Phil Christofanelli


Philip Christofanelli is a Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives.

Biography

Christofanelli graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. He was elected to the Missouri Republican State Committee at age 21, and interned for U.S. Representative Dan Benishek in 2013, later serving as his press spokesman.
Christofanelli ran for the House in 2016 to succeed retiring Representative Mark Parkinson. At age 27, Christofanelli was the youngest member of the Missouri House of Representatives.

Controversy

While Christofanelli was a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, he enrolled in a class, "Intro to Labor Relations", that was taught by both professor Don Giljum of University of Missouri-St. Louis and Judy Ancel of University of Missouri-Kansas City by means of a live video feed. Christofanelli shared the full video footage with some of his friends in order to "obtain other opinions on the propriety of what occurred in the class". Using the video footage from the class, an organization named Insurgent Visuals released a video on YouTube called "Thuggery 101" and several others, with a total time of 20 minutes, edited from 18 hours of class footage. The videos then went viral in the conservative community, with claims of liberal indoctrination of the students. Both universities discredited these videos and stated that the professors were being framed, with one administrator calling the videos "highly distorted through splicing and dicing". Christofanelli denied providing the footage directly to Insurgent Media, and also denied wrongdoing by distributing the footage, while making media appearances on Fox News and local radio stations. Giljum was subsequently forced to resign.

Political positions

Christofanelli is pro-life. He opposes any restrictions on law-abiding citizens' access to firearms. He supports a right-to-work law for Missouri.

Electoral history