and
so forth. It was just a case of almost reacting to…
RF: More of a hodge-podge approach?
LM: Yeah, a hodge-podge approach of reacting to whatever problems existed.
[Tape meter, 100]
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 5
RF: I was astonished to find [while doing background research] that in the county there were
fifty-seven bridges that had been around 1900 still in use!
LM: Oh, yes. Sure, sure. Yeah, but that‟s kind of the way it is… And that‟s what [happens]
when you don‟t have a good road plan. The county government now… You know,
we‟ve got a county government works director that‟s trained and… They‟re far more
progressive and more professional than we were. We were the ones that kind of got some
of that started. But you know, quite frankly, we were pikers compared to what they‟re
doing today.
RF: What about planning and zoning out in the county?
LM: We established that when were in... That was another thing we got passed. There was no
planning and zoning prior to the time that we went on the court in 1970, and that was one
of our big issues too, was to create planning and zoning. [Smiling] You know, we got it
created, then we left all the problems for subsequent courts to deal with.
RF: (laughs) You‟d mentioned the punch card system -- it‟s out of the line of questioning,
but I can‟t resist -- what do you think of the new computerized [system], the touch screen
voting that some places are adopting now?
LM: I presume it‟s all right. You ask me what I think of it, I haven‟t seen it. I haven‟t
experienced [it.]
RF: Fair enough.
LM: I don‟t know about it. But the punch card system we went to was really very good.
[Smiling] I don‟t know why Florida had the hanging chad problems. You know, I don‟t
know what that was all about. But we did not have any of those kinds of problems. Now,
6 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
you know as you go along you always have increased technology, and so Wendy Noren2
changed from our punch cards to the optical scanners. You know, this is not something I
keep track of, but I suppose we‟ve been doing that for ten years now. And I have no
problem with that. That‟s just another step forward. When you‟re talking about these
touch screen voting systems, that‟s still another one. You‟d like to able to have some
kind of a paper trail to it, and I guess there is some mechanism for having a paper trail on
the touch screen deal.
But you know, elections were something I was very much involved in. I moved
here from Illinois. And the first election I voted in, I was just shocked when I went in
and requested my ballot and received my ballot and then they marked the voter number
that I was on the back of that ballot. And they had this black sticker that you placed over
it which was supposed to assure the secrecy of the ballot. But naturally if you‟d hold that
up to the light you could read that number right through there. And to me, any ballot that
has any means of being traced is not a secret ballot! So in the legislature one of my big
deals was to create a secret ballot and to abolish that system of marking the ballots and
using these black stickers, which required a constitutional amendment. We got the
constitutional amendment passed by the House and Senate, then it has to go to a vote of
the people, and got that approved. Then you have to go back and do implementing
legislation to change your state‟s statutes to comply with the constitution. And so I
handled all that legislation. That was one my good achievements, I think.
RF: Yes. What was the logic behind having them numbered in the first place?
2 Boone County Clerk at the time of the interview.
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 7
LM: (chuckles) Goes back to Tom Pendergast in Kansas City…?
RF: Oh, okay.
LM: …when they thought the elections were all being rigged and it was a way of…
Supposedly it was a reaction to the Pendergast regime in Kansas City. Do you know
about Pendergast; what I‟m talking about when I…?
RF: Oh, sure!
LM: Well, he was a big political boss. In fact, Harry Truman came out of Pendergast‟s gang,
but really was a friend of Pendergast‟s son. (chuckling) I don‟t want to say there‟s
anything wrong with Harry Truman -- that‟s not my purpose -- but Pendergast had a lot
of political control in the western part of the state and even influence across the state.
[Tape meter, 150]
And this numbering of the ballots and the covering [with] the black sticker so that they
could go back and trace a ballot was the result of the concerns about Tom Pendergast‟s
influence. And I recognize why they did it at the time. I still think having a secret ballot
is more important, and [I] had no hesitation to remove that. But that did come up in a
few cases about, well, you know, “why did we put that on there” -- some people wanted
to preserve that system.
RF: Well, how difficult was it for you to be elected in this area? It‟s traditionally Democrat,
but I know Mr. George Parker had been elected before you as a Republican.
LM: Yes, that‟s correct. And I followed him. He ran for state treasurer in ‟72 and I ran for his
vacated seat. And you know, you say, “How difficult was it?” (chuckles) I don‟t know
how difficult! You know, any election‟s difficult! But I was in the process of
8 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
completing a two-year term on the county court, and I think had created a pretty good
image, a pretty positive image in the minds of voters of being a competent person. And
so running for legislature, I was replacing a Republican. It certainly was not a
Republican district. If you want to talk about basic Democratic votes… For example, in
primaries. All of my elections, the Democrat would have double the number of votes I‟d
get as a Republican in the primary. But then sometimes triple. But Boone County also is
the biggest ticket splitting county in the state. So you know, [you asked] “How difficult
was it?” I didn‟t feel that it was an insurmountable problem, but I recognized [that] I had
to get elected as Larry Mead, not as the Republican. They would vote for me in spite of
being a Republican, but not because of being a Republican. And I think that‟s the
difference. And you have… Hey, let‟s go down [to] Greene County which is Springfield
where it‟s heavily Republican, there are some very good Democratic people that served.
But they‟re facing the same thing. They have to get elected as outstanding individuals
not as Democrats. So you find that thing flip-flopping wherever you go depending on
what the basic party makeup is.
RF: Did you enjoy campaigning for office?
LM: Yeah, I enjoyed campaigning. Yeah, generally enjoyed most of it. I liked the interaction
with the people. I enjoy people. I‟m pretty much a people person. That part of it was
very enjoyable. The stress of the campaign [would] sometime[s] bear on you a little bit,
but that‟s all part of it. And it‟s an awful stress on your family! It really is. There‟s no
question about it. You‟re under scrutiny. My kids were young at the time, and
occasionally they‟d hear some pretty bad things about me! (laughs) They‟d come home
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 9
wondering about it or being upset about it. You know, you just have to say, “Hey, you
just have to know that people talk about you that way when you‟re running for office.”
RF: Was your family supportive of your decision to run for office?
LM: Oh, very much so. Very much so. And my kids, particularly when I started out, were
young enough that to them it was just a lark.
[Tape meter, 200]
You know, it was fun! My wife was seriously supportive of it. By the time I ran my last
race my son was in -- well, he was a freshman in college by that stage -- and he was very
supportive of it.
RF: What means of campaigning did you find to be the most effective? Door-to-door, radio,
TV, newspaper…?
LM: Well… (laughs) I think about old Senator Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota who once
made the statement that ninety percent of campaigning is a total waste. The only problem
was you couldn‟t figure out which ten percent wasn‟t! In my races -- and we did a lot of
door-to-door -- we did almost the reverse of what a lot people would tell you to do today
(and it‟s not done so much today either, today it‟s so much more high tech.) My district
when I ran was about half the city of Columbia. Well, you go out here buy [advertising
on] KOMU, you‟re buying a twenty county market to talk to people in half this local
community. Now, if you had people that really felt you had to have TV that was the
place to go, because most people here follow KOMU TV. Channel 17 [KMIZ] was just
getting started then, so it did not have the big following that it has today. So from our
standpoint we put more emphasis on our print campaign -- the Tribune in particular, the
10 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
Missourian secondarily -- because we felt it had less waste circulation (from our
standpoint.) Secondarily we used the local radio stations, primarily KFRU. And then
third a little bit of TV, primarily just to satisfy the people in our campaign that were
excited because they‟d see us TV. (chuckling) It was an easy… It‟s kind of an inside
story, but people that were just so concerned because they didn‟t see having TV
commercials… You weren‟t always convinced you needed those commercials, but it was
awful easy to say, “We don‟t have the money for it. [If] you want to get out and get some
money raised, well…” (chuckling) That made people raise some money. So we‟d buy
some TV to raise money, is really what it amounted to.
RF: I thought it was interesting that you and Harold Reisch sort of did a “tag team” approach
to campaigning, quite often.
LM: Oh, very much so! Yeah, the Democrats never did figure out that they needed to run
somebody against each of us to keep the other one busy! And they would… They‟d
have a primary candidate running against me and nothing against Harold. Or the next
year they‟d come back and they concentrated on Harold and I wouldn‟t have an opponent
-- or I‟d have a very token opponent. So we were always able to do things together. And
the guy that didn‟t have the opponent did advertising anyway because we‟d do it jointly.
We did it to support the other, the off one. It was just kind of funny the way that worked
out but that is the way it was. I don‟t think there was ever a time… I don‟t recall an
election where both of us had a really strong candidate running against us. Usually it was
one or the other. But that‟s the way it worked out.
[Tape meter, 250]
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 11
RF: When you got into the legislature -- at least in your initial term -- what did you really
hope to accomplish there? What was your big goal?
LM: Well, one of the first major… (laughs) [During] my first term in the legislature, I passed
I think four or five bills, which was an incredible number for a freshman.
RF: Especially a Republican freshman [in a legislature with a Democrat majority.]
LM: Yeah. Yeah, and I was very sensitive to that so I didn‟t make much noise about it.
(laughing) I didn‟t want to get too excited about it! If I were to make a big deal out of it,
and then they‟d say, “Hey, wait a minute! Shut him off!” But I had as a county court
judge… There was a Democrat, he was a year younger than I was, down in Cole County,
[Anthony] “Tony” Hiesberger, and Ralph Smith from Franklin County. And we were a
committee. I was chairman of the committee to form the Missouri Association of
Counties. We didn‟t have a county organization. We had the County Court Judges
Association, but they were just primarily to… Their function was to get pay raises for
county judges, is what it really amounted to. But to get an actual Missouri Association
of Counties to support and lobby for county government improvements, we didn‟t have
that. So I was kind of the chief architect in getting that organized. And because of that…
We went around the state to meetings and got county judges and we had to get county
courts to buy into this and to agree to dues that they hadn‟t paid.
We had to have the two metropolitan… We had to have St. Louis County --
Lawrence K. Roos was St. Louis County Supervisor -- we had to go in and visit with him
and get him to sign onto it. St. Louis County was already a member of the Missouri
Municipal League, which is a very effective thing and what we wanted to do was create a
12 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
counterpart organization. So once Roos… He was noncommittal initially, but once he
saw that we were going to make it go, they didn‟t want to be left out. And of course their
dues… They were going to pay the most dues. We had to have them for the financial
base that we needed.
Then on the Kansas City side… Jackson County at that stage did not have a
Jackson County Legislature, they had a three-man county court. Harry Wiggins was one
of them. He [later] became Senator Wiggins.3 Harry was a good booster. George [W.]
Lehr was the presiding judge, who [later] became State Auditor.4 We went in and Harry
Wiggins was the one that we really talked to and got well acquainted with, and he
supported us and Jackson County came in. So once we got Jackson and St. Louis -- St.
Louis provisionally -- then we could go around…
And Greene County, that was the next one we went after. George [W.] Reed was
the presiding judge down in Greene County. They were pretty progressive about this. So
then we signed it up.
The upshot of it all is that when I went into the legislature I in a sense had a little
bit of a statewide network because the county judges all over the state knew me and knew
who I was. (chuckling) And it was kind of amusing, because there‟d be some issue
come up on the floor, and here I am, this freshman Republican from Columbia, and some
guy from Jefferson County might call home to his county judges to see how they should
vote on this measure, and they‟d tell him, “Well, go see Larry Mead. Whatever Mead
says, why, follow what Mead says.”
3 Wiggins served seven terms as a state senator. He was first elected in 1974. 4 Lehr was elected to the office of State Auditor in 1974.
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 13
[Tape meter, 300]
(laughs) And so he‟d come shuffling over and talk to me. There was a guy, Howard -- I
can‟t think of his last name -- a nice, nice man.5 But these were all Democrats we‟re
talking about! (laughing) And he come over and he said, “Hey, they told me to come
talk to you. What about this bill? What will it do for Jefferson County?” And I told him.
Then he‟d say, “How the hell do these guys know you?!” (laughs boisterously) He said,
“What‟s the connection here?” You know, I explained it to him. But that gave me a bit
of a… Well, it gave me an element of credibility with my colleagues. (chuckles) When
they talked with the local guys at home all of them would essentially mention me. So
you know, if you get a little bit credibility that way, you don‟t play games… I didn‟t go
in as a partisan legislator. And so you take that credibility and you try to build it into
other areas. And I was able to do that pretty effectively. It was very helpful to me in
working with legislation.
RF: What could you tell me about Mr. Wiggins? I mean, he‟s passed on...6 I‟ll never have a
chance to talk to him.
LM: Yeah, right. What could I tell you about him? What…?
RF: Yes. Just sort of what type of person; how would you assess his abilities?
LM: Oh, he was very sincere, Harry Wiggins. Never married, was always a bachelor. He was
of course a liberal Democrat, very liberal Democrat. But from the standpoint of county
government matters, you know, that doesn‟t have anything to do with liberal or
conservative, really. You know, if you want to talk about tax issues, you could tie it up
5 Possibly referring to Howard M. Garrett of Festus. 6 Wiggins died on July 31, 2004.
14 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
for… But for the most part it was about government function. It didn‟t make any
difference if it was Democrat or Republican. Most of us had the same objectives. We
were very good friends.
[pauses] Harry had a bit of an alcoholism problem, which most people knew, but
you don‟t need to beat on it. But a few times that diminished his capabilities. He would
forget things, and dropped the ball on some legislation a time or two when he shouldn‟t
have. But because of the alcoholism… He did a couple of times go into rehab for that
and improved himself. Later on…
Oh, Harry and I were never enemies or political opponents as such, but we did not
agree on all legislation.
[Tape meter, 350]
And where we divided ourselves… He was very much a pro-life person. [smiling]
Now, you see, as a Republican I‟ll mess your mind up because I was a pro-choice
Republican. And I was a major co-sponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment at that stage.
An interesting aspect for your purposes: all of the Republicans that were elected here --
George Parker, Larry Marshall in the Senate, Harold Reisch, and myself -- we were all
pro-choice. We were all pro-choice. Most people wouldn‟t even remember that now.
But that was an issue that Harry and I locked horns a little bit on. And there was some
legislation that came through a time or two, and I was on a House… We had a House-
Senate committee that [would] work out the differences between bills. The House
position was very pro-choice and I was the one Republican on that committee. Harry was
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 15
on the Senate committee and, oh, he just couldn‟t believe I‟d support that. (laughs) That
I‟d support the position I did. But that‟s the way it goes.
[Tape meter, 372. End side one, tape one of one.]
[Tape meter, 005. Begin side one, tape one of one.]
RF: You‟d mentioned pro-choice. And you were also in favor of the ERA.
LM: Yes, pretty much so.
RF: What could you tell me about the inner workings, back-and-forth workings of that in the
legislature? You would have of course known Sue Shear.
LM: Very much so. She was one of our co-sponsors. The one time -- and it really only came
up for a vote once in the House, it was always an issue but it never got to the floor for a
vote -- the one time that it did, we passed it in the House. But strangely enough, we had a
higher percentage of the Republicans voting for it than the Democrats did. A higher
percentage of Republicans voted for it than the…
[Tape meter, 012. Brief telephone interruption. Tape recorder off momentarily.]
I got a lady beat. And I got a dear friend beat, and I‟ve always regretted that.
[Margaret] “Peg” Miller was the state rep from down at Webster County and the vote was
coming up… Gerald Ford was President, and Betty Ford was going to make five phone
calls to Republicans that were wavering or that we might be able to influence. I was one
that fingered them. And I had them call Peg Miller because I knew that Peg in her heart
believed in it, but she came from a very conservative area where that was really difficult.
But she was one of the persons that I gave for Betty Ford to call the morning of our vote.
And she did. I really shook Peg. I mean, she was… I don‟t think Peg ever knew that I
16 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
was the one that said, “Call her.” But Peg came back in and… Oh, it was a hard vote for
her, a really hard vote. It wasn‟t a hard vote for me! You know, this community
supports that. But it was hard for her. And she voted for it. We needed that vote. I
mean, the thing only passed by, I don‟t know, one or two votes. But her next election,
oh, it was just brutal! I mean, they brought in these right wing preachers who preached
in the churches about this woman of the devil that voted for that and all that stuff. And I
was really disappointed in our equal rights coalition people -- who frankly tend to be
pretty Democratic -- but they did not go to her rescue; they did not lift one finger to help
her. And she was just slaughtered! (chuckles) I mean, she was just slaughtered in the
election! Now, she subsequently was appointed by John Ashcroft as a gubernatorial
assistant and worked in the Ashcroft office, but Peg… (chuckles) Those are some things
that you really felt bad about. But that‟s part of the deal.
RF: You said that was a hard vote for her. Was there any instance where you found
something particularly difficult for you to vote?
LM: Oh, sure! You find that all the time when you get right down to it. The death penalty is a
good example. I had very ambivalent feelings about the death penalty, but I really wasn‟t
opposed to it. (laughs) The funny thing is that both Larry Marshall (who was in the state
Senate) and Harold Reisch (who was the other Republican [representative] from here)
were very much opponents, and very outspoken opponents, of the death penalty. I wasn‟t
really an opponent, but we had a death penalty bill that they had put so many silly
amendments on… It so happened that Harold was gone the day the vote came up so
(chuckling) he didn‟t have to cast his vote, and it never did come up in the Senate! Larry
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 17
never cast a vote. I was the only one that had to cast a vote. But I voted against it.
Among the amendments they put on was a death penalty for a patient in a state mental
hospital. Well now, shoot, these folks aren‟t supposed to be responsible for their actions
or they wouldn‟t be in there in the first place. And you know, I‟m just not going to vote
for silly stuff. So I voted against it. I really didn‟t have any hesitation to vote against a
bill that I thought was just silly. I was not going to vote for silly things because it looks
good or looks bad. (chuckling) But on the other hand, you know, nobody explains the
bill. You voted against the death penalty bill. Now, if somebody would ask me about it,
I‟d say, “Yeah, this is why.” “Whoa, jeez, I didn‟t know that.” And they would agree.
But you know, you took some hammering because the death penalty was frankly rather
popular! (laughs)
[Tape meter, 050]
I don‟t think anybody with any kind of an open mind could look at the death penalty
issue and surmise that it‟s effective. You could look at states that had the death penalty
and maybe their murders had gone up. Some states had abolished it and they had gone
down. It was just a total mishmash. You couldn‟t make heads or tails out of anything
statistical. I would have supported it -- the death penalty -- not as a deterrent to murder.
The only person it deters are those of us that are logical that don‟t need the deterrence
anyway. The vast majority of people that commit these murders, they don‟t plan.
They‟re losers in life or they wouldn‟t be in such a situation in the first place. But on the
other hand, some of them are dredges on society in my opinion, and I don‟t think there‟s
18 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
any rehab to them. And if you have a narrowly based, narrowly defined death penalty
that you feel can be fairly applied, then I would support that sort of thing.
But you asked about an issue that you grappled with. That was one.
RF: A little bit back to campaigning… Did you find that Watergate affected [any of your
campaigns?]
LM: Oh, heavens, yes! You bet! (chuckles) It so happened in „74 I didn‟t get an opponent.
Harold had one. That was one year. But Watergate year was a tough year for
Republicans. It was tough! I‟ll cite you an example: There was a man over here in
western Missouri -- [slight pause] ooh, I can‟t remember the name of that individual,
and I can‟t remember the town. It was like Lafayette County -- a Republican fellow died
in office. On Election Day that year, you had two elections that day. You had a single
ballot election with this man and his Democratic opponent on it to fill the unexpired term
of the fellow that died. Now, the unexpired term would only run from November to
January, but there were going to be some interim sessions in between. So you had that
election. The Republican won that election, won that election handily. I mean, he may
have won by sixty percent! And yet in the general election, he lost! And he lost fairly
badly. What it means is they just went in and voted straight Democrat, mad as a reaction
to Nixon and Watergate. And this guy got flushed out. He got beat! But it‟s so unusual
that you have two people, a Democrat and a Republican, running in two separate
elections on the same day with the exact same voters. He [the Republican] wins the one
where there‟s just the two of them on the ballot, so in that basis they‟re picking people.
So the electorate clearly preferred the Republican as an individual, but when it came to
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 19
the general election ballot -- which was a long ballot -- a lot of them were just mad [and]
voted straight Democratic and that was the end of it. It‟s kind of an interesting
illustration.
RF: Being from Columbia, I imagine education funding was a big issue for you as a
representative.
LM: Well, to an extent, although our… (laughs) I was about to say we did pretty well with
the university in those days. It was not a big, major issue. Now, everybody always talks
about the university… And I kind of hate to see the university kind of used as a
stepchild. I‟m always fearful that we‟re going to give this fine institution over here an
image of being the University of Boone County rather than being the University of
Missouri. And we always spent a lot of time trying to say, “Hey, this is the state
university. This isn‟t Columbia University or Boone County University.” When we get
too many people -- and I‟m not trying to inject myself into these campaigns today, but the
Chuck Graham-type of attitude and some of these others… Boy, you‟re walking a tight
line when somebody from Springfield or Kirksville or wherever hears those kind of
comments and, you know, we‟re wanting an extra twenty [or] thirty million [dollars].
The guy up at Kirksville, he‟s trying to get an extra million. And he thinks, “Good God,
what do you guys got to have to keep happy?” What you don‟t want them to do (I guess
is what I‟m trying to say) is to say, “What do you guys in Columbia think you have to
have?”
[Tape meter, 100]
20 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
Well, it‟s not us guys in Columbia; it‟s what the state university has to have. And you‟d
better keep it that way because they can sure gang up on you if you don‟t! I‟m always a
little fearful or… Ah, not maybe fearful. [It‟s] not the right word. But a little hesitant to
have a Republican or a Democrat to get up here and start pounding his chest about what
he’s going to do for the university. (laughs) I‟m not sure that‟s the smart way to go.
RF: When you were in the legislature, did you observe any factions?
LM: Oh, sure! All kinds of factions. All kinds of coalitions. The press always wanted to
make a big deal out of party line votes. Shoot! What did we have, 1,500 [or] 2,000 votes
in a year?! In a session? And there wouldn‟t be fifteen or twenty party line votes, really.
It didn‟t amount to a hill of beans. But you have rural-metro coalitions; you have county
government and municipal government conflicts sometimes. All kinds of… Education,
we would have people from Cape Girardeau (Southeast), Kirksville (Northeast),
Northwest and ourselves, we would sometimes be together on some issues --
Warrensburg and so forth -- and some other areas might not be.
[Tape meter, 117. Brief telephone interruption. Tape recorder off.]
RF: Alright. Could you compare and contrast, perhaps, the styles of some of the Speakers of
the House that were there?
LM: Oh… You know, I served under two Speakers: Richard Rabbitt and Kenny Rothman. I
don‟t know that there was a great difference in style between those two guys. They‟re
both from St. Louis. I got along right well with both of them. (chuckles) Frankly, I had
a really good relationship with Kenny Rothman. We became very good friends.
Customarily a person in the House would serve on three committees, sometimes four. I
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 21
accused him of driving me out of the House. My fifth term, I was on eight committees.
(chuckles) So was Harold! Harold and I, we were on more committees than any other
two members of the House! And it was just incredible. But Rothman liked us; he
believed in us; liked our integrity. And boy, these weren‟t ?flukey? committees.
(chuckles) We got put on some heavy duty committees. But I think he felt we were very
capable people and we were both non-partisan kind of guys. And man, he socked it to us.
We used to tease him about it: “Jeez, what are you trying to do to us?!” He‟d just laugh.
RF: He wanted somebody who was more of a moderate, in other words.
LM: Well, yes, if he wanted a moderate position, or even a liberal. Abortion issues for
example. One of us would always be on those House-Senate committees. A couple of
things that I was involved in… But [I was a] really key player [in some committees] that
he put me on and more or less told the chairman, “You work with Mead on this, on
whatever. [You‟ve] got to key off of Mead.” This is terrible to sound so self-serving, but
you know, I had that kind of relationship. And it allows you to have a lot of influence on
some bills!
RF: Why did you choose not to run again?
LM: I ran for Congress in ‟82.
RF: Right, against Harold Volkmer.
[Tape meter, 150]
LM: Yes, uh-huh. It was a new district. Boone County was in his district for the first time.
RF: Reapportionment?
22 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris
LM: Well, yeah, it was the result of reapportionment. (chuckles) You know, I had a lot of
people pressuring me to run for that. And I suppose there was a Democrat House
member -- who has since passed away, so it‟s not a big deal -- but [D.R.] “Ozzie”
Osbourn was the chairman of the Ag[riculture] committee -- nice friend -- and he was up
from [Monroe] County which is right next to Marion [County] where Volkmer is from.
We were on the elevator one day and he said, “What are going to do?” And I said, “Oh, I
don‟t know Ozzie.” He says, “You‟ve got to do it. You‟ve got to do it. You‟ve got a
real shot at beating him. If you don‟t do it, you‟ll think about it the rest of your life and
wonder if you should have. Do it. You‟ve got to do it.” And you know, that probably as
much as anything forced me to go ahead and say, “Yeah, maybe I‟d better do that.” It‟s
the idea that if you didn‟t, you‟d be looking over your shoulder all the time. So, that’s
why. It was also a joint decision for Kathy and I. We were getting more and more
appointments, more and more pressure. It was almost a decision that either we‟re going
to get in or get out. You get in full time if you go into Congress. Or if you don‟t win,
why, then you‟re out and back in your business.
RF: How different was it, running for that level of office as compared to state rep?
LM: Oh, very much different. Yeah, you know, I was in a very safe district here. I‟d created
an image for myself that was positive and I‟d gotten to the point where… [pauses] I
don‟t want to sound arrogant about this, but it got to the point where it wasn‟t likely you
were going to get real strong, creditable candidate. You know, most people of substance
really don‟t want to take on somebody that‟s pretty well established, because you face the
possibility of getting beaten. And nobody wants to be beaten. So as a consequence, for
LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris 23
the most part, you weren‟t likely to get a real strong opponent. But, hey, you know,
you‟re running against an incumbent. The shoe‟s on the other foot. So you knew it was
going to be difficult. You knew that if the economy didn‟t pick up a bit, it was really
going to be hard. And the economy didn‟t, and we got beat. But we still got forty-nine
percent of the vote which is pretty good in that basically Democratic district. Four years
later Kenny Hulshof ran. He lost the first time, ran a second time and won.
Hey, I need to go to a Rotary meeting at noon here, but I‟ll be glad…
RF: Okay, we can do this some other time then.
[Tape meter, 187. End side two, tape one of one. End of interview.]
24 LM = Larry E. Mead; RF = Renae Farris