JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – A Missouri state senator is challenging colleagues to clean up their campaign tactics following the death of Auditor Tom Schweich in an apparent suicide.

Republican state Sen. Mike Parson took to the Senate floor Monday to denounce a political environment in which he says candidates are torn down with “misleading statements, outright lies and propaganda.”

Parson, of Bolivar, referenced a negative radio ad that had run against Schweich the weekend before his death. Schweich also had called reporters, just minutes before his death Thursday, to say he wanted to go public with allegations that the Missouri Republican Party chairman had made anti-Semitic comments about him.

The party chairman has denied doing so.

Many of the state’s top elected officials are expected to attend Schweich’s funeral Tuesday in Clayton.