After 28 years in the Missouri Senate, Sen. Harry Wiggins is going to shorten his commute to work. Beginning June 3, he will no longer be making the regular drive to Jefferson City, but will be headed downtown to the law firm of Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin where he will join the governmental affairs practice. "If I were a kid getting out of law school," the 69-year-old Wiggins says, "it would be my dream to work for Blackwell Sanders."

In fact, Wiggins started his law career in 1959 with a firm in Kansas City called Barker Fallon Jones & Barker, but he got the taste for politics when Bobby Kennedy came to town seeking support for John Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Wiggins went to hear Bobby Kennedy speak in Kansas and ended up on the executive committee of Citizens for Kennedy in Missouri. In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy appointed Wiggins as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Wiggins was elected Western Judge of the Jackson County Court in 1970, and then was elected to the Missouri Senate from the 10th District in 1974. Thus began the commute.

It’s been quite a journey with over 400 bills bearing Wiggins’ name coming into law. He holds what is believed to be a national record of never missing a roll call vote—now standing at 17,000 roll calls. Most recently, he served as sponsor of legislation that created the Bistate Cultural District and led to the restoration of Union Station.

Wiggins and his colleagues, however, were not able to salvage Kansas City’s stadium and downtown improvement bills before the 2002 Missouri Assembly adjourned May 17. "It was a disaster in many ways," Wiggins laments of the budget-embattled session. He leaves it to others to carry the fight next year as he looks forward to his new role. Asked if he will miss Jefferson City, he replies, "I will miss the people, but I sure won’t miss 50 Highway."

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