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Politically Speaking: Rep. Roden on bringing a law enforcement perspective to Jefferson City

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jason Rosenbaum,
Jo Mannies
Published November 7, 2017 at 4:51 PM CST
State Rep. Shane Roden
Jason Rosenbaum I St. Louis Public Radio
State Rep. Shane Roden

On the latest episode of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome Missouri state Rep. Shane Roden to the program for the first time.

The Cedar Hill Republican represents portions of northwest Jefferson County in the Missouri House. He was first elected in 2014, a year when the GOP took control of most of that county’s legislative offices.

Before he ran for the state legislature in 2014, Roden was a firefighter and a reserve deputy sheriff. After defeating another Republican candidate by about 500 votes, Roden went onto beat incumbent state Rep. Michael Frame in 2014 by a narrow margin. He had a much higher margin of victory in the 2016 election cycle, as Donald Trump won Jefferson County with roughly 65 percent of the vote.

State Rep. Shane Roden, R-Cedar Hill, joins Politically Speaking.

Since entering the Missouri House, Roden diverged from Republicans on efforts to curb the power of labor unions. He’s repeatedly voted against “right to work,” which bars unions and employers from requiring workers to pay dues as a condition of employment. He’s also been a skeptic of a prescription drug monitoring program aimed at reducing opioid abuse.

  • His constituents in Jefferson County don’t have a favorable opinion of protests over former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley’s acquittal on a first-degree murder charge. “If you want to protest, do it peacefully. Do it right,” he said. “But shutting down highways is not the way to get answers and I think it’s actually backfiring for a lot of them.”

  • He said one way to get better police officers is to offer up more competitive compensation. He said sheriffs' deputies in rural counties make less than $30,000 a year, a salary that often deters people from getting involved with law enforcement. “When you look at this as a whole, your quality of individuals has gone down because we don’t pay anything,” he said.

  • After sending out a district survey, Roden said the vast majority of respondents support legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes. He said it could help people who are dealing with chronic pain – or going through chemotherapy. “I watched my dad go through chemo treatment and everything else, and not be able to eat and go through those issues,” he said. “If marijuana in any form helps him with that issue, why are we — why is this even an issue?”

  • He surmises that most people in his district are not paying attention to U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill’s re-election bid. The Democratic senator will likely need to do well in Jefferson County in order to win another term. “The normal person doesn’t give a rat’s butt until next year,” he quipped.


Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: @jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter: @jmannies

Follow Shane Roden on Twitter: @reproden111

Music: “Rudie Can’t Fail” by The Clash

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