I think it's a pretty terrible political decision regardless of the outcome. Whenever you take a stance on a highly technical issue like this you're rolling the dice and hoping that you don't actually have a number of technical minded folks in your state. It can backfire amazingly.
It's much easier to play political games on much more abstract issues where it's harder to evaluate the options.
I don't think many tech folks, even in Missouri, are among this guy's voters, and the ones who are, aren't turning "blue" over this (they're probably in it for religious reasons, i.e. abortion).
Meanwhile, he's received national attention.
We'll see, but it may yet be a smart play, politically speaking. I'm not saying it for-sure is, I just don't think that result's anywhere near being off the table.
I fled to Canada over a decade ago so take my opinion here with a grain of salt but... I think that folks still talk to other folks on a local and familial level so a cousin of mine that's anti-vax has reached out to talk about technical news occasionally and you'll tend to chat with neighbors.
So having someone technically minded in your general blob of associations is generally enough for these sorts of obviously stupid moves to get politicians in serious trouble.
The stakes are a lot lower obviously - but this is a much clearer case of technical malpractice than anything having to do with Snowden and reminds me of Morris[1]'s case - basically it's complete BS and a misuse of the law.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris (I might be thinking of someone else - I thought there was a teenager that got the book thrown at them back in the early days of the web but maybe I'm just misremebering things)
Have you written about this anywhere? I'd love to hear more about the motivation (not that it's hard to guess possibilities) and what the process actually looked like. I hear people threatening to move to Canada all the time, but there don't seem to be too many who go through with it!
Oh - I met a partner in Canada and when we looked at the costs to immigrate one way or the other it made a lot more sense to move up to Canada. Additionally the service offering was quite attractive up here, I'm in BC so there isn't any free pharmacare but there still is a pretty large provincial subsidy program.
Additionally I was pleasantly surprised, when I moved up, to learn that Canada doesn't have the same culture of greed. I feel like, if you aren't making every cent possible in America that you could - if you aren't constantly extracting the absolute maximum revenue - you're looked down on. Up here I've found a much nicer focus on balancing work with interests.
It's much easier to play political games on much more abstract issues where it's harder to evaluate the options.