GOP Infighting

Over the last four years, there is a list longer than your arm of ethical improprieties in Jefferson City and across Missouri which Peter Kinder saw fit to ignore completely.  Kinder never, not once, piped up to talk about ethics in government during any of the following ethical lapses and scandals...

The fee office scandal

The Jewell Patek-Andy Blunt favored lobbyist strongarm

The Fred Ferrell sexual harassment scandal

The Blunt brothers' Show Me Ethanol escapade

The Nathan Cooper illegal immigration saga

The Carl Bearden lobbyist-and-legislator-at-the-same-time trick  

Catherine Hanaway's Sweetheart Deal for Nathan Cooper

The Scott Eckersley firing

The Governor's Sunshine Law violation and cover-up

The Randa Hayes fiasco

Rudy Farber's $50K Purchase of a Transportation Commission seat 

Mike Kehoe's illegal in-kind bus donation to the Matt Blunt campaign

Yet now, all of the sudden, Kinder is drawing a bead on Rod Jetton, rolling out an ethics package clearly aimed at the Speaker.  I wonder if Kinder knows something the rest of us don't that he's trying to get out in front of by throwing Jetton under the bus?

Kenny Hulshof just made a wholesale adoption of Matt Blunt's plan to "remove politics" from tax credit decisions by the Missouri Housing Development Commission by removing elected officials from the MHDC board and allowing the governor to appoint all its members.  

Seems Hulshof's vision of his own prospective term in office looks very much like the term of Matt Blunt.  He's the anti-change candidate, apparently. 

Steelman just went through a list of project earmarks that Hulshof voted in favor of during his time in Washington.  

She namechecked San Francisco as the home of one of the projects on the list as well, paying homage to her campaign consultant Jeff Roe's ridiculous work on behalf of the Sam Graves campaign.

She and Roe both starting to sound like one-note Sallies... 

At the MO Press Association debate between Hulshof and Steelman...

Responding to attack ads by Sarah Steelman, Kenny Hulshof just defended his vote for a federal transportation bill that included the now-infamous earmark for the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere."  

Hulshof asked how Steelman would have voted and opened the door for Steelman to speak on the one subject on which she sounds like she knows what she's talking about --Hulshof's record in Washington.   

We already know that newly-minted GOPer Kurt Schaefer will take a beating in November as he goes up against Democratic incumbent Chuck Graham in an ill-advised run for the state senate.  

The only real question is whether Schaefer will be able to save any face and maintain an air of respectability around his campaign.  Judging by some Jason Rosenbaum video from last week, things aren't looking good on that front for Fred Ferrell's lawyer.  

In fact, some insiders are questioning whether key Republicans from inside the 19th Senate district will support or campaign with Schaefer after some revelations he made to the Columbia Trib reporter last week.  Specifically, the suggestion is that Rep. Therese Sander --whose Randolph County 22nd House district sits within the 19th Senate district-- will give Schaefer the cold shoulder. 

A sign of of things to come?

According to the MOGOP's list of delegates to the Republican National Convention in Larry Craig's stall Minneapolis, Congressman and favored candidate of the Party establishment Kenny Hulshof was apparently not among those elected by state conventioneers as at-large delegates to the national nominating convention. 

Among those who were elected as at-large dels are Exxon's Congressman Sam Graves, stem cell research ringleader Jack Danforth and Hulshof's primary opponent, Sarah Steelman.

Heck, even Hulshof's paid help, John Hancock, got his ticket to the Twin Cities punched.  Yet no Kenny.

Sunday's blogpost by Dave Catanese provides some great insight into the nasty undercurrent in the Hulshof-Steelman gubernatorial primary.  Particularly compelling are the anecdotes about Blunt administration figures working hard to undermine Steelman's candidacy.  One choice cut...

It's no secret Gov. Matt Blunt is no fan of Steelman. After Blunt's decision not to run for re-election in January, a former high level official in his administration refused to list Steelman as a potential candidate in an interview. After the camera stopped rolling and I asked why, he let me know he left her off the list intentionally. "Conservatives can't trust Sarah Steelman," he said....

"It was like your pastor calling to ask why you weren't in church on Sunday," said one Steelman supporter who received several calls from different Hulshof backers. "They just say Sarah would be a weak candidate..."

Quite a choice for GOP primary voters.  They can back the candidate propped up by the current regime, which has been roundly rejected by Missourians.  Or they can get behind the "weak" candidate whom conservatives cannot trust.   

Jo Mannies reports on Peter Kinder's trip to the GOP State Convention (wonder if he rode his bike to Branson?) and comes back with some weak junk from the Lieutenant Governor.  From Jo's blogpost:

Kinder said in an interview Friday night that he doesn’t expect state Treasurer Sarah Steelman to follow suit. And when asked, he said he was not ready to endorse either her or U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof...

Kinder's lack of readiness is a bit odd considering that he was in attendance at the Kenny Hulshof fundraiser hosted by Andy Blunt in Jefferson City last week.   Story Continued »

Check out Dave Catanese's video interview with MOGOP communications director LaTina Hervey, who answers questions (truthfully?) about the Republican Party's increasingly nasty gubernatorial primary.

Unfortunately, the video can't be stolen and posted here, so we've transcripted a portion...

Catanese: You've got a primary here for governor, that's where the attention's going to be on, don't you think?

Hervey: We've two incredible candidates who are our Republican nominees who are running for governor and we will be lucky no matter who wins...

Catanese: which candidate is more incredible?

Hervey: They're both incredible and Missouri and the Republican Party would be lucky to have either one as our governor

Catanese: Really?

Hervey: Yes.

Catanese: Is there a favorite with either one?

Hervey: No.

Does Hervey know that her boss, Party executive director Jared Craighead, was an attendee at a big Jefferson City fundraiser for Kenny Hulshof fewer than 48 hours prior to her little interview with Catanese? 

Almost all of last week's action in the GOP gubernatorial primary focused on the daily back and forth between the candidates, as they traded recriminations about accepting campaign money from stem-cell related interests and attempted to cast doubt upon one another's conservative bona fides.

After it was revealed that Hulshof --whose campaign earlier attacked Steelman for having accepted a check from pro-stemcell Supporters of Health Research and Treatments-- had also taken contributions from the PAC of the firm run by leading research advocate Jim Stowers, his team spun a yarn about how Stowers' investment firm "has nothing to do with embryonic stem cell research."

But Hulshof's objections notwithstanding, evidence exists that indicates he has not taken as hard-line a position against stem cell research as his anti-Steelman rhetoric would suggest.  In fact, Hulshof appears to have gained personal financial benefit by virtue of having invested in funds run by Jim Stowers' firm and which provide capital to companies engaged in the "life sciences" sector.

All week, Sarah Steelman and Kenny "Fred Thompson" Hulshof have been engaged in a pitched battle for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

What will the winner get for their trouble?

The right to be trounced by Jay Nixon.

A new Survey USA poll has Nixon beating Steelman by 25 points and Hushof by 24.

Moral of the story: Be very careful what you wish for.  Story Continued »

It's now three weeks since we learned that Spence Jackson, former media mouthpiece and stalwart defender of Matt Blunt, was joining the Sarah Steelman campaign as its spokesperson (We haven't checked, but presumably Jackson is actually being paid by the campaign for performing those duties, rather than by the Department of Economic Development or the Treasurer's office).  Shockingly, that entire three weeks has passed without Jackson's having yet made a single embarrassing and inappropriate outburst to the media or comparing political opponents to a mass murderer of women and children.  

The law of averages tells us that's not gonna last forever.   

What'll it be that puts Jackson over the top and precipitates a return of The Spaz to the statewide scene?  Will it be...­

So here's the question of the week: if Matt Blunt was willing to endorse one of the Republican candidates in the GOP gubernatorial primary, would either of them actually want him to?  Is the stamp of approval of the Least Popular Governor in the United States something that Kenny Hulshof or Sarah Steelman believes would be an asset to his or her campaign?

As we wrote last week:

Blunt was, after all, at a robust 56% disapproval rating among Missouri voters back in the middle of April.   And that was before Blunt and his top aides were fingered as having directly ordered the destruction of electronic backup tapes --a story which cannot have helped his numbers.

That's in addition to the fact that the state's economy has gotten very, very soft under Blunt's watch, with jobless numbers climbing and revenue estimates appearing as though they'll fail to reach the levels planned for by Blunt in upcoming budget years.  Accompanying those sad circumstances is the realization that Blunt's chief legislative accomplishment, the sale of MOHELA's assets, has left the loan agency teetering on the brink of insolvency and forced to scale back its educational mission. 

After a week of pitched GOP in-fighting, an issue finally came along that was so compelling, it moved former intra-party combatants to beat their political swords into plowshares and leave small-village thinking behind.

That unifier?