Missouri politicians wouldn’t be able to lure donors into recurring contributions with emotional appeals that don’t disclose who would benefit from the money under a bill heard Jan. 13.
State Rep. Jim Murphy, a Republican from Oakville, said the scheme leaves contributors, who are often elderly people, confused when thousands of dollars are drawn from their accounts months, or years, after they respond to a fundraising email or text.
“If it’s not fraud, then it’s certainly something that hurts every one of us,” Murphy said as he presented his bill to the House Elections Committee.
Murphy’s bill is a response to fundraising tactics used by former state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Republican from St. Charles, who used it to finance his unsuccessful bid for governor in 2024 and is pulling money from donors to that campaign to fund his bid this year for St. Charles County executive.
Murphy said he filed the bill after The Independent reported in November that a 92-year-old Nebraska veteran who thought he had given once to Eigel’s campaign in 2023 was tapped 35 times, for $1,050 total, from December 2024 through Sept. 30 because of an automatic recurring donation.
The aforementioned veteran, Russell Wood, is one of 141 people nationally — including six from Missouri — who made multiple donations to Eigel’s 2024 campaign for governor who are also contributors to his St. Charles County executive race.
One retired woman in Texas, who made 143 donations to Eigel’s campaign for governor, contributed $1,205 in 74 separate donations since December 2024.
BILL PAC, a separate committee that promotes Eigel’s campaigns, also uses the tactic.
The latest campaign donation reports are due Jan. 15 and will show whether those donations continued during the final quarter of the year.
Eigel’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the bill.
Murphy’s bill would ban any political committee from accepting automatically recurring donations, although, under questioning, he said he would be willing to change it to allow people to set up recurring donations if they wish.
The bill would also require solicitations to “state clearly, in a clear and conspicuous manner” which candidate or committee would benefit from a donation.
Murphy did not name Eigel during last Tuesday’s hearing, but said his campaign was soliciting contributions without giving his name but with an appeal that brought an emotional response.
“As it turned out, there were elderly people that said, ‘oh, yeah, I’m against this particular issue, so therefore I’m going to give $20 to fight this issue’,” Murphy said. “They had no idea where the money was really going to and then years later, they’re still trying to get off the automatic contribution rolls, and it’s turned into thousands of dollars.”
If the bill passed, it would not stop candidates for federal office from using solicitations that create automatic, recurring donations, Murphy said in response to questions.
The problem, he said, isn’t limited to federal candidates and needs a state response.
“Politicians don’t have the best reputation in the world,” he said. “Some of it is deserved and some of it is certainly not. But when campaigns do things like this, they certainly do not do any of us a service and they don’t do the country any service.”
Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.
