John William Loudon
John William Loudon is a former Republican member of the Missouri Senate for the 7th District from 2000 until 2008 and a member of the Missouri House of Representatives from 1995 through 2000. He is the chairman of Florida Citizen Voters and Citizen Voters Inc, a member of Mar-a-Lago, and a former advisor to America First Policies.
Early life
Loudon was born and raised in St. Louis, one of four children of Robert and Janice Loudon. He graduated from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1989.Career
Political career
Loudon served in the Missouri House of Representatives from 1994 through 1998. He was elected to the Missouri State Senate in 2000, and again in 2004. While in the Senate, Loudon founded and chaired the Senate's Small Business, Insurance, and Industrial Relations Committee, was vice-chair of the Governmental Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee, and a member of the committees on education, gubernatorial appointments, and judiciary and civil and criminal Jurisprudence.Towards the end of his career as senator, Loudon introduced an amendment to a health insurance bill that legalized the practice of midwifery in Missouri. The Missouri State Medical Association, which represents physicians in the state, sued to block the controversial provision, arguing that it violated the state's single-subject rule for legislation. In 2008, the Missouri Supreme Court voted, 5–2, to uphold the legislation, finding that the Missouri State Medical Association lacked standing to sue.
Loudon is the chair of both Florida Citizen Voters and Citizen Voters Inc. Both organizations are working in Florida and nationally to change state constitutions to explicitly state that only citizens may vote in elections. As of July 2019, the Florida organization had raised $4.7 million and collected more than 1.5 million signatures, more than twice what was needed to place the measure on the 2020 ballot in Florida.
In May 2018, it was reported that Loudon had used inflammatory and derogatory language against women, Muslims and Democrats. He promoted conspiracy theories about President Obama's birth and religion, suggesting that Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim.