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Politically Speaking: GOP consultant Gregg Keller on the fight over politically active nonprofits

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jason Rosenbaum,
Jo Mannies
Published June 4, 2017 at 9:25 PM CDT
Republican consultant Gregg Keller
Jason Rosenbaum I St. Louis Public Radio
Republican consultant Gregg Keller

On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome back Gregg Keller for the second time.

Keller is a St. Louis-based, Republican consultant who runs his own firm, Atlas Strategy Group. He’s worked for a number of Missouri’s prominent GOP officials, including former U.S. Sen. Jim Talent.

Recently, Keller has emerged as a critic of efforts to require politically active nonprofits to reveal their donors. Keller started the Missouri Century Foundation, a 501(c)(4) that’s pushed conservative policies on labor and higher education issues. For instance, Keller’s group prompted the legislation for the right-to-work law, which bars unions and employers from requiring workers to paid dues.

Political consultant Gregg Keller joins St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies for the Politically Speaking podcast.

Discussion over politically active nonprofits has become more pronounced after Gov. Eric Greitens’ campaign staffers started A New Missouri, which is aimed at pushing the governor’s agenda. Even though Greitens criticized his GOP rivals during the 2016 for using “secretive Super PACs” to attack him, he’s been unapologetic about A New Missouri not revealing its donors — or the attacks the nonprofit has launched on fellow Republican lawmakers.

  • While Keller worked for one of Greitens’ opponents during last GOP primary, he said he agrees with the governor’s stance against disclosing 501(c)(4) donors. “I’m very glad that Gov. Greitens has been standing and taking the right stance on this of late — which again, is standing up for Missourians’ constitutional rights,” he said.
  • Keller is hoping Greitens calls a special session aimed at invalidating a St. Louis ordinance that stops landlords and employers from discriminating against women who are pregnant, use birth control or have had an abortion. The Archdiocese of St. Louis is suing the city, contending the ordinance adds abortion rights supporters to a protected class, while discriminating those who are against abortions.
  • He warned that Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill could benefit in her 2018 re-election bid if a divisive Republican primary produces a flawed nominee. “I think that if we go through a bruising, nasty Republican primary and then we nominate someone like a Todd Akin who says or does something incredibly stupid like Todd Akin does, then I think she obviously has a chance of winning in that environment,” he said.
  • Still, Keller said that McCaskill may be in trouble regardless of who emerges as the GOP nominee — especially because President Donald Trump won Missouri by such a huge margin last year.


Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter:@jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter:@jmannies

Follow Gregg Keller on Twitter:@RGreggKeller

Music: “Smooth” by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Missouri News
Jason Rosenbaum
Since entering the world of professional journalism in 2006, Jason Rosenbaum dove head first into the world of politics, policy and even rock and roll music. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Rosenbaum spent more than four years in the Missouri State Capitol writing for the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri Lawyers Media and the St. Louis Beacon.
See stories by Jason Rosenbaum
Jo Mannies
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
See stories by Jo Mannies