Chris Koster focuses on Medicaid fraud
The candidate for attorney general cites his experience in law enforcement as a deciding factor in the election.
Oct. 3, 2008
Chris Koster's feet have walked crime scenes, courtrooms and the floor of the Missouri Senate, often deep in a pair of cowboy boots.
"I'm not so sure if it's a state of mind, but it's certainly a state of comfort," Koster said of his boots. "I don't think I can go back now that I've started, I just like them too much."
Something else Koster started is his candidacy in the race for Missouri attorney general, but this journey started more with family than footwear.
"My dad was a writer, but my uncle Bob, who I was pretty close to, was an attorney," Koster said. "Honestly, I think that's where my mind first grew curious with the interaction between law, politics and public policy."
After receiving his undergraduate and law degrees from MU, Koster earned a master's degree in business administration from Washington University in St. Louis, but his experience, rather than education, has proven more important in this election.
Koster stressed his time in law enforcement and trial law as the defining factors to trump his Republican challenger, Senate President Pro Tem Mike Gibbons of Kirkwood.
"The attorney general is in charge of training a group of trial attorneys," Koster said. "If you've never been a trial attorney yourself, if you've never stood in front of 12 people and made closing arguments in front of a jury, I don't know how my Republican opponent can possibly think that he can train these attorneys to be great trial lawyers."
The fact that Koster is opposing a Republican at all, however, is also one of the campaign's interesting caveats. Koster switched parties, from Republican to Democrat, less than a year ago.
"The reason for the switch was that the senator wanted to govern from a common sense progressive center of the political spectrum," campaign spokesman Danny Kanner said. "Whether it be stem cell research, or workers rights or the non-partisan court plan, the senator has fought for the same issues his entire career, and it was really the Republican Party that left the common sense center on those issues."
Koster addressed the cost of higher education as a major issue affecting students. But he added that the attorney general doesn't really have any sway on the topic, since his or her job is to enforce laws rather than make them.
One area the attorney general does have control over, however, is the prosecution and investigation of Medicaid fraud, an issue that affects low-income and disabled Missourians statewide and one that Koster said he would make a priority.
"Approximately $600 million dollars a year is stolen out of our state's Medicaid system, and $600 million dollars is enough to run the University of Missouri on all four campuses for an entire year," Koster said. "I think one of the most important tasks of the next attorney general is to double down on the effort to root out Medicaid fraud, to take that money and to route it back into the state's health care system."
Overall, Koster's aspirations to become the next attorney general are rooted in his experiences as a politician and as a prosecutor.
"I had the chance to serve in local government as prosecuting attorney in Cass County from 1994 to 2004, and it was in that role that I recognized, beyond just the criminal law aspects of that job, that local government, even more so than the higher ranks of government, can really affect people's lives," Koster said.
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