Steelman: 32% (-8%)
Akin: 23% (-6)
Brunner: 18 (+12)

Since Steelman is the only one of the three who has run statewide, it’s not surprising 3P has her name ID at 52%.
Akin’s ID is 41%.
Brunner’s name ID, like his support in the poll, is climbing it’s at 35%. That’s double what it was in the fall, when his candidacy was an open secret.

Brunner is also the only one of the three who’s been up on TV and radio extensively.
The 3P news realse has some other interesting items on the Missouri GOP Governor’s race. One fact: 73% of the people surveyed are undecided.
Candidate Dave Spence just made his first move to re-arrange those numbers by going up with his first TV ad of the campaign January 31 (see previous post.)
Here’s the balance of the 3P release:
“Dave Spence may be viewed as the presumptive Republican candidate for Governor but he’s not exactly setting the world on fire so far. He actually trails Bill Randles 15-12…it’s not often we poll a race and find 73% of voters undecided. That’s a function of both hopefuls being pretty anonymous. Only 18% are familiar with Randles and just 15% have an opinion about Spence.

Randles and Spence’s weakness/anonymity leaves a lot of room for another Republican candidate to get into the race and one who has considered it is State Auditor Tom Schweich. He would take the lead in the primary if he jumped in, polling at 28% to 10% for Randles and 7% for Spence. Even he’s not that well known though- just 24% of voters have an opinion about him.

-It’s hard to know what to make of Peter Kinder’s chances for another term as Lieutenant Governor. He’s polling at only 37% in the primary, a pretty weak place for an incumbent. But with three opponents splitting the anti-Kinder vote he still has a 25 point lead in the primary with Brad Lager second at 12% followed by Luann Ridgeway at 9% and Mike Carter at 5%. He may be able to survive with under 50% of the vote if all of the other folks stay in.”

The convention and visitors bureau recently discussed offering guided bus tours and even a smartphone app. But storm victims bristled, imagining that their shattered homes could be put on display for legions of curious sightseers.

The bureau director says he wants to promote Joplin’s recovery. He insists the effort is “not about busted-up homes or destroyed cars or body parts.”

Signs of revival are slowly emerging from the ruins left by the May 22 twister, which killed 161 people. Debris has been cleared, and Home Depot and other stores have rebuilt. Hundreds of construction permits have been issued, too.

Fourteen-year-old Rhianna Morawitz hanged herself in her bedroom in September after what her father said was repeated harassment at school and online.

The father, Rick Morawitz, told the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday that a 2007 state law doesn’t go far enough to protect students who are victims of bullying.

The committee is considering legislation to require more reporting by school districts under a uniform anti-bullying policy and shorten the timeline for investigations. It also requires districts to report incidents to the State Board of Education.

Opponents say the proposal micromanages how districts respond to bullying and gets away from local governance of discipline.

The proposal provides for dividing the geographic territory of an unaccredited school district among neighboring districts. It also would let students in unaccredited districts attend parochial or private schools with scholarships funded partly by state tax credits.

Tuesday’s testimony before the Senate General Laws Committee came as the state is grappling with how to deal with the Kansas City School District, which recently lost its accreditation.
Democratic Senate Minoirity leader Victor Callahan’s bill would permit the neighboring districtnext to kansas City to absorb the unnacredited Kansas City district.
The St. Louis School District also has been unaccredited for several years and is now being governed by a special board.

The legislative proposal also would expand the availability of charter schools in districts that lack accreditation.

University of Missouri-St. Louis associate professor David Kimball was Tuesday’s first witness in a Cole County Circuit Court hearing on the constitutionality of the state’s new U.S. House districts.

Kimball said districts proposed under an alternative map would have been more compact than those ultimately approved by state lawmakers. He also testified the map could be characterized as gerrymandered, meaning districts were drawn to give one political party an advantage.

The Missouri Supreme Court ordered further legal review of the congressional districts earlier this month and set a Friday deadline for a decision.

Several witnesses testified Tuesday on behalf of those challenging the new map. The hearing was to resume Wednesday morning.

School students at Holy Cross Grade School

The Superintendent if Kansas City’s Catholic school system wants state law changed to permit some state funding to be available to private schools, like his.
Daniel Peters expects to testify in Jefferson City Tuesday in a measure known as “the Turner Fix”.
That measure could provide tax credits to parents who send their children to private schools.
Peters says the bill, sponsored by St. Sen. Jane Cunningham, would permit the state to authorize fax credits to private school families.
Peters say say they’re about to start a petition drive to place a similar measure before Missouri voters.
Catholic educators consider that a backstop option should the “Turner Fix”, measure fail. Peters and the Catholic Kansas City schools are on a recruiting drive.
He says local Catholic schools offer a neighborhood option for parents who want their children to transfer out if the unaccredited Kansas City system.
He says the local Catholic system has about 1,000 extra seats to accommodate transfer students.

On Wednesday, the House taxation committee will decide the future of a sales-tax holiday proposed for Kansas.
The bill would give Kansans a sales-tax holiday every year starting at midnight on the first Thursday each August. The tax holiday would end that Sunday.
The sales tax holiday would apply to any article of clothing costing not more than $300, back-to-school supplies costing more than $100 per purchase and computer purchases not exceeding $2,000.
The bill is backed by Rep. Virgil Peck, a Tyro Republican. Peck wants to keep Kansas residents from crossing the state line into Missouri and Oklahoma, which both have sales tax holidays.
“I might ask, when Kansas residents travel to Missouri or Oklahoma and spend money, what benefit does it provide to Kansas businesses or for that matter what benefit is there to Kansas government?” Peck told the committee in written testimony last week.
There are reportedly 18 states nationwide with sales tax holidays on the books, many of them across the South. Examples, include Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana and Florida.
Analysts estimate that the bill would cost the state about $6.7 million, not counting money in local sales taxes that might be lost. Local taxes lost are estimated at $1.7 million.
But some lawmakers have questioned how much sales tax holidays in Missouri and Oklahoma might cost the state as consumers skip across the state line to make their purchases.
The bill has some opposition from the Kansas Association of Counties and the Kansas Association of School Boards.
The counties association says the proposal would cause “significant” difficulties for local government. The group says a sales tax holiday would cause more uncertainty to local government budgets.

JEFFERSON CITY — If Jane Cunningham gets her way, the class of 2013 would be the last to graduate from the Kansas City Public Schools district.
The Republican state senator from Chesterfield is pushing legislation that, among other things, would permanently dissolve the unaccredited school district, carve it up and require neighboring districts to take over city schools.
“For decades we’ve watched as (the Kansas City) district has gone down and down and down,” Cunningham said. “The district has not served its students or the community, so a dramatic change is needed.”
A public hearing on the bill, one of many introduced this session addressing the troubled district and other education issues, is scheduled for 3 p.m. today in the Capitol.
Critics of the plan argue it would deny local residents a say in the future of their school district and could do more harm than good.
Missouri Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro has dismissed the idea, saying at a public meeting last month that the challenges associated with educating the urban core — poverty and other socio-economic factors — “will not be addressed simply by dispersing the children.”
Complicating matters further is the inclusion of other measures in the bill that have proven controversial. Perhaps the biggest would be the creation of a tax-credit supported scholarship program for students in unaccredited districts to attend private and parochial schools.
‘20 Pounds’ note: Leaders of the Kansas City catholic School district, with an enrollment of 12,000 students also plan to testify about school reforms at the hearing. They are interested about having an opportunity at the tax credits scholarship program, among other things.
The Kansas City Catholic School system has launched a campaign to try and attract students from the unaccredited Kansas City district.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/30/3400749/senators-bill-would-bring-an-end.html#storylink=cpy