ShowMe Better Courts

Update: "Vote Yes To Stop Double Taxation" says they will sue to contest the signature county by local election authorities and the SOS. Their release is below the break.

Initiative petitions from the ShowMe Better Courts and the Vote Yes To Stop Double Taxation committees will not be on the fall ballot because they failed to collect enough valid signatures, the Secretary of State's office announced this afternoon.

I suspect this won't be the last we hear about the failed campaigns of  James Harris and David Barklage.  Harris was paid more than $44,000 by ShowMe Better Courts to run their campaign, and Barklage's Strategic Communications Group collected more than $200,000 from the Realtors-backed "Vote Yes To Stop Double Taxation" committee.

The notorious Lincoln Strategy Group was hired to collect signatures for two initiative petitions in Missouri this year, and announcements regarding the valid signature totals for all petitions are expected early this week. 

The problems with the signatures submitted by James Harris' ShowMe Better Courts have been well documented by the Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund (MFICAF).  But Lincoln was also hired by the Vote Yes To Stop Double Taxation committee (i.e. David Barklage and the Missouri Association of Realtors) to collect signatures for their effort to block the creation of a real estate transfer tax in the state. Given the firm's apparent management problems and inability to overcome the MFICAF's education campaign for the ShowMe Better Courts' initiative, it wouldn't be shocking if they also fell short for the Realtors.

Roy Blunt, back when he lived in Missouri

Twenty-five years ago, Roy Blunt was elected to be Missouri's Secretary of State.  In that capacity, he oversaw things like initiative petitions and elections, just like the people who served before and after him in that role. 

Blunt's direct knowledge of SOS operations make his campaign's latest salvo really hard to understand.  As reported by The Beacon, Blunt's spokesman Rich Chrismer says "Missourians have every right to question [Robin Carnahan's] judgment and whether she can be trusted to make an independent or impartial decision on" whether or not the ShowMe Better Courts' petition should make the ballot.  While I'm sure that buddy James Harris appreciates the attempt to divert attention away from his apparent failure to collect enough signatures, the attack is dishonest and dumb.

As Blunt should recall, signatures are verified by local election authorities -- not partisan officials in Jefferson City. Once signatures are submitted to the SOS office, they're sent to local offices for checking.  The SOS office will then undertake the task of adding up the numbers provided to them.  Moreover, this whole process is done in the open -- there's not a lot of room for discretion.  Either Harris & Co. have the signatures, or they don't. 

I know this undercuts the Blunt campaign's entire argument, but it's how things work.

Ruh-ro, Shaggy.   The Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund (the campaign fighting ShowMe Better Courts' ballot initiative) says James Harris' signature gathering effort has come up woefully short in Congressional Districts 5, 7 and 9. 

Translation: The initiative won't make it on the ballot.

UPDATE: A statement James Harris provided to The Star suggests that Harris may pin the blame on "petition company reports." 

There are a few things to digest in a new post from the Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger about ShowMe Better Courts' inability or refusal to pay their petition gatherers in a timely manner. 

Perhaps the most interesting nugget to long-time Fired Up! readers is the public reappearance of convicted felon Nathan Cooper in the GOP mix. As you may know, Cooper was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in December 2007 for immigration fraud.

Missourians for Fair & Impartial Courts has released a new web video challenging ShowMe Better Courts for their reliance on the notorious Mark Jacoby to collect signatures for their ballot initiative.  ShowMe Better Courts, led by GOP operative James Harris and funded by right-wing donors who want more radical judges in the state, are pushing an initiative that would allow for call for partisan judicial elections.

A source on the ground reports that Jacoby is coordinating a significant portion of the ShowMe Better Courts' signature gathering effort, and expects a sizable (six figure) bonus if the courts petition qualifies for the ballot.  Corporate records also connect Jacoby to at least one company publicly advertising its work in the state.

• A company called Star Petition Group has been advertising petition canvasser jobs around the state. See archived job postings here, here, here and here.
• Those advertisements include messages like this: "We are currently working on 2 issues for the November ballot. The first issue is to prevent the state from adding any new sales taxes to the sale or transfer of homes. The second one is to change the way that judges are elected in the state of Missouri."
• According to Nexis and corporate registration records, Star Petition Group and Jacoby's YPM, LLC share Box #324 at a Mailboxes, Etc. store in Dunedin, Florida.  See source documents below.

At what point will politicians who claim to care about small government, protecting taxpayers and tort reform realize that filing a bunch of frivolous lawsuits isn't helping their case? 

The Missourian's George Kennedy skewers the right-wing efforts to gut the state's nonpartisan judicial selection process:

Some ideas are so outrageously, irredeemably bad that you just know they won’t go away. One of the worst is the recurring effort to destroy Missouri’s non-partisan plan for picking judges.

Politics should not play a role in Missouri's judicial selection process -- partisan elections should.

So wrote Ernie Lee in the Columbia Daily Tribune yesterday.

In completely unrelated news, Ernie Lee is Peter Kinder's campaign treasurer, and Peter Kinder received a $50,000 check from David Humphreys last quarter.

In October, the Star reported that some lawmakers were "stunned" earlier by the Humphreys family donations connected to this years' legislative efforts to gut the state's nonpartisan courts plan.