Missouri Senate 10th District race turns sour as attacks fly

By Steph Quinn, Missouri Independent

For much of the Republican primary race for Missouri’s 10th District state Senate seat, state Rep. Tricia Byrnes of Wentzville has sought to make the accelerating development of large-scale data centers a decisive campaign issue.

The district, which comprises Callaway, Lincoln, Montgomery, Pike and northwestern St. Charles counties, has been a flashpoint of public outcry against data centers. Amazon and Google are building data centers on nearly 2,000 acres north and south of New Florence along Interstate 70, and data centers have been proposed in northern Callaway County and at Foristell, near the eastern border of the district.

Byrnes, who has vowed to file legislation on data centers, has described her opponent, Missouri Cattlemen’s Association Executive Vice President Mike Deering, as a “lobbyist” and data center supporter. Deering, of Shamrock, has said little publicly about these claims, instead emphasizing his small-town roots and an ethos of fiscal responsibility and government “getting out of the way” of small business owners and farmers.

But in recent weeks, attacks on Byrnes by Deering backers have turned attention away from issues of land use, state spending and streamlining bureaucracy.

A political action committee dedicated to Deering’s campaign, the Cut the Bull PAC, has released mailers, purchased radio advertisements and set up a website alleging that Byrnes “lied to police” and sent a “fraudulent police report” in February 2025 about being suicidal.

Byrnes drew criticism at the time for texting the state’s 988 suicide and crisis lifeline saying she had a gun to her head in what she described as a test to reveal shortcomings in the system. Though the Missouri Capitol Police responded to the texts, Byrnes told The Independent the PAC’s claims that she told police she was suicidal are false.

Now Byrnes has written in a mailer sent by her campaign committee, Friends for Tricia Byrnes, that the response to her 988 messages was part of a “political campaign” to get her expelled from the General Assembly and thwart legislation she had filed about the hotline earlier in the 2025 session.

Byrnes said she was “being a hero” by revealing how long 988 clients wait before being connected with a counselor. In the mailer, Byrnes also said surveys sent to 988 clients, which include questions about gender identity, are used to gather data on “transgender youth suicides” and “argue for more federal funding and more ideological entrenchment inside the mental health system.”  

“They were coaching vulnerable kids and collecting data on them,” Byrnes said. “That is a really big story. But the entire thing became about, Trish Byrnes is facing criminal charges.”

The 10th District seat is available because incumbent Republican state Sen. Travis Fitzwater of Holts Summit resigned in May to become executive director of the Missouri Technology Corporation rather than seek a second term.

Deering’s candidate committee has raised $137,919 through June 30, with $109,142 on hand. Byrnes’s candidate committee hasn’t submitted the report due Wednesday as of publication time. Through the end of March, Byrnes had raised $82,828 with $72,637 on hand.

Both candidates have PACs dedicated to their campaigns. The Values First PAC, which supports Byrnes, has raised $52,251 with $52,056 on hand as of June 30. Cut the Bull PAC had raised $208,748, with $185,640 on hand.

The winner of the primary will take on one of two Democrats in the November general election: John Wells of Holts Summit or Pablo John Los. The district has not elected a Democrat to the state Senate since 2010.

Data centers

Byrnes has suggested that Deering opposes guardrails on data center development, referring to him in a July 7 social media post as “Data Center Deering.”

In the post, Byrnes commented on a photo of Deering with Gov. Mike Kehoe, former Gov. Mike Parson, Fitzwater and former U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer from Deering’s campaign kickoff, calling the group “the Data Center Dream team.”

Kehoe has praised data centers as a key to Missouri’s economic growth, appearing at the public announcements of Amazon and Google data centers under construction in Montgomery County.

“When I see these data centers being rolled out by the powers (that) be, I think it’s very fair to refer to him as Data Center Deering,” Byrnes said.

But Deering told The Independent he supports restrictions on data center development.

“With any large development, especially these data centers, there need to be massive, massive guardrails in place on these things, or they just don’t need to be here,” Deering said.

He said that includes transparency requirements and legislation to protect natural resources and ensure that utility prices “aren’t raised one red cent” due to new data centers.

Deering said he supported legislation this year sponsored by two St. Charles County Republicans, state Reps. Mike Costlow and Colin Wellenkamp, that aimed to bolster protections against rate hikes linked to large-scale electricity and water consumers like data centers. 

“Any politician that says there wasn’t time to act during session is not being honest with Missouri voters,” Deering said.

Byrnes said she voted against a 2025 state law that required investor-owned electric utilities to establish higher rates for large-scale electricity consumers because it also allows utility companies to charge customers for power plants while they are under construction.

Deering said in a November 2025 interview that data centers could provide local tax revenues and “controlled growth” while preserving the rural character of Montgomery County.

“If you want to talk about the positives, you’re going to get a large tax base to fund your schools, your fire districts et cetera, without a big boom in housing, without a big boom in retail and industry and things like that,” Deering said.

Byrnes told The Independent she doesn’t believe that Deering supports data center guardrails.

“He’s saying that to copy off of me,” Byrnes said.

Mike Deering

Deering, who became executive vice president of the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association in 2012, took his first elected office in 2024, as a member of the Montgomery County Board of Education. He and his wife produce beef and lamb at their farm in Callaway County, which they sell along with other locally made goods at their store in Montgomery City, Nature’s Plow.

Raised in Savannah, Deering worked in communications for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the U.S. Grains Council and the National Cattlemen’s Association in Washington, D.C. before returning to Missouri. He said he was not a lobbyist for any of these organizations, and a search for him in federal lobbying reports did not turn up any results.

Deering began registering as a lobbyist in Missouri after he took up his current post at the state’s Cattlemen’s Association — most recently in 2020 — but said he stopped because he realized his position doesn’t require it.

“I absolutely unregistered because I never was a lobbyist,” Deering said.

Someone is a lobbyist if they have regular and continuing contact with lawmakers to persuade them to adopt a particular stance on an issue.

Though the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association monitors policy changes and provides feedback on how proposed legislation could impact cattle farmers, he says his work isn’t lobbying.

“People at the Capitol every day?” Deering said. “No, that’s not me.”

Deering said eminent domain and protection of property rights are among the most serious challenges for Missouri farmers.

One of Deering’s proudest achievements at the Cattlemen’s Association, he said, was his support of a 2022 state law that required electrical transmission line developers to pay landowners more for land taken through eminent domain. 

In 2026, Deering testified in support of legislation that would have prohibited the use of eminent domain in solar or wind energy projects and required the “fair market value” for land subject to eminent domain proceedings reflect factors such as the impact of a proposed project on the value of a landowner’s remaining land. 

“The power grid in this country has been built largely on the backs of landowners, and too often they are an afterthought in condemnation proceedings,” Deering said. 

If elected, Deering said he hopes to streamline the business filing process and simplify the tax system for small business owners.

Deering said the current tax system benefits businesses with “entire accounting departments available to take advantage of special interest loopholes.”

“Small mom and pop businesses like ours struggle to keep up with never-ending and ever-changing government red tape,” he said.

Tricia Byrnes

Byrnes, who is serving her second term in the Missouri House, describes herself as a “grassroots conservative.”

“My brand has always been that if a powerful corporation or government bureaucracy is hurting families, small businesses, farms or local communities, I’ll be their voice,” Byrnes said.

Byrnes, whose son was diagnosed with a rare cancer as a teenager, was an early leader in the multi-year fight for compensation of St. Louis-area residents sickened by radiation exposure linked to the city’s role during World War II in the development of the first atomic bomb. Those efforts culminated in 2025 in state legislation expanding the authority of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to investigate radioactive waste contamination and the inclusion of 21 Missouri zip codes in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

Byrnes said her priorities include limiting screen time in schools and allowing consumers choice in electric utilities.

A bill Byrnes sponsored this year that would have required school districts to cap the use of tablets and laptops in kindergarten through grade 5 passed the House with bipartisan support but was not heard on the Senate floor.

The use of instructional technology in schools, Byrnes said, “impacts literacy rates, and it even impacts focus and mental health.”

Byrnes told The Independent that the website, ads and mailers funded by the Cut the Bull PAC are false because she only sent messages to 988, not police or 911.

“They’re saying I called 911, called in a fake police report to 911,” Byrnes said. “Completely fabricated a criminal charge against me.”

Deering told The Independent he would not comment. Candidates can donate to PACs that back them, or help them raise money, but they can’t legally control their actions.

“There is only one candidate in this race that I will talk about,” Deering said.

An audio clip on Cut the Bull’s website targeting her, Byrnes said, is from her return call to the Jefferson City Police Department to let them know that there was no emergency. She said she had missed the department’s earlier call because of her duties in the House.

“I’m state Rep. Tricia Byrnes. I have a bill on 988,” Byrnes says in the recording.

Her bill would have directed the suicide and crisis hotline to immediately ask clients what their crisis is and whether they need to be connected to the 911 system. Byrnes said she filed the bill after contacting 988 on a previous occasion about a genuine mental health concern in her district and waiting 24 minutes to talk with a counselor, receiving only surveys and chatbot messages.

Byrnes told the dispatcher she and an employee of Compass Health “were wondering what would happen with 988 if you said you were going to kill yourself, and the same ridiculous nonsense happened, and then 45 minutes later you guys called, which is a failure.”

After confirming that there was no emergency, the dispatcher says, “We put quite a bit of resources on this call, and that is concerning to me.”

Byrnes says the response to the incident was a “political hit.” She has submitted a complaint to the Missouri Bar Association against Cole County Prosecutor Locke Thompson, asking for an investigation to determine whether Thompson “used the power of criminal prosecution to obtain collateral political, reputational, legislative and personal outcomes unrelated to the proper administration of criminal justice.”

In an interview with The Independent, Thompson described Byrnes’ claim that he tried to “bury” her findings about 988 as “a load of something.”

“I think I even told her this, that what she found with the 988 stuff…was concerning, but she couldn’t go about doing it the way she did,” he said.

The recent mailers from Byrnes’ candidate committee claim Thompson told House leadership that Byrnes was charged with a felony and threatened her political career. She was never  charged with a crime and denies that she was ever under investigation.

Thompson told The Independent Byrnes “was absolutely under investigation” by the Missouri Capitol Police and the Missouri Highway Patrol’s Division of Drug and Crime Control.

In an “inter-agency memorandum” Byrnes shared with The Independent, Thompson told House Speaker Jon Patterson and members of the House Ethics Committee that after reviewing the investigative file on the incident, “the conclusion of the Cole County Prosecutor’s Office (is) that it has little choice but to charge Representative Byrnes.”

Thompson told The Independent he never told anyone Byrnes had been charged.

“I talked to House leadership about how it was likely that she was looking at some pretty serious consequences for her actions,” Thompson said. “But I never did tell them she was in fact charged. I might have said I was leaning that way at one point.”

Byrnes’ mailer also refers to three draft press releases Thompson sent Byrnes’ attorney laying out possible outcomes of the investigation, including one in which Byrnes would resign and Thompson’s office would close the investigation. 

“You’re going to charge me with (making a terrorist threat), but if I resign, a criminal action just goes away?” Byrnes told The Independent. “…So he threatened my legislation with criminal charges.”

Thompson said he sent the press releases during discussion with Byrnes and her attorney to get options in writing.

“I wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page,” Thompson said.

Thompson said it’s not uncommon for prosecutors to close cases against elected officials if they agree to resign and that it’s a practice he carried to his current position from working in the state attorney general’s office.

“If part of the allegation is something where it’s someone sort of abusing their office, and if you listen to the (call) I kind of felt like that was the case, then as long as that individual resigns, we typically just call it a day,” Thompson said.

Byrnes said that even though she was not charged, the uproar distracted from her legislation, which passed out of a House committee and then stalled.

“The frustrating part was that they got to do a political hit, but they also got to bury what I was exposing,” Byrnes said. “Because all of the (news) coverage should have went, ‘Oh my God, 988 is killing people because you can’t get a real person on the phone…’.”