Though he only served one term in the Missouri House of Representatives for the 153rd District, Jeff Shawan is grateful for the opportunity and feels he made a positive difference for the people of the region.
“Looking back, I am grateful. It’s an amazing privilege to represent 37,000 people … the people I love the most on this earth, and fight for them in Jefferson City,” Shawan said.
Shawan said the work was hard, but fulfilling.
“Even though I only served one term, it’s an extremely busy, maddening pace of legislating, but it’s very exciting,” he said.
Typically, Shawan said, he “would start at 6:30 in the morning and never knew when I was going to be done at night.”
Being a state representative is a commitment, and “you can’t look at it as a job. It has to be a labor of love, and for me, that’s what it was,” Shawan said. “Working hard was easy to do.”
During his time in Jefferson City, Shawan said, he was “extremely active. I filed a lot of bills, and I passed legislation in my very first session. I filed 13 bills in my first session and 21 or 22 in my second session. I was giddy-up.
“I passed meaningful legislation from the time I arrived. It had little to do with me — it had to do with government affairs people and other more senior members who helped me get my legislation through. I didn’t know what was next with everything I was doing, but I was just willing to work hard.”
Helping the people in the 153rd District, Shawan said, was his greatest joy while serving in Jefferson City.
“Hundreds and hundreds of people have problems with their state government, and the thing I loved the most is how many times, individually, I was able to help my constituents with personal problems. Sometimes you can’t, but an amazing amount of time you can move the needle. The satisfaction is overwhelming,” he said.
Shawan was grateful to his legislative staff, who, he said, “could help me cut to the chase.”
During his tenure in Jefferson City, Shawan said, there were two moments he especially cherished.
“One of them was when I was being sworn into the 100th General Assembly,” Shawan recalled. “I was overcome with the fullness of the moment. I took it as a sacred moment for me that being sworn in; I was going to do the best job I could for my constituents in the 153rd.
“It’s an irreplaceable moment in life, and to me, it feels like it happened yesterday.”
The second event was a deeply personal one in his first session.
“At that moment, we were debating the omnibus life bill, which I co-sponsored and fought for,” Shawan said. “Before we went onto the floor that day, the sponsors of the bill, the speaker and I had a prayer meeting. I was not tasked with saying anything specific, but if I felt moved to speak, to take the microphone.”
Because of that bill, the Capitol was a dangerous place at the time, Shawan said, “filled with evil people who were threatening us and spitting on us.”
“The debate moved to the part of the bill that is specific to selective abortion. One of my colleagues got up and started speaking about how he and his wife had become pregnant and the child had spinal bifida, and they felt like they should be able to destroy that child,” Shawan said.
That triggered an emotional response from Shawan, one which he called his “single biggest moment.”
“The hair just stood on end on my neck because almost nobody knew before then that I was born with spina bifida,” he said. “When he hit that button, I felt that tap on my shoulder. It was completely unscripted, and I spoke for about two minutes, and you could hear a pin drop.
“I was able to make the point that every life has value, and it’s not ours to judge.”
Today, Shawan is 64 years old and has fought back problems since he was a child, a result of his spina bifida.
Even so, “I feel like my life has been worth living, and I was able to make that point in a way that was extremely personal, but I wouldn’t trade it,” he said.
During his second session, the world was turned upside down with the COVID-19 pandemic, and three bills near and dear to Shawan never made it to the House floor, something he described as “tragic.”
“One is the taxation bill that would’ve closed the last Planned Parenthood in Missouri,” he said.
In that bill, “the endowment of any Missouri university that aides in the training in providing for abortion would be taxed,” Shawan said.
Washington University in St. Louis is the only such school in the state, he said.
“It was a tax bill designed to never collect the tax, meaning that if they would not stop training and providing abortion doctors, they would get taxed 1.9% of their total endowment, which in the case of Washington University would have been somewhere around $150 million a year,” Shawan said.
The bill saw threats and “amazing lobbying efforts to kill it,” Shawan recalled.
“It made it through general laws and passed along party lines. It was moved to the rules committee, and COVID happened,” he said.
Another bill halted because of COVID was Shawan’s concealed carry in church bill, which would make it legal to concealed carry in church without permission, and the third one “was my resisting arrest bill, which we desperately need. It would make it a felony if you elude the police in a motor vehicle,” Shawan said.
Though those three bills never made it to the floor, Shawan said, they still have life after other colleagues vowed to keep them alive.
“That work is being carried on, and it’s an amazing honor to me,” Shawan said.
With his term over, Shawan said, he won’t miss the drive top Jefferson City.
“There’s no good way to get there from here, and it’s dangerous,” he said.
But, more than anything, Shawan said, he is “not going to miss the separation from my wife and family and Southeast Missouri. It’s no fun.”
Looking ahead, Shawan said, he hasn’t devised a specific plan.
“Who knows what my next calling will be. I have no idea,” he said.