Missouri volunteers say they were harassed by paid GOP canvassers. It’s likely the same group accused of forging signatures in Utah

When President Donald Trump called on Republican-controlled states to redraw their congressional maps to favor the GOP, he created a windfall for Patriot Grassroots.

The MAGA-aligned — and Donald Trump Jr.-backed — campaign firm has raked in millions providing canvassing for the Republican party in states like Utah and Missouri. But its work has been nothing short of controversial.

Earlier this month, the Utah GOP terminated its $4.3 million contract with Patriot Grassroots after a county clerk’s office determined that hundreds of signatures the firm gathered in support of repealing the state’s ban on partisan gerrymandering were fraudulent.

Now, new reporting by Democracy Docket suggests that Patriot Grassroots’ canvassers also crossed a line in Missouri, where volunteers gathering signatures to put a GOP-backed gerrymander to a statewide vote said they were harassed by out-of-state paid agitators outside Kansas City polling places during the November 2025 election.

“They would follow me everywhere I would go, just kind of heckling myself and other people,” said volunteer Chrispus Taylor. The goal, he felt, was clearly to intimidate both the signature gatherers and ordinary Missouri voters. 

The allegations against the canvassers are noteworthy because of the remarkable national effort Republicans have launched to oppose a potential referendum on the gerrymander, a right guaranteed to Missourians in the state Constitution. For months, the GOP has used lawsuits, biased ballot language, misleading text messages, and even threats to sic immigration officers on signature gatherers.

By publication time, Patriot Grassroots had not responded to a request for comment.

Aggressive Campaign

Taylor, a Kansas City resident, was a first-time volunteer gathering signatures for the Missouri referendum when he asked two men approaching him if they wanted to add their names to the petition. 

Their answer wasn’t what he expected.

“They were like, ‘Actually, no. We’re here to stop you from getting signatures,’” Taylor said.

When Taylor asked whether they were going to be violent, they said no. But when he asked who they worked for, they wouldn’t tell him. Instead, one of them tried to recruit Taylor, saying he had started as a pro-referendum signature gatherer but switched sides when he was offered a paid job. 

Taylor tried to move to another spot, but the agitators followed close behind, aggressively heckling him and telling passersby that Taylor was tricking them into signing a harmful petition. 

To their credit, many people signed the petition in spite of the agitators, Taylor said, but they also seemed disturbed by what they were witnessing.

“I think it was unbelievable for them that they were actually experiencing individuals kind of yelling at them not to sign it,” Taylor said. “I mean they were really aggressive.”

Taylor did not sign up to gather signatures again.

Diana Crain, another volunteer, experienced similar harassment outside another Kansas City polling place. 

She was approached by two men who began discreetly filming her and told passersby not to sign the petition or give Crain their personal information. Soon, two more men showed up and joined the group, lining up near Crain and another volunteer. 

“They start yelling at people, ‘Don’t give out your personal information. These people are trying to trick you. Make sure you don’t sign anything. Don’t give away your information. They’re lying to you.’ Things like that,” Crain said.

The men told Crain that they were paid workers from out of state, but wouldn’t say who employed them. They offered voters forms to remove their signatures from the petition that included a disclosure saying it was paid for by Put Missouri First.

That was the giveaway. A Republican political action committee, Put Missouri First hired Patriot Grassroots and paid them $2.9 million — basically all the funds it received from GOP donors, including the Republican National Committee — to stop signature gatherers from putting Missouri’s GOP gerrymander to a statewide vote.

Crain says it’s no coincidence that agitators went after signature gatherers located outside polling places. 

“It’s the place where you’re supposed to be able to express your democracy and talk to your neighbors about important things in our state and in our city,” Crain said. “And they know that, so that’s where they targeted it, and they definitely tried to make voters feel uncomfortable, hurry out of there, whether or not they had voted.” 

Crain said the harassment made her feel intimidated and uncomfortable. But it didn’t seem to stop Missourians from signing the petition. If anything, Crain took it as a sign to keep going.

“It means that it’s important that we are doing this work, because they’re working so hard at trying to stop us,” Crain said. “That means that they think that we are a threat. And that’s very encouraging, actually.”

History of Controversy

For all the money it has received, Patriot Grassroots is no stranger to controversy. 

Even before the allegations of submitting fraudulent signatures in Utah, the Wyoming-based campaign firm had faced criticism for how it treated the canvassers it hired. 

In December, Utah’s ABC4.com reported that multiple people who had relocated from other parts of the country to the state to work as canvassers for Patriot Grassroots said their start dates were delayed, they were not paid promised bonuses, and some were unexpectedly fired. Several even wound up living out of their cars.

In response, a Patriot Grassroots spokesman told ABC4.com that any reports “suggesting that workers, who have actually done their jobs and not committed fraud or violated our code of conduct, have been left unpaid or stranded are not true.”

In light of the allegations of fraudulent signatures in Utah, that comment sounds increasingly questionable. 

Earlier this month Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson, a Republican, said his office identified hundreds of suspect signatures in packets tied to the repeal effort and referred 27 packets to the county attorney for criminal investigation. Each packet contains about 50 signatures. 

“This is probably the most extensive fraud that we’ve seen,” Davidson told a local Fox News outlet. “They’re not just fraudulent signatures. [It’s] making up names and addresses. It’s like a non-existent person.”

Yunior Rivas contributed reporting to this story.