S3E21: We’re All in This Together with Representative and Former County Clerk Peggy McGaugh

In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Peggy McGaugh. She’s the State Representative for the 7th District, which includes Carroll, Linn, Livingston, and part of Ray counties. Before being elected to the House, she served for 33 years in the Carroll County Clerk’s Office.

They spoke about McGaugh’s experience, the benefits of state legislators coming from election administration backgrounds, and how clerks and state legislators can better work together.

High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson

Transcription of the episode is as follows:

Peggy McGaugh: If you are thinking of a state position at all, consider it because we need more county officials sitting on the House floor, and I would encourage it. Now have all your ducks in a row. Go down there for the right reasons.

[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]

Brianna Lennon: Welcome back to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. This is Brianna Lennon. I’m the County Clerk for Boone County, Missouri, and with me is my co-host –

Eric Fey: Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri.

Brianna Lennon: And we’re very excited to be talking to –

Peggy McGaugh: Representative Peggy McGaugh.

Brianna Lennon: So, representative, you are a legislator now, but previous to that you served as a county clerk for a really long time, and, I think, helped a lot of, mentored a lot of new clerks into the profession. But what we always ask our guests first is to learn a little bit about them and their path into elections. So, can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up in this industry, I guess?

Peggy McGaugh: Of course, it’s pretty much the story of my life because one of my first jobs was in the Hall of Waters in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, where they have government offices, and it was a program for youth – not at risk youth – don’t get that rumor started, but it was for youth that needed summer jobs, you know, keep us off the street type. Anyway. So, my dad was a city employee, so I got this job at the city hall offices. Now, mind you that they didn’t do the elections, but just the whole government experience was kind of cool to me. Neither of my parents went to college or, you know, they were just workforce, blue collar, so I kind of had my aspirations into, you know, I think I’m gonna be something else, you know? I’m gonna work towards something else.

So, fast forward when my husband and I met, and he was farming at the time, and we decided to move to Carroll County, which there I was looking for a job, and there was a courthouse job open, and so, I just went and saw it in the paper and went and applied and got hired in the county clerk’s office by a very, very nice man, elderly gentleman. His name was Howard Payne, and he was just a very fatherly figure, very stoic, and, you know, in his ways, but he mentored me, and he was going to turn 70 the year that the office was open, so he came to me and said, “would you” – and I worked for him nine years – “Would you like to file? You think you want to be county clerk because I think you could do it.” And I said, “Oh, I, you know, I’ve got a child, I’ve got this, you know,” I had all the excuses, and he said, “How about if I pay your filing fee,” which, back then it was $50, which was a lot when you’re making minimum wage – which, by the way, back then was $4.25 – and so, he did. He paid my filing fee. He didn’t tell everybody we did that. Yeah, he’s passed away now, so we’re okay, but he really guided me towards, you know, the service and the fact that everybody that came into that office, and you heard it in here today, is the same. We don’t separate the Republican and the Democrat. We treat them all the same. Elections is bipartisan. So, that’s always how I’ve treated that position.

So, I stayed there for over 30 years. Again, nine as his deputy, and then I had five and almost a half terms, and then my son was the representative for our area before redistricting, and he got appointed by the governor at that time as our associate circuit judge. And he’d moved back to the community – Carrollton. So, he came to me in my office and said, “Mom, I’m going to get that appointment. How about you take my place in the state house?” You know, I was a member of MAC [Missouri Association of Counties], I had testified, I’d done all the things that you do as a county clerk to interact with the House, but I never really aspired to be there until I started seeing things in elections be not so fair and not so fun, and it just seemed like the clerk’s office, especially, was being loaded up with new duties.

So I said, “Well, I’ll consider it,” and he said, “You need to decide really quickly,” and so, my third question was, “Have you asked your dad? Have you said anything to your dad?” Because that’s, you know, we live far enough away from the Capitol you have to stay during the week. Well, it all turned out well, I won my first election. It was a special election in February of ‘18. Got down there. It was too late for me to file any election bills, but boy, I knew which ones I was going to once it was my chance to do it, because of my relationship with you all, and having served as a county clerk and wanting to make it fair, and just you guys need the attention that you – you know you deserve the attention that you get, but misinformation about what you do and elections, in general, runs rampant, not only throughout the community, but in the State House, and I wanted to fight that, and, as you know, I do truly carry out my office and my bills in a bipartisan fashion.

Eric Fey: Absolutely, I wonder if maybe we can back up a little bit from where we are now to where you started when you were county clerk because we’ve been talking earlier today to several folks who are brand new in the job, or just been in there a couple years, and that in Missouri we’ve had this large turnover of county clerks – almost a third of them I think – we’ve got new folks going into this presidential election. When I started and, you know, obviously haven’t been around nearly as long, but my sense was all the leaders of the association were these folks that had been around since the 70s and 80s, and everybody seemed like had all this experience and it was very collegial, and, I mean, I really enjoyed getting to know it. And there didn’t seem to be the level of scrutiny, or maybe that’s even the right thing to say, that kind of the level of harshness that you see a little bit today [sic], and so, I wonder if you could – I’m rambling, but could you just paint a picture for anybody who might be listening of what it was like to be a Missouri county clerk when you started, you know, and how it’s different now for people?

Peggy McGaugh: Well, back in ‘95 when I was, when I first took over the office there in Carroll County, the county clerk was the – they still are – the clerk to the county commission, and that’s how it appeared on the ballot, and your life, your work life, mostly revolved around being the secretary to the county commission, being the secretary to the board of equalization payroll, HR, I mean, it seemed like more than 50%, probably 70% of a county clerk’s daily, day-to-day activities were not related to elections., and I feel like now that has flipped. So, that’s one big difference.

And yes, we did have a lot of people that – and back then a lot of men – and, as you notice here, now it’s mostly women. I heard you talk about the, you know, the statistics on that, and why, I don’t know. But we had a lot of men, and they taught us well, and, you know, expected us to learn ourselves, but they were there to help, and I worry now that there’s not enough training, and people are thrust in there not knowing what they’re getting into, and then they kind of throw their hands up like, “This is hard,” you know, and that’s why you’ve had a large turnover.

Speaking of that, I just found out through NCSL [National Conference of State Legislatures] that Missouri is now the number one state, and I looked that up and your name, Eric, came up – that mentioned that, I think, it was over 70% in the last, since 2019 in our association, your association has flipped with people retiring, coming and then leaving again in short term, and then just throwing their hands up they don’t want to come back, and that’s what forces new ones to come on. And some have never had any experience with even working in an office, so that’s a barrier, and I know that is for you guys who, you know, work with and train the new clerks. You know, if they don’t have basic, you know, payroll knowledge, then that’s going to be a problem when they get in there and they’re responsible for it, especially if they beat an incumbent, or they have an unfriendly transition between the old clerk and the new clerk.

Brianna Lennon: So, I’m wondering because I feel like as we have these two competing things, which is a bunch of new clerks and a bunch of misinformation that we’re trying to get people to understand and trust that we know how to do our jobs – but we have so many new people and we don’t have training that may they might not know how to do their jobs – and it’s not because of a place of maliciousness, it’s from an experienced place. I wonder, from where you sit now as a legislator who probably feels like you have to defend us a lot –

Peggy McGaugh: All the time

Brianna Lennon: Because of all of the things that keep coming up. What position do you feel that puts you in to be able to say to your colleagues, you know, “We want to make sure that these people are not set up to fail, but at the same time, you should listen to them because they know what they’re doing.”

Peggy McGaugh: Well, that’s a good question. I don’t want to say that you make my job hard or harder because, honestly, I went down there for you all. I am your rep. I am your person, and being in touch with you all the time and just I can text you, I can text Eric, and you answer me back, even on the weekends. So, that part makes the job easy. But you’re right. There are legislators that believe not only the misinformation, but they don’t believe their clerk, and they think the elections are already predetermined, or that, you know, funky business happens, you know, the night of the election if there’s a, you know, hiccup and they don’t get to announce the results. There’s just a mistrust out there that I have to talk in, not only in committee, but when we talk as a caucus, you know, “Yeah, we,” you know, they’ll, they’ll bring up, you know, “this is, we got to change this. Somebody needs to file this law,” and I’m like, “Hold up. Wait just a minute. Do you know why that statute was put there in the first place?” You know, “somebody else years ago decided that needed to be that way. Why? If you don’t know why it’s put there, let’s not change it just yet. Let’s talk about it.”

And so, I have enough experience now, and I will be a senior – hasn’t that gone fast. My senior term –and I was appointed as the Elections Committee Chairperson, and that was like the epitome of, the highlight of being a county clerk and a state legislator, because that’s what I wanted, that’s what I went for. So, I do have that venue now to me, and people come to me as the election expert of the House because I’m the County Clerk of the House, and so, that’s good. People will now listen and they’ll take a back step into some of these conspiracy theories that they is being fed constantly.

Also, I found out through NCSL that – and I think it was mentioned today with the candidates – Missouri’s election law is coveted. I just came back from the meeting of the election chairs of NCSL – people from Hawaii, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, all over the states, and it was hosted here in Missouri, and honestly, we have so many things to be proud of and that we follow, you know, we’ve passed no excuse absentee, and that really was one thing that I went there to do. I worked on that from the 90s, you know, and so, that’s one of the things I’m going to talk about tomorrow in my speech, you know, we think that we need to get away from what they are talking about other states, and we need to realize that what we have is really good, learn it, learn the law, follow the law, and then we’ll tweak it as we go. Not a wide swath of just throw the baby out with the bath water type thing.

[High Turnout Wide Margins Mid-break]

Eric Fey: I don’t mean for this to be a softball question, necessarily, but – and I also don’t ask it to you know, blow smoke – but I have been very appreciative of your efforts, Peggy, in that, unlike some folks in the state capitol, you’ve taken, in my opinion, the path of more resistance, not the path of least resistance. In that a lot of folks, as you know, you know better than me, in the state capitol are angling for the next thing angling up the ladder, and they like to make deals, and you have consistently stood your ground for county election officials in Missouri and often taken a lot of slings and arrows from folks in your own party, and I draw the parallel to some folks we’ve already talked to, like Adrienne Lee from Vernon County, who, you know, has, again, stood up for the law and what she thinks is right, and I’d like to just give you the opportunity to talk about why you have taken that path, and your thoughts on that.

Peggy McGaugh: Well, thank you for that. Thank you for the compliment first of all, and, again, you know, like I said, when my son came to me and said, “Do you want to be a legislator?” The very first thing that came to my mind was, “I want to change election law,” or “I want to make it better,” or “my clerk friends to be able to not be attacked,” and we just need to bring civility back to elections. And so, you’re right. I have nothing to lose, really. I can speak my mind. I can sometimes tell my party this is not the way it is, let’s have a conversation about it. I don’t want to be Secretary of State. I’m not even going to, I don’t have a path to Senate either, because the senator from my area, due to redistricting, used to be the position I’m in now – the Rep. So, that’s another eight years, and as you can tell from the new grays that I have, you know, that’s just not in my path. I don’t want to be staying away from my home four nights a week when I’m 70 years old. I can tell you that.

Now, would I like it – probably. Will my health hold out – I hope so, but I’m also my mom’s primary caregiver, and she needs me. She’s 90, and she needs me back home, too.

So, sometimes I just have to bite my tongue, I really do, and you’ve probably seen it in committee, but other times, like I said, I got nothing to lose. I’m going to tell the truth and I’m going to say the way it is –whether my legislation moves or not – at least I go to sleep each night knowing that I stood my ground and made my peace with if they wanted to listen, and like I said, a lot of people will come to me and they’ll be complimentary about – “I was thinking that, but I didn’t want to say it because I didn’t want leadership to,” you know, “come down on me.” They – leadership – they don’t come down on me because they respect that I do know what I’m talking about, but as you found out this year, the very bill that we needed to pass was a non-election bill, and, I think, because of a couple of votes I took that, you know, didn’t fit the narrative, for some reason, my bill just fell off the calendar, you know. So, I do regret sometimes that I am so vocal when I’m trying to do something, and it gets swept away because of a stance on another thing.

Brianna Lennon: One of the things that you touched on is the fact that you are term limited out, and that you will be term limited out after your next two-year cycle, and there are not very many clerks, I mean, there are so many new clerks, but it’s not like the turnover that we’ve had or because they’re running for other offices. There are a few, but not very many, and certainly some of the ones that we’ve had haven’t had very much experience as a clerk before they make the move to the next position. What would you say to, well: A – I guess, what would you say to a clerk that was thinking about going into the legislature? And also, can you touch on the importance of having former clerks in the legislature.

Peggy McGaugh: If you are thinking of a state position at all – consider it because we need more county officials sitting on the House floor, and I would encourage it. Now have all your ducks in a row. Go down there for the right reasons. First of all, it’s a pay cut, so you gotta get ready for that. So, in my instance, I was able to supplement my paltry legislator pay with my CERF [County Employees Retirement Fund] benefits that I gained while I was the county clerk. So, that worked well for me, and some people don’t have that.

You want to make sure that, again, you’re going for the right reasons, and you want to make sure that you listen to the people of what is the issue in your district, not statewide, not what’s happening in other states, what’s happening in Missouri? And what’s happening in your area? So, that you can be a person that represents your 37,000 people, and you got to remember, Brianna, that my district changed with the new census. The three counties I started out with, two of the three totally got taken away from me, and I got two more. So, in essence, I have represented five and a half counties in my, what will be my eight years, hopefully. I am on the ballot, and I do have competition, by the way, disclaimer. But, you know, that’s a lot. And people in your area, in your area – their 37,000 people is a neighborhood or a town, right? So, rural representatives have a lot of land mass, you know, it’s not easy. You need to be prepared for being on the road a lot, driving a lot, just being with your people. I feel like that’s the best representative, the ones that know their constituents by name, by problem, by the things that are important to them. And it used to be that elections was not high on people’s priority list. In ‘18, you know, if I asked, “So, what issues do I need to carry with me to Jefferson City?” “Roads,” you know, “black tops. Don’t give them back to the counties. Fix the roads,” you know, “jobs, the economy,” and I would bring up elections. “Oh, well, I love our county. Elections are good. We’re good.” It’s flipped now, you know, “Immigration.” “I’m sorry that’s a federal issue really,” right now. But, yeah, people bring up the machines, or, you know, fraud. “Oh, I know someone’s not a, you know, a true person that lives here. They just have a home,” you know, “a vacation home.” Just all those things. I mean, I feel like the press has worked people up to a frenzy in that there are so many things wrong with our elections, when there are not – not in Missouri, and we know that, and you know that, and that’s why you are good at your job.

Brianna Lennon: Do you have also, do you have any advice for other legislators, of like – what do you think the ideal relationship would be like between clerks that are trying to talk to a legislator about an issue that is of concern to them?

Peggy McGaugh: There’s going to be a large number of freshmen on the House, and so, one of the first things the city and county clerk needs to do is welcome that person, whether it’s the same party or not, you know, let them come to the office, see how elections are run, or, by that time, you know, it’ll be the certification or something, you know, let them in on the equipment and all the things that go together and, you know, making a successful election. Start out on the right foot, even if there was a hiccup, you know, make sure that this new state legislator, especially, knows you know what went on behind the scenes, and open that up to them. And I say that same thing to them, you know, it’s like, “have you met your new county clerk?” If someone will come up [with a], “So and so did this?” “Did you actually go to the office? Have you met them? Did you just read the newspaper article, listen to the radio? Or did you actually talk face to face with the person that certified your election?”

And, yeah, do I shame them? Maybe. But it makes it happen, you know. Every – I feel like, if you’ve made it that far to be a legislator, there’s a whole lot of people that helped you get there, and you want to talk to the elections board, even if it’s a different party. You want to get along with what’s happening there. It’s very, very important.

Eric Fey: You’ve been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I’m your host, Eric Fey alongside Brianna Lennon. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.