Senate GOP Launches New Strongarm Fund Run By Blunt Fee Agents

Missouri's Senate Republicans have long used a continuing ethics committee called the Senate Majority Fund as a vehicle for raising big checks from lobbyists to bankroll Senate campaigns (and for keeping the English family clothed and fed).  But apparently that committee's time has come and gone.  In its place is a new committee with the same mission but a shorter name --Majority Fund, Inc.  

And the new committee, which is apparently such a hot commodity that it began raising lobbyist dollars even before it was registered with the Missouri Ethics Commission, is run by two officers who know well how the GOP money game works --Blunt fee agents William "Buddy" Hardin and Patricia Thomas. 

The Senate Republicans put the Majority Fund, Inc. to work with remarkable haste, raising just shy of $50,000 into the committee on March 28th in connection with their caucus's in-session fundraising event.  Strangely, the entity into which they raised that money --the Majority Fund-- hadn't even yet been created with the Ethics Commission.  The committee would not come into existence until paper was filed with the MEC on April 9th --nearly two weeks after GOP senators played drag-the-bag with the capitol lobbyist corps. 

Unsurprising, as Senate Republicans have become notorious for living as though rules don't apply to them.

But the folks who the Gibbons, Barklage and the Senate GOP chose to install as officers of the new committee are certainly familiar with the rules of politics under the Blunt regime.

William "Buddy" Hardin IV, in addition to being the treasurer of the Majority Fund, is the appointed fee agent of the Blunt license office in O'Fallon, Missouri.  Hardin was also a contributor to Nathan Cooper's 158th District Legislative Committee, which was used to pass money through from prospective fee agents to Matt Blunt's then-appointment secretary James Harris.  Hardin also carries Team Blunt's water in a most unusual way --running a Mormon Republicans in Missouri blog, presumably on behalf of Mormon Mitt Romney, Matt Blunt's close friend and chosen Presidential candidate.  Buddy Hardin, one imagines, is sure to keep mum about whatever sort of business the GOP operatives are engaged in, as he's complicit in the scams himself.

Ditto for Patricia "Pat" Thomas, deputy treasurer of the Majority Fund.  Thomas, appointed by Blunt as agent for the lucrative Mexico license office, is a Republican operative who has worked for U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, State Rep. Steve Hobbs and the abortive U.S. Senate campaign of Florida's Katherine Harris.  Yet another crony with skin in the game atop the Senate GOP's warchest. 

Behind the doors of power in Missouri Republican circles you won't find many players who aren't linked into the game by virtue of their own close personal financial involvement in state government.  Within a horde of two-dozen Missouri fee agents, committee treasurers, fundraisers and consultants there exists the vast majority of meaningful connections between the money that government can yield and the people with the money to bring governments to power.  The new connections we see with the Majority Fund are but another illustration.  Time for a change.