An Interview with
P. Wayne Goode
at his legislative office in
Jefferson City, Missouri
06 November 2000
interviewed by N. Renae Farris
Oral History Program The State Historical Society of Missouri © 2000
Collection C3929 Politics in Missouri a.c. 281, 282
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PREFACE
Wayne Goode was born August 20, 1937 in St. Louis, the son of Peter Wayne Goode, Sr., and Helen McManus Goode. Educated at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Goode earned a Bachelor of Science degree in banking and finance. Upon graduation, he entered his family‟s truck transportation business. As a Democrat, he was first elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1962 and served there for eleven consecutive terms. Mr. Goode became a Missouri State Senator in 1984, and was re-elected in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000. At the time of the interview he was chair of the Senate Appropriations committee. For his most recent biographic entry, see the Official Manual of the State of Missouri, 1999-2000.
The recording session took place in his Capitol Building office. Although the legislature was not then in assembly, Goode had traveled to Jefferson City to see his first grandchild who had been born the day before the interview. As our conversation progressed, it became apparent that he had spent some time reflecting upon the history of the legislature as it had occurred during his tenure. Topics discussed included his varied legislative efforts, such as environmental preservation, school finance, and utility regulation.
The interview was recorded on 3M AVX60 audio cassettes (normal bias), using a Sony TC-D5 ProII manual recorder and a Shure VP64 omnidirectional microphone attached to a floor stand. There are only minor background sounds, and the recording is of generally high 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 two. Begin interview.]
RF: I‟m Renae Farris, and I‟m here in Jefferson City at Senator Wayne Goode‟s office on
Monday November 6, 2000. Senator Goode was first in the House of Representatives
beginning in 1963, am I correct?
WG: Right.
RF: And you served there until around 1985, you ran for Senate in 1984.
WG: Right.
RF: And have served as Senator since that point. Well, if you could just give me a little
background on yourself? When, where you were born. Your family, things like that.
WG: I was born in St. Louis [in] 1937. My parents were both born in St. Louis, so the family
had been there for some period of time. I moved out to St. Louis County in [the] early
forties and went through the Normandy school system. And then [I went] to the
University of Missouri at Columbia, then graduated from there in 1960. [I] got a ROTC
commission [and] was briefly in the Army for six months. Then [when I] got out [I] ran
for the legislature. [I] didn‟t expect to spend most all my life here, but that‟s kind of the
way it‟s turned out.
RF: Who were your parents?
WG: My father was Peter W. Goode, Senior and my mother was Helen McManus Goode. Her
mother‟s name was Egan, so that was the Irish side of the family. Actually my
grandfather Goode came from Ireland also. They all settled in St. Louis.
RF: What sort of things did they do for a living? What did your father do for a living?
WG: Well, my father started a trucking business in the early thirties. It was a company by the
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 1
name of Be-Mac Transport. The name came from some of the early partners. The “Be”
came from a man by the name of Bemer that I never knew, and the “Mac” was my
mother‟s brother, Bill McManus. Over a fairly short period of time, my father and his
brother, George Goode, bought out the other partners and started building the business.
Back in the thirties, when this was an altogether new form of transportation… As you
can imagine, the highways were quite poor. My dad drove a truck, as well as tried to get
the business, and managed the business, and everything else and built it into a fairly
substantial small [to] medium-sized mid-western truck line. And [he] actually took the
company public with a public stock offering in the early sixties. We had about five
hundred stockholders. [The] family still owned most of the stock. Then in ‟72 we sold it
to a holding company, U.S. Truck Lines, who owned about half a dozen other truck lines
of that size. My dad had great foresight. He was very much worried about the
deregulation of the trucking industry. I worked for the company at that time as well as in
the legislature, and I was more or less ambivalent about it (whether we sold it or not).
But he was absolutely right, because almost all these small truck lines went out of
business within three or four years after deregulation in the later seventies. So it was
definitely the right thing to do.
RF: Was your father involved in politics? Or even your mother, for that matter?
WG: No, neither directly. They both grew up in rather poor families. Neither one graduated
from high school because they had to go to work. My mother‟s father died when she was
very young. Actually, [he died] during World War I, but not as a soldier. But it
[grandfather Egan‟s death] was [a result of] one of the epidemics that went through the
2 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
St. Louis area. So they were both very poor and had to earn a living. But as they
progressed through life, they were active in the community and active voters and active
citizens. There was always good discussion of what was going on in the world and in the
neighborhood and all those sort of things, so in that sense they were involved.
RF: What prompted you to become involved?
WG: Well, I graduated (as I said) from the University of Missouri in 1960, and that‟s when
John Kennedy was running for President. He got a lot of young people excited about
politics.
[tape meter, 050]
I thought, “Well, if he could be President at age forty-two (or whatever it was), I could
probably get involved in politics in my early twenties.” I looked around and they were
re-districting the legislature, of course, after the census in 1960. I thought maybe that
was the opportunity that I was looking for. So I decided to run for the House of
Representatives.
RF: Back at that point, that was still the county representative, right? [Correcting herself]
Well, the St. Louis area would have been [divided into] districts [even during the era of
county representation.]
WG: Yeah, that was pre-“one man, one vote”, and that is a very interesting period of time. I
really hadn‟t thought much about what I wanted to talk about today, but I woke up about
six o‟clock this morning -- I was here in Jefferson City because as it turned out my son
and his wife delivered our first grandchild yesterday (November 5th), so we drove up to
Jefferson City yesterday morning and then spent the night here at their home -- I woke up
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 3
and gave some thought to this for the first time, and what occurred to me is when I came
to the Legislature right after the 1962 elections it was an altogether different place than it
is today. Michael Kinney, Senator Mike Kinney had been in the Missouri legislature for
over fifty years and served his last (I think) four or six years during the time I was here.
That meant he was first elected prior to World War One.1 He was in the legislature
through World War One, through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World
War Two, the Korean War, and even into the start of the Vietnam War and the so-called
“New Society” that was generated during the Johnson Administration after the untimely
death of John Kennedy. So individually and politically, he lived through a very
interesting period of time, but the reason I mention that is: I would guess that the
Missouri Legislature changed very little during the fifty-something years that he was in
the legislature, and state government changed very little. However, since then, since the
time I was elected, state government and the legislature have changed just very
significantly. It is an altogether different place than it was when I got here.
RF: What do you think maybe was the catalyst for that change?
WG: Well, there were a lot of things. You almost need to go back through history. Prior to the
Civil War, the states and most of the people looked at the United States as that: a united
group of states with the states having a significant amount of power, which they did. And
that of course changed after the Civil War. But state legislatures, if anything, became
more entrenched and did less, and it‟s my view that that‟s one of the reasons the New
Deal offered by Franklin Roosevelt in the thirties took off. One of the reasons federal
1 Kinney was first elected to the Missouri Senate in 1912. He served from 1913 to 1969.
4 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
government became so supreme over the states during the thirties, and forties, and fifties
was the states continued to do nothing during a time when there were many problems in
society. And this didn‟t change until after I got elected to the legislature, not that I‟d say
I had much to do with that! (chuckles) But that‟s when times really began to change and
worked into what we refer to now as “New Federalism”, which is this partnership
between the federal government and the state governments on so many different
programs.
But the legislature, when I got here, mainly took care of public education. And
they didn‟t do that in probably a very good way, [since they were] essentially offering
incentive programs that allowed the districts that were already better funded and more
well off to take advantage of these programs where the poorer districts didn‟t.
[tape meter, 100]
Public education was a big deal in state government, but it wasn‟t handled very well. The
states, including Missouri, did a pretty good job with higher education.
Mental health -- we had all these old mental health facilities that were packed full
of people, many of which were simply old and senile. They had no place else to go, but
that‟s a big part of what the Department of Mental Health did. The Department of Social
Services had some minor old style social service programs that had not changed much
over the years other than as they were forced to by the federal government.
But along during the sixties all this began to change. Medicaid came on the scene
[and] that changed the way we address human problems significantly. The states also got
much more aggressive in areas of education and trying to bring more equality to
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 5
education. Higher education took off, and we went from the old normal schools that then
became teacher‟s colleges, then [later they became] the universities. You know, [a] much
more aggressive approach towards higher education. The states are essentially a partner
today with the federal government in most all these programs.
When I started, they basically were resisting change and probably had resisted
change forever and just weren‟t doing much. The budget was so simple at that point. For
example, I chair the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, and twenty years ago I
chaired it in the House. In both cases, we had professional staffs, people with degrees in
finance or accounting and we take a very aggressive approach towards the budget. When
I first got here, the [staff for the] Appropriations Chair in the House consisted of one
extra secretary on top of the one secretary a senior member of the House would have. So
that‟s some idea of the difference in the complexity of the budget.
RF: When you came [into the legislature] in ‟63, what were your goals? What were the main
things you had hoped to accomplish?
WG: Well, one of the things I did accomplish was getting legislation passed that allowed the
University of Missouri to start a new campus in the St. Louis area. I was kind of in the
right place at the right time, because a lot of groundwork had been done on that both by
citizens in the Normandy area as well as by administrators. The then-president of the
University of Missouri, Elmer Ellis, was a very close friend with the long-time
Superintendent of Schools in Normandy, Ward Barnes, and they had mutual goals.
Normandy School District, the citizens of the Normandy School District purchased the
old Bellerive Country Club that was in the Normandy area. They had planned to start a
6 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
junior college. At the time, junior colleges were a thirteenth and fourteenth year
connected to a high school district. This was in 1958 when this started. The legislature
in 1961 passed the new Community College Law or Junior College Law as it was called
then. A group got behind a new community college for the St. Louis metropolitan area
with multiple campuses. So that was taking off at the same time the citizens of
Normandy had sold bonds to buy the old country club to start a junior college as part of
the high school.
[tape meter, 150]
So they had to re-think this, and because of Ward Barnes‟ close connection with Elmer
Ellis they decided that this would be the perfect way to start a campus of the University
of Missouri. It started with a residence center. It required legislation to clear the way to
do this, and I handled that legislation in ‟63. When that legislation became effective that
following August, the University of Missouri took over the campus and we now have the
University of Missouri-St. Louis. It is generally referred to as “uhm-sul” [UMSL]. So I
was connected to that and that was a goal of mine.
You know, I thought I‟d probably stay in the legislature for four, six, eight years
and go on to something else. As I had mentioned, I was in the truck transportation
business with my family and that was a very good, solid, growing business at the time. I
had a lot interest in [that]. I had worked summers working in the truck shop, driving
trucks, all those sort of things as I was growing up in both high school and college so that
was kind of my career direction.
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 7
But I just became very involved in legislation and public education. I chaired the
Education Committee in the early seventies. In the late sixties [I] got very concerned
about the way we financed public education in Missouri, that it did not provide equal
opportunities for students from one district to another. So I was in on the start of this
movement that‟s still going on today to build more equity into school finance formulas.
That got my attention and took a lot of my time for a number of years there. In the mid-
seventies I became Chair of the Appropriations Committee in the House. By that time, I
really got hooked on state government and knowing that if you worked hard and were in
the right places, you could get a lot of things done. So I just continued to do that.
I‟ve handled a lot of environmental legislation, a lot of education legislation, more
recently a lot of the utility-related legislation. I got involved in that kind of by default
because no one else jumped in to fight some of the proposals by the utility industry to
monopolize... I probably ought to clarify that. They were legal monopolies, but basically
what many of them wanted to become is legal unregulated monopolies. It was clear to
me that you either have to control prices in the public interest, either in a competitive
mode or a regulated mode. If you had neither, the public was not going to come out well.
So there were just a lot of things that caught my attention. I continued to be very
involved in Appropriations, and as I mentioned, chair the Senate Appropriations
Committee today.
RF: When you came [into the legislature] in ‟63, did you run into the “unofficial” rules, say,
for a freshman legislator? Did you run into any of that?
8 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
WG: Well, yes. But that made sense. I mean, kind of the rule was you‟d keep in your seat and
you‟d listen. I didn‟t have a problem with that because I knew coming here at age
twenty-five that I had a lot to learn!
[tape meter, 200]
And I could best learn that by listening, and watching, and paying attention. I just read in
the last day or two an old Harry Truman quote. I think it was in one of the political
articles -- as you know, we‟ve got a big election tomorrow -- and Harry Truman said
something like for the first six months when he was elected to the United States Senate,
he continued to try to figure out how he got there and for the rest of his career he tried to
figure out how everyone else got there! So you soon find that you go through this
learning period, but then just those (I have to say it [about] myself now) that have been
here a long time aren‟t the only ones that know a lot about what‟s going on. So there‟s
room for new ideas, but you do need to get into it carefully otherwise you cause yourself
problems in relationships more than anything else.
RF: Did you have a lot of trouble trying to balance your business with your political
[activities]?
WG: Well, it was difficult. After we sold the truck line in 1972, I started a truck supply
business. We sold Peterbilt heavy-duty trucks, serviced the trucks, sold parts and
equipment, and that sort of thing. And I owned that business (which was located in the
St. Louis area) up until the end of 1991. So for almost twenty years I had to spread my
time between a business that took a lot of management and a business that was very
risky (because a lot of areas could cause you potential problems), as well as to try to be
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 9
one of the more active members of the legislature. And that was difficult. It took a lot of
hours, particularly when we were in session. I sold that business in ‟91 and today… Or
since that time, I should say, my wife has never quite been comfortable in answering the
question when someone says, “What does your husband do?” whether or not to say “He‟s
retired” or “He‟s a full-time politician.” (Laughs) But this job of being in the legislature,
particularly in the Senate, can take all the time you want to give it. So I find myself
easily working sixty, seventy hours a week for the four and a half months that we‟re in
session. And for the rest of the year spending no less than twenty, thirty hours on
legislative issues, and constituent issues, and all those things on the average, so it can
keep you very busy.
RF: When you came in, that was about the time that a lot of the marches in Birmingham and
things that [took place]. Did you participate in any of the racial issue legislation? Say,
the Public Accommodations Act of ‟65?
WG: Well, I did over time. I certainly supported the Public Accommodations Act. That was a
big issue when I came in. Actually, our Governor who we just lost, Mel Carnahan, was
the primary sponsor of that in the House, but I was very supportive of that. Also the
Miscegenation Statute, which is the statute that said you couldn‟t have legal marriages
between different races, that was an issue.
[tape meter, 250]
You look back on those things today and it‟s hard to believe that was the law and those
were the issues. But they were!
10 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
And I can remember driving to Jefferson City my first term with the former
Speaker of the House and Lieutenant Governor Ken Rothman who also started in the legislature with the 1962 elections as did Mel Carnahan. We were all in the same freshman legislative class. But riding up here, and one week another member grabbed a ride with us. His name was Hugh White and he was an African-American attorney from
St. Louis. We stopped along the way. When you rode up here with Rothman, he always wanted to make about three stops. One to eat, and then one to get coffee and so forth, and it would turn a two hour trip into a three or four hour trip. That‟s why we only rode together for one session! (Laughs) But anyway, we stopped [while] coming down here and went into a restaurant. We sat there at a table, actually it was a little booth, and there wasn‟t hardly anybody in this little restaurant. Finally the waitress came over and said,
“Look, I can serve you, but this gentleman is going to have to go out to his car. We‟ll fix some food and take it out there to him.” You know, it was kind of a shock to run into that! Obviously, we all got up and left. But it was a problem.
Perhaps it shouldn‟t have been such a shock to me because when I was in high school the Normandy School District actually desegregated in (I guess) the fall of 1954 after Brown versus the Board of Education. There was one black male member of our class, Wardele Massey, who came out for the football team. He was a great guy and never [had] any problems. I remember Coach talking to us -- Mel Sheehan (who was later the athletic director at MU). [He said] that the school was integrating. Most of us had never even thought about that sort of thing. But we had in the three [grades] that comprised the senior high school, maybe four or five black students [including Wardele]
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 11
in our class. We had a pretty good football team that year. There was this one game
where one of the local kind of a mixed drive-in plus indoor booth type of facility that was
right near Brown Road and Natural Bridge put out a challenge for the team that if we
won the whole team could come over there for a [free] hamburger and milkshake
afterwards.
[tape meter, 300]
We won, and we did that. Wardele rode in my car with several of the other football team
members and I think some of our girlfriends and other friends and so forth. We went in
and filled up these booths and we had a similar situation happen. The waitress came over
and said that she couldn‟t serve Wardele. A couple of us asked to see the manager and
we talked. Finally they did decide to serve him. So that was a kind of a growing up
experience, but [I] never really thought about it a whole lot until this trip to Jefferson
City. So it‟s just a different time today than it was then.
One piece of legislation dealing with race issues that I had a great deal of
involvement with is… There had been a constitutional provision going probably back to
the Civil War for separate but equal schools. Of course, it had no effect of law after
Brown versus Board of Education, but it had remained in our constitution. There were a
couple of early attempts in the fifties to remove it that didn‟t go anywhere. I thought that
was a real affront to people to have that in our constitution, so I introduced the
constitutional amendment in the House to remove [it]. I talked to a couple senators about
introducing similar legislation in the Senate. Senator Franklin Payne and George Murray
(who was a House member, then a senator, and then a judge, and then actually died at a
12 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
fairly early age) had sponsored it in the Senate. We got that through and got on the ballot
and did some campaigning for it and it passed. So I was very much [out in] front on that,
but also involved in the other issues.
RF: One question about when the state switched over from the county representative to the
district representative. Could you tell me a little bit about that, what it like in the House
during the debates on that?
WG: [Smiling] I skipped over that earlier when I was talking about my county. That case first
came to everyone‟s attention when I was running for election in 1962. I think either the
trial court or the court of appeals decision came down earlier that year, and basically said
that (the case was Baker versus Carr) states had to apportion both bodies of the
legislature based on the “one man, one vote” principal.
[tape meter, 350]
Prior to that, most legislatures were like Congress where the representative body, the
House, had one representative per county sort of like the U. S. Senate (in kind of reverse).
Then the Senate was on a population basis. Baker versus Carr held that both bodies had
to be on population. That was a very difficult time! I think we re-districted three times
during the sixties. Two of which… Well, you had the normal one in the early sixties
[after the census and] you had one or two that were thrown out by the courts before we
got it right. There were all sorts of bizarre ideas. There was this one representative that
wanted weighted voting that [would have been] based [partially] on population where he
would have one vote and I probably would have twenty-five votes. Of course, they were
simply trying to preserve their seats. (Chuckles) But we got through that. After the “one
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 13
man, one vote” re-districting, the legislature really changed significantly and I probably
should have mentioned that earlier as part of the discussion of the changes in the
legislative process.
[tape meter, 376. End side one, tape one of two.]
[tape meter, 001. Begin side two, tape one of two.]
RF: Before the re-districting, was it difficult for city representatives to get things passed
[since the House] was so dominated by the rural representatives?
WG: Well, obviously if it was anything that would cause a conflict between the rural point of
view and the urban point of view, it would be very difficult. Now if that wasn‟t an issue
then it wasn‟t a problem. But that was an issue a good deal of time, because rural
legislators had a very conservative approach towards legislation. That goes back to what
I had discussed earlier about basically [the] “do nothing, status quo” approach to state
government. So it was more difficult. On the other hand, the legislation [for] University
of Missouri [at St. Louis], [that] was something [whose] time had come. At the same
time the University was taking over the private university2 in Kansas City, which became
UM-Kansas City, and connecting Rolla (University of Missouri at Rolla) as a full-fledged
partner campus of the university system (because they were always kind of the step-child
in the past). So those sort of things fit together and it worked out, but it was a very rural
point of view and not only in the House. The Senate, which was supposed to be “one
man, one vote”, really wasn‟t because the senate districts in the rural areas tended to be
twenty percent or so smaller than those in the urban areas which meant that a
2 The University of Kansas City.
14 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
disproportionate number of senators were from the rural areas. So you had somewhat the
same situation in the Senate.
RF: In respect to the Senate, back in the late sixties, early seventies, when Governor Hearnes
was in [office], it just seems like there was an awful lot of squabbling going on there.
How did that play out in the House?
WG: Well, Warren Hearnes was a very powerful governor. He knew how to work the system
very well. He had spent ten years in the House, and was Floor Leader in the House. Of
course, he was from Charleston, Missouri, a very rural part of the state down in the
Bootheel. But when he was elected Governor, he became a very aggressive governor.
[He] wanted to move the state forward and kind of lost his rural connection, so to speak.
He had been a West Point graduate, he had seen the real world, he understood the
problems. He was very, very popular in his first term, so popular that the people of
Missouri changed the constitution to allow a governor to succeed himself. So he was the
first governor to do that.
And in his second term, he was trying to get a lot of things done and ran into a
real loggerhead situation with many members of the Senate who did not want to move
forward as quickly as he did. The state was in need of additional revenue. He felt that
the best source of that revenue was to increase the income tax. Prior to that, in my first
term in ‟63, the state increased the sales tax from two cents to three cents. That was the
only sales tax. There wasn‟t any conservation sales tax or local sales tax. It was just a
pure two cents that was increased. Of course, the sales tax is more regressive and falls
harder on poor people, so when the state needed additional revenue in the early seventies,
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 15
Governor Hearnes felt that it should come from the income tax. We passed the income
tax due to a lot of arm-twisting by the Governor and a referendum petition put it on the
ballot, and it was overturned. Warren Hearnes wouldn‟t take “no” for an answer, and he
called the legislature back into session. The closing days of the special session, right
before Christmas, we passed the income tax again and that time it held. He did a lot of
arm-twisting, and he made a lot of enemies, particularly in the Senate.
[tape meter, 050]
Now, in the House, he had managed a couple of years before that in his first term
to get his candidate as Speaker elected. So he had a lot of clout, and a lot of control and a
lot of support in the House. Tom Graham, who just passed away within the last few
weeks, had been Speaker when I first came here and was re-elected the year I started then
again two years after that. He fought re-districting, he fought “one man, one vote”, and
then he fought with Warren Hearnes. So Warren Hearnes decided he was going to try to
beat him as Speaker. The Speaker Pro Tem was a man by the name of Charlie Bauer and
that was Warren Hearnes‟ chosen candidate for Speaker. Unfortunately, Charlie died of a
heart attack a few weeks before the General Election. The governor, Warren Hearnes,
had to find a new candidate. He recruited Jim Godfrey, who was a member of the House
and a lawyer from St. Louis. He became the next Speaker and was of course very
cooperative with the Governor because he owed his Speakership to the Governor. So
Warren Hearnes had lots of support in the House, but really ran into problems in the
Senate.
16 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
RF: When all this was going on in the Senate, sort of infighting among Democrats, did that
hurt anybody else at the polls, do you think? Do you think it had any kind of reflection
on the House members when they ran?
WG: Not too much. Missouri was seen as a solidly Democratic state, and was. There hadn‟t
been a Republican governor, I guess, since the early forties. The legislature had been
(and still is) Democratic except for the first two years of the Eisenhower Administration
when the Missouri House was Republican for two years in ‟53 and ‟54. So in the
seventies, it was a solidly Democratic state. It really wasn‟t partisan in terms of
Democrat versus Republican. It was rural versus urban, conservative versus more
progressive. Now, as it probably turned out, a lot of that set the stage for John Danforth
running for Attorney General, because Warren Hearnes went from being one of the most
popular men in the state to being somewhat unpopular with the general population and
politically unpopular with the rural Democratic Party.
Of course, there were some other problems too. There was an Attorney General
at the time, Norman Anderson, whose chief of staff got in all sorts of problems and
reflected very poorly on Norman Anderson although no one ever thought he did anything
wrong. And that caused some problems for the Democratic Party, some major problems
[which] as much as anything probably led to John Danforth getting elected. That
assistant was a fellow by the name of Brick [P.] Storts, [III], who was an attorney. He as
much as anyone in the state was responsible for the resurgence of the Republican Party in
Missouri! (Laughs) He doesn‟t get much credit for it! Probably wouldn‟t want much
credit for it! But I think that‟s where the blame lies!
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 17
RF: I was wondering how Bond could become governor in such a strongly Democratic state.
I thought maybe you‟d have some insight on that.
WG: Well, it came from these things that I mentioned. Warren Hearnes‟ battle with the Senate
[and] Norman Anderson‟s problems through his assistant Brick Storts set the stage. If I
remember right, [Christopher] “Kit” Bond first ran for in the Ninth District and lost, and
then ran for Auditor. As Auditor, you have a good base to get your name in the paper a
lot, get a lot of publicity.
[tape meter, 100]
And there were a lot of things in state government that needed auditing, and in all
honesty hadn‟t been properly audited for many, many years because the Auditor
historically really didn‟t function as an auditor. It was just a political stepping-stone or a
patronage office. It became professionalized after “Kit” Bond. But “Kit” Bond
understood how to use it as a place to gain good publicity, and then ran for governor as
“Mr. Clean” and in his first term was well thought of by the general public, Democrat and
Republican alike. And [he] moved on from there. (Laughs) He did (even though he was
popular) anger some of those in his own party, which caused him to lose at the end of his
first term to Joe Teasdale. The story at the time was “Kit” Bond, when he lost, was the
second most surprised person in the state because Joe Teasdale, who won, was the most
surprised because no one expected that to happen. But that was the basis for the
resurgence of the Republican Party in Missouri. The Warren Hearnes fight with the
Senate, the Norman Anderson problems, “Kit” Bond understanding how to turn the
Auditor‟s office into a political starting block, and it went on from there.
18 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
RF: Was there much tension between the Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled
House?
WG: Not a whole lot. Well, I shouldn‟t say that. It kind of depended where people fell in all
different viewpoints of politics. Those who were very partisan wanted nothing of “Kit”
Bond. But others, including many Democrats, felt that there were some things that
needed to be changed, and needed to be operated more in the public interest as opposed
to the political interest of the party in charge. So it was kind of a mixed bag.
RF: Could you tell me something about the battle for the ERA3 while you were in the House?
WG: Yeah, I was very much involved in that. A former representative, Bob Branom, and I
introduced one of the resolutions to ratify the ERA in Missouri. Another version was
offered by the then-Speaker Jim Godfrey, and Floor Leader Dick Rabbitt, who became
Speaker later. Theirs moved forward where ours didn‟t and it got locked up in a
committee that was chaired by a former state representative and now former circuit judge
Tony Heckemeyer, who I actually knew from college. He and I were both at the
University of Missouri at the same time. We probably had our best opportunity to ratify
the ERA that first year. It went to Heckemeyer‟s committee and he sat on it, and the
Speaker wasn‟t willing to take the heat to move it along. And I think he could have, Jim
Godfrey. Then it became very contentious and it never had a chance again in the
Missouri. Sue Shear got elected that next year and came back and offered it. A lot of
people think of her as the first person to offer the ERA in Missouri, but actually it was
3 Equal Rights Amendment.
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 19
offered two years before she was elected. That was the period of time (those two years)
when it was ratified by most of the thirty-something states that ratified it.
[tape meter, 150]
Those that didn‟t ratify it then, for the most part, didn‟t because Phyllis Schlafly got in
there and it became this big right-wing fight. But we almost passed it. Prior to that, Bob
Branom and I had introduced the resolution to change the voting age, ratify the
constitutional amendment, change the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. We kind
of jumped in there and got first in line and got that passed. That was one of the reasons
why when we tried to do that again with ERA, the Speaker and the Floor Leader said,
“No, we‟re not going to let those young guys jump in ahead of us!” (Chuckles) So they
got it and they couldn‟t get it passed.
RF: Could you tell me about some of your work with environmental legislation?
WG: Yeah, I‟ve been somewhat of a crusader in that area. Much of the environmental
legislation that is on the books was my doing. The hazardous waste legislation that we
actually passed two or four years before Congress passed the federal version -- which was
basically a cradle-to-grave system of monitoring and controlling hazardous waste so it
didn‟t end up either in land fills or along the roadside and was disposed of as properly as
possible -- that was one of my bills. Later the solid waste bill that we passed in (I
believe) 1990 [was another of my bills], but that was kind of the second major revision of
solid waste laws because they were actually revised in (I think) the late seventies. But
the system that we have today that set up the regional districts and regions of the state to
address solid waste in a comprehensive manner was part of that. Now there were other
20 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
things that I tried to do that [I] never accomplished such as requiring a deposit on
beverage bottles. Tried for years to get that passed. Never could. So there were a
number of environmental efforts that never got off the ground.
And there are some little things, too. [That is], little from the aspect that it never
got much attention. I remember reading a little article in the Wall Street Journal back,
oh, twenty-five years ago or so about the problems with waste disposal wells. Waste
disposal wells were being utilized in some states. They would pump hazardous waste
into these wells and supposedly seal it off into a geological formation in the earth where
it wouldn‟t go anywhere. Well, you know, that seemed to me that that wasn‟t very
logical that you could ever do that correctly, and I read this article where problems were
coming of this. So I introduced this bill and got it passed to prohibit hazardous waste
wells in Missouri. And a few years later there was a big push to try to change that. I did
my best to make sure it didn‟t happen because there was the argument, “Well, that‟s a
legitimate way to handle hazardous waste.” That came along after we passed the
hazardous waste legislation that I talked about earlier. People were looking for more
options on how to deal with it. But we stayed that. So there were some small things like
that, too.
RF: What prompted you to become involved in the environmental issues? It didn‟t seem like
environmental issues (at least back in sixties and perhaps through the mid-seventies)
weren‟t exactly popular.
[tape meter, 200]
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 21
WG: No, they weren‟t. I don‟t know, I guess I‟ve always had a real love of the outdoors and
doing things outdoors, whether it be hiking or canoeing or whatever or just observing. I
seemed to me that we needed to do everything possible to preserve the environment. It
was clear to anybody [who] looked at this that a great deal of damage had been done
throughout the twentieth century and particularly since World War II with growing
industrial development, and that we had to address some of these issues. So we‟ve done
a lot, but there‟s a lot that needs to be done.
RF: What prompted you to run for the Senate?
WG: Well, I had probably accomplished most of what I could in the House, and when you‟re
in the House you quickly learn that the Senate is the more powerful of the two bodies,
and particularly the individual members of the Senate have more clout, more opportunity
to get things done. I had been Chair of the Education Committee, which is a great
chairmanship in the House, and the Chair of the Appropriations Committee, but if I was
going to get more done I needed to go to the Senate.
Harriett Woods was the senator from my district at the time. In fact, Harriett and
I almost went head-to-head in a race for the Senate in „76. She was a city councilperson
in University City and I‟d been a state rep for I guess twelve, fourteen years. Every once
in a while we joke about that, because had I ran that would‟ve ended one of our careers.
We don‟t know which one because I had the larger and more solid base than she did, but
she may well have won or I might have.
But one of the biggest reasons I decided not to run is Ken Rothman was going to
be elected Speaker of the House, and he had asked me to Chair the Appropriations
22 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
Committee in the House. So that was one of the reasons I decided not to run for the
Senate. Then when Harriett was moving on, I obviously wanted to go for the Senate and
made it clear that I was going to do that. [I] ran and won, and managed to stay there the
last sixteen years.
RF: Did you ever aspire to take the position of Majority Leader in either the House or the
Senate?
WG: (Chuckling) I had actually ran for Majority Leader in the House in 1980, and got into it
late and didn‟t realize that Tom Villa (who is now running again for the House this year)
pretty much had the majority of the Democratic votes locked up. So I did not win. Then
two years ago, [I] was asked by some of my colleagues to run for Majority Floor Leader
at the last minute in the Senate, which I did.
[tape meter, 250]
But that‟s not really where my heart was, I wanted to be Appropriations Chair. As it
turned out, Senator [Ronnie] DePasco won the Floor Leader job. He got what he wanted,
[and] I ended up being appointed Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee so I got
what I wanted, and it worked out fine.
RF: Could you tell me anything about the lobbyists? Have you ever found them to be either a
hindrance or a help?
WG: Oh, they‟re both, sometimes both at the same time. (Chuckles) They have a job to do.
The lobbying business has really grown in the time I‟ve been in the legislature, and it‟s
due to a lot of factors. Just the fact that state government does a lot more than it once did,
also there is a great deal of money at stake in many different areas particularly the
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 23
different providers: Medicaid providers, other health care providers. There‟s a lot of
lobbying going on representing their point of view so they get their share of the pie. It‟s
become a big business!
RF: Who is one of the most effective in your experience?
WG: (Chuckles) Well, everybody has to say John Britton because: 1) he is very effective and
2) he‟s been here for about forty years now. He certainly does have a lot of impact. Bill
Gamble, who once worked for John Britton... [Gamble] actually got his start as a
legislative intern when he was in college and afterwards went to work for Britton for a
while and then went off on his own. [Gamble], I think, is one of the more influential
lobbyists. He has a partner and a number of employees. Jorgen Schlemeier is his
partner. They are just very professional on how they conduct themselves. They know the
issues, they know the members very well, and just work very hard at it and do a good job.
RF: Who do you think was one of the most effective orators in either the House or the
Senate? Who was best at debate?
WG: Oh, going way back, there was a representative from Kansas City, Harold Holliday. [He
was an] African-American lawyer that got elected probably around the early seventies,
maybe late sixties, [he] was a tremendous speaker. But there have been many,
particularly in the Senate.
[tape meter, 300]
John Schneider -- who‟s still in the Senate, has been in the Senate for about thirty years I
guess -- is a very good speaker. [He] can be very convincing. But there have been many
24 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
over the years. Larry Lee, former Floor Leader of the Senate, was very good. Just many
over time.
RF: What would you say has been your proudest accomplishment?
WG: Oh, that‟s hard to say. Obviously, being connected with the start of the University of
Missouri in St. Louis. [I‟m] very proud of that. But as I said earlier, I can‟t claim that
totally as mine because I came into it as kind of the right person at the right time in the
right place, that sort of thing.
I think one of the things I‟m most proud of is the work I‟ve done with
appropriations. Prior to becoming Chair of the Appropriations Committee in the House
in 1977, there was no public mark-up of appropriations bills. [The] chairman would
introduce the bills, they would hear the bills, the chairman would put together the final
bills, the committee substitutes, knowing he had this in there for that person and that in
there for that person, make sure he had enough representatives on board, go out and tell
them, “Your piece is in the bill”, not expect anyone to look at anything else in those bills,
bring those bills out, vote them out of committee, take them to the floor and the argument
was “it‟s the obligation of the majority party to get these bills passed”, and that‟s the way
it would go. We tried to change that when Ken Rothman was elected Speaker and he
asked me to chair the committee. He said, “Wayne, you need to clean up this process.” I
said, “Ken, you need to give me a committee that will do that.” So we changed about
half the members of that committee. That was back when the House just had one
Appropriations committee, like the Senate does now. We went into this very open
process, and the administration didn‟t know what to make of it because they weren‟t used
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 25
to this sort of thing where they came in and we held very serious hearings and we grilled
them on what they did. We wanted to know, and we wanted them to justify their budgets.
Then we went through an open mark-up process where we determined what was going to
be in those committee bills, and took them to the Floor and got them passed.
The Senate, during the time I was Appropriations Chair for four years in the
House, had three different [Appropriations Committee] Chairs.
[tape meter, 350]
They left for various reasons. The first, Don Manford, was appointed a judge. Then I
think Truman Wilson was appointed, and then he got mad at Norm Merrell who was the
Senate [President] Pro-Tem and abruptly resigned. Norm Merrell stepped in and finished
it up for that last couple weeks of the session himself, because he was a prior Senate
Appropriations Chair. Then he appointed Ed Dirck, who continued to serve for a number
of years. So during this fairly short four year period of time, the Senate also changed to
where they were going through an open mark-up process. So I take the credit for really
changing the way we addressed appropriations in Missouri. I think that‟s what I‟m
probably more proud of than anything else.
[tape meter, 369. End side two, tape one of two.]
[tape meter, 003. Begin side one, tape two of two.]
RF: Well, on the opposite side of the coin then, what do you think is your biggest
disappointment?
WG: Oh, that‟s hard to say. I don‟t know, I don‟t feel that I‟ve had any real major
disappointments. I‟ve been pretty happy with what I‟ve been able to accomplish. I just
26 WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris
can‟t name any major disappointments. Obviously, things happened here or there that
didn‟t go the way I would have liked for them to go, but no real major disappointments.
RF: How do you see the future of the House and the Senate? Where do you see them going?
WG: I am very concerned about what‟s going to happen with term limits. For example, every
time we go through appropriations hearings, I learn something. In fact, I learn a lot of
somethings. I‟ve been doing this for thirty-eight years, and been very much involved in
appropriations for about thirty-plus of those thirty-eight years. I‟m so concerned because
there isn‟t going to be anyone who has that background or that institutional knowledge.
I‟m not saying that there aren‟t people in the legislature who have used their knowledge
or their experience for their own personal interests rather than the public interest. But
term limits is just wrong. It is not going to work well for the public. Where else would
you put people in a place to run an almost twenty billion dollar budget and to pass the
laws that govern the state with little or no experience? I am real concerned about that.
RF: I‟ll call that it for today then, because I know you need to get going, and I thank you
again for talking with me.
[tape meter, 023. End side one, tape two of two. End of interview.]
WG = Wayne Goode; RF = Renae Farris 27
INDEX
Anderson, Norman H. (1924-1997), 17, 18 Apportionment (Election Law), 13-14 Aspen Group, Inc. (St. Louis, Missouri), 9 Barnes, Ward E. (1904-1993), 6, 7 Bauer, Max. E. “Charlie” (1913-1966), 16 Bellerive (Missouri) Country Club, 6, 7 Be-Mac Transport Company (St. Louis, Missouri), 2 Bond, Christopher Samuel “Kit” (1939 - ), 18, 19 Branom, Robert H., Sr. “Bob” (1935 - ), 20 Britton, John (1925 - ), 24 Carnahan, Melvin E. “Mel” (1934 - 2000), 10, 11 Civil Rights Act - Missouri (1965), 10 Civil Rights - Law and legislation -- Missouri, 10, 12-13 Danforth, John Claggett “Jack” (1936 - ), 17 DePasco, Ronnie (1943 - ), 23 Dirck, Edwin L. (1928-1996), 26 Education - Finance -- Missouri, 8 Education, Higher - Missouri, 6 Education - Missouri, 5 Educational law and legislation - Missouri, 6-7 Egan family, 1, 2 Ellis, Elmer (1901-1989), 6, 7 Environmental law and legislation - Missouri, 20-22 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) - Missouri, 19-20 Gamble, Bill, 24 Godfrey, James E. (1922-1986), 16, 19 Goode family, 1, 2, 3 Goode, George R., 2 Goode, Helen McManus (1911-1990), 1 Goode, Peter Wayne, Sr. (1908-1993), 1-2 Graham, Thomas D., (1922-2000), 16 Hearnes, Warren Eastman (1923 - ), 15-16, 18 Heckemeyer, Anthony J., Sr. “Tony” (1939 - ), 19 Holliday, Harold L., Sr. (1918-1985), 24 Junior colleges - Law and legislation -- Missouri, 6-7 Kinney, Michael (1875-1971), 4 Lee, Lawrence J., Sr. “Larry”, 25 Legislators - Missouri -- balance between personal and professional life, 9-10 Lobbying and lobbyists, 23-24 McManus family, 1, 2 McManus, William “Bill” (1901-1962), 2
Manford, Donald Lee (1934-1991), 26 Massey, Wardele, 11-12 Merrell, Norman L. (1924-1994), 26 Miscegenation - Law and legislation -- Missouri, 10 Missouri. Department of Mental Health, 5 Missouri. Department of Social Services, 5 Missouri. General Assembly, 4, 14-15, 23 Missouri. General Assembly. House - Appropriations Committee, 6, 8, 25-26 Missouri. General Assembly. House - Education Committee, 8 Missouri. General Assembly. House - rules and practice, 8-9 Missouri. General Assembly. House - Speaker, 16 Missouri. General Assembly. secretaries, 6 Missouri. General Assembly. Senate - Appropriations Committee, 6, 26 Missouri. General Assembly. term of office limits, 27 Missouri - Politics and government, 17 Murray, George E., Jr. (1923-1982), 12-13 New Deal (1933-1939), 4-5 Normandy (Missouri) School District, 6, 11-12 Payne, Franklin (1917-1994), 12-13 Peterbilt of St. Louis (St. Louis, Missouri), 9 Public Accommodations Act (1965), 10 Public utilities - Rates -- Law and legislation -- Missouri, 8 Rabbitt, Richard J. “Dick” (1935 - ), 19 Race relations - Missouri, 11-12 Rothman, Kenneth J. (1935 - ), 11, 22, 25 Rural-urban relations - Missouri, 14-15 Schlafly, Phyllis (1924 - ), 20 Schlemeier, Jorgen, 24 Schneider, John Durbin (1937 - ), 24 Shear, S. Sue (1918-1998), 19-20 Sheehan, Mel R. (1923 - ), 11 Storts, Brick P., III, 17, 18 Taxation - Missouri, 15-16 Teasdale, Joseph Patrick (1939 - ), 18 Trucking - Deregulation, 2 United States - Politics and government, 5 University of Kansas City (Missouri), 14 University of Missouri - Kansas City, 14 University of Missouri - Rolla, 14 University of Missouri - St. Louis, 6-7, 14 Villa, Thomas Albert, (1945 - ), 23 Voting Age - Law and legislation -- Missouri, 20 White, Hugh (1922-1979), 11 Wilson, Truman E. (1926 - ), 26 Woods, Harriett Friedman (1927 - ), 22-23