By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
State Sen. Rusty Black, a Republican from Chillicothe, learned early on during the legislative session in Jefferson City the difference between the House and the Senate.
Black served three terms in the Missouri House before being elected last year to the state Senate.
“There is a difference between being on the House side of the building and the Senate side of the building,” Black tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “In major issues, major type negotiations, probably my entire six years on the House side, I was only involved with two or three of those.”
Black says he’s been involved in that many his first year in the Senate.
Black represents the massive 12 Senatorial District which spans nearly all of northwest Missouri. The biggest difference between the two chambers at the Missouri Capitol is the size of both. The Missouri House has 163 members while the Senate has only 34.
Black succeeded Sen. Dan Hegeman of Cosby, who had to leave the Senate due to term limits.
“Life changes when there are only 34 of you compared to 163; that changes,” according to Black. “And Dan has been so good at being a mentor through that and not telling me what to do, but helping me think about. Well, you have to think about this, you have to think about x to be able to do it.”
Black says he understood the difference between the two chambers on his very first day.
“I felt it the day we were sworn in,” Black says. “For three different swear-ins in the House, because I served three terms, there’s 163 people standing up and saying ‘Aye.’ In the Senate, you go up in front of a big crowd and there’s 17 of you. That’s when the weight changed, was that day.”
Black, the former agriculture educator, represents the largest senatorial district in Missouri.