WESTPHALIA — Provided the weather allows it, the annual Lincoln Day dinner is scheduled for Thursday at the Westphalia Lions Hall, beginning with happy hour at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 6:30, and the program to follow. 

Newly-elected Secretary of State Denny Hoskins will provide the keynote address, and Congressman Dr. Bob Onder is scheduled to speak.

Hoskins, a Loose Creek native, graduated from Fatima. After earning his degree from the University of Central Missouri, he served in the Missouri Army National Guard and became a Certified Public Accountant.

He was first elected to the Missouri Senate in 2016 after serving eight years in the Missouri House of Representatives.

Hoskins ran for Secretary of State, vowing to be Missouri’s chief elections officer to protect election integrity. He said that the best way to do this was to require voter ID on Election Day with a paper ballot. “I don’t trust voting machines and support going back to hand-counting ballots,” he said at last year’s Lincoln Day dinner, adding that he agrees pornographic materials should not be accessible by children in the kids’ section of publicly funded libraries. “Every Missourian should know that their vote will count.”

Hoskins also promised to continue his fight to protect the unborn. He voted in support of the 2019 Heartbeat Bill and believes in eliminating abortions in Missouri, stating that life begins at conception and every life is sacred.

He wants to keep the woke agenda out of Missouri schools and barring students from competing in sports that do not match their biological gender. The governor also signed his Senate Bill 236 in July 2023 to ban transgender surgeries