This is Patrick Ishmael's own site — a personal, first-party archive of his published policy writing, testimony, and media appearances, built and maintained by him rather than by any former employer or outlet.

Patrick holds honors degrees in finance and political science from Saint Louis University, and a law degree from Saint Louis University School of Law with a concentration in business transactions; he is an attorney licensed in Missouri. He worked on Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign in Missouri before joining the Show-Me Institute, a free-market think tank, in 2011. He spent over a decade there, becoming Director of Government Accountability in the latter part of his tenure before leaving the Institute in 2024. Across that time, the throughline was consistent: government transparency, tax policy that favors growth and fairness over favoritism, and skepticism of subsidies carved out for the politically connected at the public's expense. His writing ranged widely beyond that core as well, into education policy, health care, labor law, and municipal governance.

He approached the work as what he liked to call a "happy warrior" — persistent and unapologetic in argument, but rarely dour about it. That showed as much in the volume of what he produced as in the methods behind it: sustained, systematic use of Missouri's Sunshine Law to build public databases where none had existed, rather than simply writing about the need for one.

Among the projects he was proudest of: the Show-Me Checkbook initiative and its various iterations, aimed at making local government spending searchable by the public; the Municipal Checkbook Project, which used Sunshine Law requests to compile city spending records across Missouri; and the Show-Me Curricula Project, which did the same for school district curriculum materials. He was also a persistent critic of large corporate tax-credit packages — most notably the "Aerotropolis" proposal debated in 2011, whose most expansive form never became law after years of public pushback he was part of — and a consistent advocate for the income-tax cuts Missouri phased in over the following decade.

Beyond the Show-Me Institute, his writing and commentary appeared in Forbes, National Review, The Federalist, the Kansas City Star, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and dozens of Missouri radio and TV stations, along with his own Substack, Middle America Matters. He has testified before Missouri legislative committees on dozens of bills and has spoken at Federalist Society events.

Outside the office, Patrick is a proud husband to Mary and father to Viviana. He holds a Series 65 license, and in his own time is a genealogy enthusiast and a car enthusiast. He also likes putting new tools to work early — leveraging whatever edge a cutting-edge technology offers and looking for what's around the next corner before it gets here.

What's here

The main archive holds the full text of Patrick's own Show-Me Institute writing and testimony, plus verified external pieces with real links back to their original publishers. The Broadcast & Media Log tracks radio, TV, podcast, and print appearances confirmed to have happened — some linked to real recordings, others still logged but not yet publicly findable.