John Griesheimer

The senate’s debate on Sen. Charlie Sheilds' (R-St. Joseph) ethics bill (SB577) has been bogged down in recent days with Sen. Jason Crowell's (R-Cape Girardeau) proposal to create a two-year waiting period for retiring legislators before they can become lobbyists after they leave office.

Sen. John Griesheimer (R-Washington) says Crowell is aiming for him. EMissourian.com:

This all goes back to the (former House Speaker Rod) Jetton deal. Just like last year. This was aimed at me. It's personal, no doubt about it. He knows I want to be a lobbyist. He even talked about Jetton on the floor during the debate. I had a feeling Jason was going to come after me. But somebody's going to have to show me where this has been a problem in the past before I can support the amendment.

Nieves said he and Griesheimer “take entirely different world views about state government.” Nieves said he is in the Legislature to limit government. “I’m likely to try to stop legislation to protect the liberties of the people,” he said. “The states are the only thing left to push back against an out-of-control federal government,” [Nieves] said.

Griesheimer made similar comments to the Missourian a few weeks ago, and noted Nieves' ties to disgraced former Speaker Rod Jetton:

[Griesheimer] said that he discussed four general issues with [Nieves] which included his lack of legislative accomplishments, his lack of concern for local issues, Amtrak funding and his association with former House Speaker Rod Jetton who Nieves had hired as a consultant.

Here's another interesting tidbit from the EMissourian.com article flagged this morning about the now-very-public conflict between Sen. John Griesheimer (R-Washington) and State Rep. Brian Nieves (R-Union).  Remembering their meeting last summer, Griesheimer says he asked Nieves to ask former Speaker Rod Jetton to apologize for the controversial village law legislation passed in 2007.

As far as our conversations about Jetton, I wanted him to ask Jetton to publicly apologize for his role in the Village Law.

Nieves and Dieckhaus in happier times.

Sen. John Griesheimer (R-Washington) and Rep. Scott Dieckhaus (R-Washington) are not happy with Rep. Brian Nieves (R-Union).  According to a story posted at EMissourian.com and a letter from Dieckhaus, the dispute focuses on Nieves' public accusation that Griesheimer "gave him a list of 10 things he had to do to be his successor and that the first four items involved lobbyists and special interests that 'he needed to get the blessing of.'"  Video of Nieves January 16 speech is here. 

Griesheimer says Neives' story is "a bunch of bull," and Dieckhaus is calling on Nieves to apologize and "give an honest account of the meeting." Dieckhaus writes on his WashMo.com blog:

For Represenative Nieves to blatantly lie and insinuate that Senator Griesheimer is beholden to special interests or encouraged him to gain approval from any of these groups disgusts me. Senator Griesheimer and Representative Nieves did indeed meet to discuss the latter running for Griesheimer’s term-limited senate seat. Griesheimer expressed concern to Nieves about his lack of legislative action and work ethic, his lack of interest in working on local issues, his ties to consultant and former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton (this meeting took place during the summer of 2009 and centered on Jetton’s role with the “Village Law”), and a personal plea from Griesheimer to continue funding for Amtrak because of its importance to sustaining the small businesses in downtown Washington.

There was no list passed to Nieves. Why would he make up such a story? My best guess is that Nieves was trying to cast himself as the “outsider” because traditional politicians are not viewed favorably by many in the Tea-Party movement. This is the worst sort of political pandering – lying about a man of integrity to boost one’s own political stock.

Dieckhaus' full letter is here.

Image credit: ScottDieckhaus.com

This is not good news:

Senate Majority Leader Kevin Engler [R-Farmington] also is bracing for trouble. Eight of the 10 senators term-limited in 2010 are Republicans. Of the 10 additional senators term-limited in 2012, seven of them also are Republicans.

"Over half my majority is term-limited, and most of them aren't running for higher office, so they have no responsibility to the voters," said Engler, R-Farmington. "Some things that would be tempered before will not be tempered now, because their objective is, 'So what? You sure don't care what the public thinks. I can kill everything if I want, because I'm not up for election."

The idea of Republican Senators being even less "tempered" in their obstructionism and extremism gives me the heebie-jeebies.