Gambling company bankrolls attacks in Missouri Senate District 16 GOP primary

The PAC has spent at least $44,000 airing advertisements on radio stations in Springfield, Lebanon and Rolla, according to Federal Communications Commission records. That is more than any candidate in the 16th Senate District primary has spent on broadcast advertising.

The ad accuses Kelly of being “bought and paid for” by interests representing casinos, marijuana businesses and pharmaceutical companies. It also claims she missed 250 votes while serving in the Missouri House, though it provides no context for that figure.

What the ad does not disclose is that its sole financial backer is a company seeking permission to operate video lottery terminals in Missouri businesses.

It also does not mention that J&J Ventures has a clear favorite in the race: state Rep. Bill Hardwick, the chief House sponsor of legislation that would legalize the machines.

J&J Ventures has given $4,000 over the past two years to Hardwick’s campaign — the maximum allowed — and $95,000 to the Missouri Enterprise Fund PAC, a committee aligned with Hardwick that accepts unlimited donations.

Hardwick squeezed the bill authorizing video lottery through the House each of the past two years, only for it to stall in the state Senate. 

Directing money from PACs it controls into attack ads is a new step for J&J Ventures.

Legio XIII also sent $22,000 of J&J’s money to other candidates, part of the company’s $2.3 million in donations given directly or through other PACs since Jan. 1, 2025. 

Neither J&J Ventures nor the treasurer of Legio XIII PAC — named for a legion of ancient Rome — returned calls seeking comment.

The Independent shared the ad’s text with Kelly, who said she had not heard it.

J&J is spending heavily “to help Bill Hardwick tell a lot of lies about me,” Kelly said in response. “Makes you wonder what other things Bill Hardwick is lying about.”

Hardwick, who by law cannot coordinate with the PAC, declined to discuss the ads. 

“I don’t really know anything about it,” he said.

The radio spots echo mailers from the Missouri Enterprise Fund that brand Kelly “Hypocritical Hannah” and say she has “taken money from casinos, Big Pharma, marijuana and liquor companies.” 

Kelly’s campaign disclosure reports show some smaller donations, with one exception: $75,000 since June 30 tied to her opposition to video lottery. That money — $50,000 from Penn Entertainment, which owns two Missouri casinos, and $25,000 from the Missouri Gaming PAC, which represents the state’s 13 casinos — arrived after The Independent reported her opposition on June 15. 

Kelly said the donors share her criticism of legalized video lottery terminals and that she did not solicit them.

Hardwick, who has drawn his own mailers accusing him of wanting a “slot machine in every corner,” said both sides distort the record. 

“I know there is some hypocrisy in criticizing somebody else for taking donations when you’re taking donations,” he said, “but I want to be positive.”

State Rep. Don Mayhew, the third candidate in the GOP primary mounting a full-scale campaign, has so far escaped on-air and direct mail attacks. He noted that the name of the PAC attacking Kelly and the issues raised obscure the source of the message.

“It’s a bit disconcerting, if someone’s going to the trouble of doing something that goofy, how much they are trying to hide the fact that this is just yet another ploy by them to influence an election,” Mayhew said. “It’s their constitutional right, I get it, but why?”

The district and candidates

The 16th District is shaped like an off-balance dumbbell, with Laclede and Wright counties on the southwest end and Maries, Phelps and Dent counties forming the northeast bulge. Pulaski County, the largest in population and home to Fort Leonard Wood, connects the two ends along Interstate 44.

For the past 16 years, the district has been represented by two generations of the Brown family of Rolla, first Dan Brown and currently his son, Justin Brown. The district is considered solidly Republican — a Democrat has only won it once since 1994. 

The Republican candidates, in ballot order, are Hardwick, an attorney; Philip Lohmann of Rolla, who has not campaigned extensively and could not be reached for comment; Mayhew, a civil engineer from Crocker; and Kelly, a real estate broker from Norwood.

The winner will face Virginia Staabs, a Democrat from Richland.

Hardwick’s high-visibility role as the chief sponsor of video lottery legislation during his four years in the House has made him the cash leader in fundraising for the race. He’s received large donations from other PACs favoring his legislation, which along with other contributions helped his campaign raise more  than $120,000 and the Missouri Enterprise PAC raise almost $260,000 since the start of 2025.

Hardwick’s other major priority legislation seeks to restore provisions of the 2021 “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” which was struck down by federal courts in 2024 as a violation of the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

During his eight years in the House, Mayhew has been one of the Missouri Department of Transportation’s toughest critics, and was a leading opponent of the bill passed in 2025 that allowed utilities to add “construction work in progress” charges to customer bills and negotiate long-term rates with big users like data centers.

This year, he joined the call for Gov. Mike Kehoe to convene a special session to regulate the placement of new data centers.

Mayhew does not have a PAC aligned with his campaign. His committee has raised just under $50,000 since the start of 2025, spent $43,000 through June 30 and had $51,683 available for the final month.

While a member of the House from 2017 to 2025, Kelly worked to hold the Children’s Division accountable for failures of the child protection system. She sponsored numerous bills to improve the state’s treatment of children in its care, including a push to set aside Social Security survivor benefits for foster children’s future needs. The bill became law a year after Kelly left office due to term limits.

She also made headlines during her final years in office for her clashes with then-House Speaker Dean Plocher as she led a House Ethics Committee investigation of his ties to lobbyists and personal expense claims.

And in 2024, she was one of two lawmakers who sued unsuccessfully to knock Amendment 3, which legalized abortion, off the ballot. 

The 16th District has military members and veterans who retired to the Ozarks, farm families and manufacturing, said Tim Berrier, former chairman of the Pulaski County Republican Party.

“It’s an encompassing district that has a lot of variety to it,” Berrier said. “It’s not just based on one thing.”

The region has been growing in population, led by Pulaski County, up 30% since 2000, and Phelps County, which has grown about 15% in the same period.

Residents, especially in Pulaski County, are worried about rural healthcare, Berrier said. 

“We’ve got a couple of clinics, but we’re 30 miles from Rolla and 30 miles from Lebanon if something major would happen,” he said.

Mayhew and Hardwick both represent House districts that include portions of Pulaski County. Berrier said the county feels somewhat neglected by having a senator for the past 8 years based in Rolla. While he didn’t name a favorite, Berrier said he wants one to win to give the county a greater voice.

“The senatorial district will not go wrong in having either Hardwick or Mayhew win that race and sit in that seat,” Berrier said.

For Pulaski County, however, having two local candidates split the vote could help Kelly, who is from Norwood in Wright County, the smallest population county of the district. 

The issues

The race could ultimately be decided by the positions each candidate takes on Amendments 4 and 5, Berrier said, which are dominating political discussions. 

“The two amendments, 4 and 5, are huge down here,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of people that are against both of them.”

Mayhew said when he knocks on doors, he’s hearing a lot about Amendment 5, which would give lawmakers the authority to increase or expand sales taxes in order to phase out the income tax. 

It is Gov. Mike Kehoe’s top priority for the year and backers have spent $5.5 million on broadcast ads since mid-June to build support. 

“There’s really not much else on screen for them,” he said.

Hardwick is one of Amendment 5’s most ardent legislative supporters, earning recognition as an ALEC Policy Champion from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative advocacy organization. During House debate on the proposal, Hardwick said eliminating the income tax will help poor families save and invest while attracting entrepreneurs because income from innovation will not be taxed.

“If you talk to people, they all have a dream of something,” Hardwick said. “They want to be their own boss. How do you make that possible? By eliminating the income tax.”

Mayhew voted for the proposal in the House but has soured on it since. 

The sales tax expansion, he said, will be shaped by heavy lobbying pressure.

“Whoever has the highest paid lobbyist gets an exception,” Mayhew said. “I don’t want the lawyers and the CPAs to be excepted out of it, but the barbers and the engineers and the surveyors end up having to pay the tax because we weren’t smart enough to hire a high-priced lobbyist.”

Voters don’t like it, he said, because it leaves too many questions unanswered. 

“People are frustrated with the way Jefferson City works, and I can appreciate their skepticism,” Mayhew said. “I share their skepticism, and so that’s what’s wrong with Amendment 5.”

Kelly is also against Amendment 5. Even with a major expansion of what is taxed, there’s not enough money exchanging hands to cover income tax revenue without a sales tax rate increase, she said.

“I am always for tax reform, but I am not going to be supporting this current version on the ballot,” Kelly said. “I cannot see that the math maths.”

Kelly supports Amendment 4, which would alter the majorities required to pass constitutional amendments proposed by initiative. Instead of a simple majority, initiative proposals would have to achieve a majority in every congressional district.

Voters, she said, are skeptical of Amendment 4 as well.

“It’s a mixed bag,” she said.

The almost-uncountered advertising campaign against Amendment 4 is very effective, Mayhew said. Many of the Republican voters he speaks with are against it, he said.

“Sometimes there’s no way for you to counter that because you can’t have a 10-minute conversation with every single voter to show them how Amendment 4 benefits rural Missouri,” Mayhew said. “You just can’t.”

As a senator, Mayhew said he would continue to seek accountability from MoDOT. Lawmakers appropriated $2.8 billion, half from the general revenue surplus, in 2023 to widen Interstate 70 to three lanes in each direction. The next year, a fund of $577 million, including $214 million of general revenue, was created for improvements along Interstate 44.

The money could have paid for all the unfunded projects in MoDOT’s system and widening projects at key points on both interstates that slow traffic, Mayhew said.

“If you take those areas, you eliminate about 80% of the traffic slowdowns on both of those highways,” Mayhew said.

A special session is needed for new data center regulation because they are built so fast, Mayhew said. The major need is to control the use of groundwater, with deep wells for data centers or protections so nearby wells are not depleted for shallow wells, he said.

“Anytime you poke a hole in the ground, if it’s a classic domestic well in a rural environment, the rules are pretty thin,” Mayhew said.

Electric ratepayers also need protection from charges associated with power purchased to supply data centers, he said.

Voters are very concerned about data centers, Kelly said. They want protection for water resources and the rural landscape.

“I will work every day to make sure that we can not have them in the 16th District,” Kelly said. “To say that we can take them out of the state, I believe, is a naive statement because they’re here.”

Hardwick also opposes data center development in the district.

“I don’t want our electric bills to go up,” he said in a post on social media. “I don’t want our farmland turned into industrial blight.”

Video lottery

”Gray market” games that have proliferated in gas stations and VFW halls around the state are being driven out by enforcement from Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, Kelly said, and she would not vote to let legal slot machines return to replace them. The games prey on addictive behavior, she said, and the money it promises for state revenue isn’t enough to offset that. 

“Why do we think expanding this will all of a sudden fix the woes of everything else that hasn’t worked up to this point?” Kelly said. “What works is cutting back on our spending. What works is being accountable for the outcomes of what we’re spending on right now.”

Mailers being delivered in the district attacking Hardwick accuse him of wanting children to have access to gambling machines, Hardwick said. The other attacks are just as inaccurate, he said.

“The attack is that Bill Hardwick wants a slot machine in every corner, but that’s not what the bill does,” he said. “The bill lets communities decide first if they want to have any gaming, and then if they do, it puts limits the number of machines.”

Mayhew opposes expanding video lottery because he sees it as a false promise of money for education and revenue for store owners. The revenue to store owners won’t pay, in many rural locations, for the modifications the bill would require to host machines, he said.

And the money would otherwise be spent on lottery tickets, which produce more money per dollar spent than the games would, he said.

“If our whole purpose for the lottery was to make sure we had a a constant revenue source for education, to avoid having to put general revenue into education in that equivalent amount, well, then this thing takes us the wrong direction,” Mayhew said.

The attacks focused on Kelly and Hardwick have left Mayhew unscathed. The reason, he contends, is that the political professionals don’t think he can win.

“​​I’ve just got to depend on primary voters being a little more savvy than general election voters,” Mayhew said, “and fortunately that is the case.”

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