Jerry Dowell

Lt. Governor Peter Kinder's chief of staff, Rich AuBuchon, is on his way to the Chamber of Commerce, and Deputy Lt. Governor Jerry Dowell left the office last month.

One would think that a gubernatorial candidate's senior staff would stick around to have the inside track on key positions in a new administration... if they thought their boss would win. 

Yesterday afternoon, Deputy Lt. Governor Jerry Dowell used his Tour of Missouri email account notify potential supporters of an upcoming fundraiser for HD21 House Candidate John Cauthorn on behalf Majority Floor Leader Steven Tilley and the House Republican Campaign Committee.

Kinder's office has confirmed to The News-Leader that Dowell sent the campaign email from his state computer. 

A copy of the illegal email is below the fold.

The Post-Dispatch has a long editorial about ethics reform legislation and recent transgressions by state legislators of both parties.  The whole thing is worth the read, but these final two paragraphs need to be highlighted.

All of these [minor 2010 ethics reform proposals] would be nice, but they clearly don’t address the fundamental problem: Campaign money from special interests drives the public’s business. It employs a bunch of oxpeckers whose interests lie in perpetuating the system, not reforming it.

Unless and until Missouri restores limits on campaign contributions, the abuses will continue. Anything else simply is masquerading as ethics reform and is bogus.

Lt. Governor (and Tour of Missouri Inc. Chairman) Peter Kinder and Deputy Lt. Governor (and TOM Inc. Executive Director) Jerry Dowell seem to be responding to initial demands for more disclosure about the operations of the Tour of MIssouri, which is a great sign.

Yet despite their new willingness to share expenses and operation information, Kinder still wants the public to believe he's "always" been open about how the Tour is conducted.  On Tuesday, Kinder's spokesman Gary McElyea says the Lt. Governor's office and TOM Inc. "have always...been completely transparent with the state, cities and media." As we all know, however, this is not the case. For example:

• Just last week, Kinder was anything but open and transparent about the nature of Tour contracts. 
• Also last week, McElyea -- the same man who said the Tour had always "been completely transparent" -- refused to discuss details of the Tour contracts, saying he wasn't even sure such disclosure was legal.
• TOM Inc. has not sufficiently demonstrated why it warrants a sole source contract with the state. Simply controlling the TOM naming rights (for now) does not mean their contracts should not be competitively bid.
• And, as I'll outline below, Kinder and Dowell have not been "completely transparent" about their leadership roles with the Missouri Ethics Commission.

Tour of Missouri, Inc. (TOM Inc.) is looking more and more like a big black box into which millions of our tax dollars go, but from which little light escapes. 

Regardless of whether or not the Tour is fully funded this year with $1.5 million in state money, I think there are questions that should be addressed before any more tax dollars are released.  If Peter Kinder and Tour supporters continue to require extensive public financing for the race, it's high time for some basic transparency and accountability, just like we'd expect from any other public entity. 

Reading the coverage, listening to the radio and absorbing lightning-fast tweets from reporters and tour supporters, I've been compiling a list of key questions that I think deserve more exploration. Have other questions?  Leave them in comments and we'll do what we can to figure things out.

Lt. Governor Peter Kinder took to the KMBZ airwaves this morning to promote his new website, SaveTheTourOfMissouri.com. In the last 24 hours, Kinder's staff has been furiously promoting the website and its corresponding Twitter feed to generate calls into the Governor's office.

Yesterday, Deputy Lt. Gov. Jerry Dowell and Communications Director Gary McElyea refused to [publicly] discuss the ownership of the website with the News-Leader's Chad Livengood, or explain why the Tour's previous Twitter pages were suspended.  [Paragraph updated w/ new details via Twitter]

Peter Kinder must really want to see Democratic Senator Frank Barnitz lose his re-election bid to former dancer Susie Snyders. Why else would the Lieutenant Governor let one of his official staffers run the Snyders campaign, at times using state equipment and resources to do so?

Because it's an unwritten rule that every Republican aide who works in the capitol must also have a front "consulting firm" through which they funnel their political pay, Kinder staffer Jerry Dowell created Dowell Consulting Group LLC in February of this year. Shortly thereafter, presumably because there wasn't enough to do in the Lieutenant Governor's office, Dowell took over the reins of the candidacy of the startlingly amateurish Susie Snyders for state senate. 

Dowell quickly implemented some campaign masterstrokes, including sending young men in their twenties to impersonate the 60-plus year old Snyders at candidate forums by reading statements that begin, "My name is Susie Snyders and I am a candidate for the 16th senatorial district...". Genius. 

In another bold move, Dowell began sending email messages (that, specifically, discounted the value Rolla Daily News online polling) to broad distribution lists as a representative of the Snyders campaign. The only problem with those messages was that he sent them from his BlackBerry which included auto-signature that said "Jerry Dowell, Office of Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder." Very, very slick. I wonder if Dowell's is one of those BlackBerries that the state pays for?