Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey had citations wiped before entering office
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Years before becoming Missouri’s top law enforcement official, Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey was cited for violating the state’s conservation laws and had the charges wiped from his record.
Bailey, who is campaigning for a full term, had those records expunged before working as the general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections in 2018.
A spokesperson for Bailey’s campaign confirmed a St. Louis-Post Dispatch report that the expungements relate to two incidents in which Bailey was fishing. One occurred when Bailey, then 18 years old, was fined $15 for staying in a park after hours after fishing. The other happened when Bailey was in college and was fined $25 for violating another conservation law.
The attorney general’s prior criminal history has surfaced as he prepares to face off against Will Scharf, a former assistant U.S. attorney, in the Republican primary this August. A political action committee supporting Bailey has started running ads highlighting previous criminal charges against Scharf.
Bailey’s campaign spokesperson Mike Hafner said in an email that the violations against Bailey were not significant enough to prevent him from getting a law license, being a foster parent or anything else.
Before Gov. Mike Parson appointed him as attorney general, Bailey served as the top attorney in Parson’s office. He also worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Warren County and as an assistant attorney general before working for the Department of Corrections.
On the campaign trail, Bailey has frequently cited his time in the U.S. Army, in which he served two combat deployments in Iraq.
Scharf, in an interview with The Star, pointed to comments he made with the Post-Dispatch.
“I love fishing too,” Scharf previously told the Post-Dispatch, before adding, “I’ve never violated state fishing law.”
Missouri state law allows people to petition the court to have certain crimes expunged from their record. Expunged records are not publicly available.
To get a record expunged, a person must pay all fines and not have had any other criminal charges for the previous three years. People found guilty of crimes such as Class A felonies, sex crimes, felony assault and crimes resulting in death are not eligible for expungement.
The revelations of the years-old criminal histories of Bailey and Scharf come ahead of the August primary election. Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Columbia, pointed to the similarities between the two candidates on policy issues.
“Given that there is no daylight between Bailey and Scharf on almost all of the issues, the campaign has degenerated into character attacks,” Squire said in an email. “The main street Republicans left in the party will have to decide which of the two candidates they find less objectionable.”
