Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced Tuesday that Catherine Hanaway will replace Andrew Bailey as the state’s next attorney general.
Bailey, 44, resigned Monday after a little more than two years on the job to become co-deputy director of the FBI.
Hanaway, 61, will be the fourth person to serve as Missouri attorney general since 2018, with her three predecessors leaving the job early for positions in Washington, D.C. She can serve out Bailey’s term, which runs until the end of 2028.
On Tuesday, she told reporters she plans to run for the office in 2028.
“My game plan, for sure, is to serve the next three years,” she said, “and then if Missourians will vote for me and believe I earned a full term, then I’d like to serve a full term.”
A former federal prosecutor, Hanaway was the first and only woman to ever serve as speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives. She twice ran unsuccessfully for statewide office, losing to Democrat Robin Carnahan for secretary of state in 2004 and finishing fourth in the Republican primary for governor in 2016.
After she left public life, Hanaway focused on her law practice and eventually became a partner at Husch Blackwell. In 2018, she garnered headlines after joining the legal team representing the campaign committee of the man who beat her in the ugly 2016 GOP primary, Eric Greitens.
Her highest profile client in recent years has been Grain Belt Express, a planned transmission line designed to transport electricity generated by wind farms in Kansas across four states, including Missouri.
In the works for more than a decade, the transmission line has drawn fierce criticism from GOP officials and agriculture groups like the Missouri Farm Bureau over the company’s use of eminent domain to take land or easements from unwilling landowners and compensate them.
Those critics include Bailey, who has used the attorney general’s office to target the project.
Grain Belt Express filed a lawsuit against the attorney general’s office last month over a demand to hand over documents, and Hanaway is the company’s lead counsel.
“Grain Belt Express seeks to bring an end to the (attorney general’s) unlawful and politically motivated investigation,” Hanaway said in a statement last month.
Hanaway said Tuesday that the attorney general’s investigation into Grain Belt will continue, and she will recuse herself.
“The team that is there, the great team that is there, will be able to go forward without my input,” she said. “There’s a great team on it, and they’ll continue to do their work.”
Speaking to reporters after Kehoe announced her appointment, Hanaway emphasized her rural roots, noting that the dorm she moved into when she attended the University of Missouri was bigger than her hometown in Nebraska.
“I’m humbled beyond belief to accept this appointment,” she said.
She ticked through what she sees as the role of the attorney general’s office, saying the most important job is “to protect Missourians from anyone who would do violence against them, who would rip them off in financial schemes, who would abuse them by providing terrible care and getting paid by Medicaid and anyone who would try to invade their constitutional rights.”
Fighting crime, she said, will “remain job one,” noting her previous work as a U.S. attorney.
She quoted the late Kit Bond, Missouri’s former governor and U.S. Senator, who she says taught her that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
“I promise to you that as attorney general, I will work as hard as I can,” she said. “I will be innovative. I will adapt to changing times. But more than anything else, I’ll show Missourians just how much I care.”
Missouri Independent originally published this story, and updates will be available on the publication's website.
