The congressman from the 9th District is Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican first elected in 2008 with Missouri roots that stretch back five generations. He grew up in St. Elizabeth, where his father worked as an insurance agent and then owned a bank. Luetkemeyer (LOOT-ka-myer) was a star high school baseball player, but his tryouts with the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates were unsuccessful. He graduated from Lincoln University, a historically black college in Jefferson City, with a degree in political science. He and his wife settled on his great-grandfather’s farm in St. Elizabeth. In addition to farming, Luetkemeyer became involved in his family’s banking operations and founded the Luetkemeyer Insurance Agency. Read More

The congressman from the 9th District is Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican first elected in 2008 with Missouri roots that stretch back five generations. He grew up in St. Elizabeth, where his father worked as an insurance agent and then owned a bank. Luetkemeyer (LOOT-ka-myer) was a star high school baseball player, but his tryouts with the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates were unsuccessful. He graduated from Lincoln University, a historically black college in Jefferson City, with a degree in political science. He and his wife settled on his great-grandfather’s farm in St. Elizabeth. In addition to farming, Luetkemeyer became involved in his family’s banking operations and founded the Luetkemeyer Insurance Agency.

In 1999, Luetkemeyer was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives, where he developed a reputation as a thoughtful legislator. He campaigned for Missouri treasurer in 2004 but lost in the Republican primary. In 2007, Luetkemeyer was appointed director of the Missouri Division of Tourism. Two years later, the 9th District House seat came open when Republican Rep. Kenny Hulshof decided to run for governor to succeed retiring Republican Gov. Matt Blunt.

Luetkemeyer entered a five-way GOP primary, and was viewed by Republican politicos as the favorite. The conservative anti-tax group Club for Growth endorsed GOP state Rep. Bob Onder, although Luetkemeyer received a critical endorsement from the anti-abortion group Missouri Right to Life. Luetkemeyer trounced the competition with 40% of the vote.

In the general election, he faced state Rep. Judy Baker, a health care consultant from Columbia. Republicans did not think Baker’s liberal message would play well in the district’s conservative-leaning rural counties. Luetkemeyer ran as a social conservative opposed to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. He emphasized his farming background to the district’s largely rural constituency. Luetkemeyer also questioned Baker’s health care credentials by pointing out that a private health care company she worked for in 2000 and 2001 lost more than $2 million in that time. Baker countered that she had helped to fix the company’s problems. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who was the state auditor during that period, also defended Baker’s record.

Baker criticized Luetkemeyer for sponsoring a bill that would have allowed Missouri insurance companies to refuse to cover mammograms, maternity benefits, or childhood immunizations. She neglected to note that he eventually withdrew those controversial provisions. Luetkemeyer raised $2.8 million, two-thirds of it his own money; Baker raised $1.7 million. In the election, Baker managed to carry populous Boone County, but Luetkemeyer prevailed in the rural counties and those west of St. Louis. He won 50%-47.5%. When Baker passed on a 2010 rematch, any Democratic hopes of victory vanished, and Luetkemeyer coasted to re-election with 77%-22% over Libertarian Christopher Dwyer.

In the House, Luetkemeyer joined the Tea Party Caucus and established himself as a devout social and fiscal conservative. He introduced a bill in July 2009 barring the United States from contributing to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which he said engaged in “dubious science.” Later, he told a tea party rally that most of cable provocateur Glenn Beck’s controversial assertions “must be true, because nobody’s refuting” them. He dismissed the economic stimulus law as a “large-scale failure,” but the liberal think tank Center for American Progress noted that he later called a grant from the program in Frankford as “critical” and joined Missouri lawmakers in requesting $100 million in stimulus money for a road project.

Following the Republican takeover of the House in 2010, Luetkemeyer won a seat on the Financial Services Committee. He had scorned the Democrats’ Wall Street reform bill as detrimental to small banks, saying in a Washington Times op-ed, “People on Main Street understand that community banks did not cause the financial crisis and that they already carry daunting regulatory burdens.” He enthusiastically backed the committee’s decision in February 2011 to investigate whether the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was being overly aggressive in overseeing such banks.