Government, Politics & Issues

Politically Speaking: 2018 is finally over. Here are our biggest political stories of the year

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jason Rosenbaum,

Published December 31, 2018 at 5:46 AM CST

Supporters listen as U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill delivers a speech after conceding to Attorney General Josh Hawley.

With a revolutionary year in Missouri politics winding down, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum, Jo Mannies and Rachel Lippmann decided to reflect on what happened and why it matters.

And what better way to do that than a list of the five biggest stories of 2018?

You’ll have to listen to the final Politically Speaking to find out which event topped our list. But it’s fair to assume that the startling descent of Eric Greitens and the Missouri U.S. Senate contest made the cut.

Other developments that were contenders included the repeal of right to work, which bars unions and employers from requiring workers to pay dues as a condition of employment. And big political developments out of St. Louis County also caught the Politically Speaking team’s attention.

Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: @jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter: @jmannies

Follow Rachel Lippmann on Twitter: @rlippmann

Music: “Real People” by American Wrestlers

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Jason Rosenbaum

Jason is the politics correspondent for St. Louis Public Radio.

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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.

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Rachel Lippmann

Rachel is the justice correspondent at St. Louis Public Radio.

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