Kinder's Special Ladyfriend Was Paid to Lobby by McKee, Tried Later to Cover Trail

Though we've already examined Peter Kinder's intimate involvement in passing the Paul McKee tax credit bill (HB 327) through the General Assembly this past session, the subject of how the lieutenant governor came to be engaged in the issue hasn't come up.  Any analysis of that topic must include facts about the extraordinary lobby business of one Melanie Moore (in photograph at left).

Several weeks ago, FiredUp Missouri learned that multiple outfits owned by developer Paul McKee --who stood to be the sole beneficiary of tax credit legislation championed by Kinder-- had hired Melanie Moore to lobby on their behalf.  Moore has been connected to Kinder by virtue of her public appearances with the Cape Girardeau Republican at events such as 2005's Inaugural Ball.

Whether payments made by McKee to Moore were for substantive lobbying work or merely served as "inducements" for Kinder to push the bill vehemently is a question that remains unanswered.

To make matters more suspicious, Moore actually went to the trouble of beginning to do business under a different name and closing her old lobbyist registration on the same day that FiredUp posted on lobbyist/client connections between a McKee business and another Kinder loyalist. 

On January 26, 2006, Melanie Moore registered as a paid lobbyist for six different companies, according to documents she filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission.  Each of those entities are subsidiaries of or have a close connection with mega-developer Paul McKee.  Datotel, Fusiva, McEagle Properties, Netlabs, Paric are all businesses controlled by McKee and registered to the same agent at the O'Fallon office address of his monstrous Winghaven development, and Stone Leyton and Gershman is the law firm used by McKee to incorporate several of the entities. 

Melanie Moore registered to lobby for all of those outfits on the same day. 

Later, on the same date in November of 2006, she would register as lobbyist for the trade groups Partners for Progress and the Economic Development Center of St. Charles --both of which are subsidized by Paul McKee.* 

In the period between Moore's hiring by McKee's companies and the end of the 2007 legislative session, Moore's friend Kinder became the chief advocate for a tax credit whose $100 million in largesse would accumulate primarily to McKee's benefit.  The Post-Dispatch wrote up Kinder's avid involvement:

Kinder sought McKee's opinion before drafting the bill. "I took it to Paul," Kinder said. "He ran it by his lawyers. We got busy and came up with a legislative proposal."

Though the vehicle containing the tax credit would ultimately be vetoed by Matt Blunt, the proposal made its way through the legislature with a big assist from the Lieutenant Governor --who continued fighting for the project on the editorial pages until the very moment the governor nixed the legislation.

But even in the period after the bill's passage and before the veto, evidence indicates Kinder and Moore were obviously very skittish about their involvement. 

On June 26, 2007, a post here at FiredUp Missouri pointed out that while news accounts of the battle over the McKee tax credit had correctly reported about McKee's retention of several lobbyists with close ties to Matt Blunt, they had failed to note McKee's hiring of David Barklage --a former chief of staff and current close advisor to Kinder.  That post suggested that Kinder's advocacy of McKee's legislation might be tied to other financial arrangements between McKee and allies of the lieutenant governor. 

In what can be understood only as either a fortunate coincidence of galactic proportions or a concerted yet ham-fisted attempt to cover over some terribly inconvenient connections, on the same day that FiredUp post was published --June 26, 2007-- Kinder's friend Melanie Moore terminated the lobbying registration under her name Melanie Moore, and opened a new lobbying registration under the name "Melanie Withrow," apparently her maiden name [see Update II below] a name from a subsequent marriage (she had divorced her husband Charles Moore some years prior).  Moore, under the new registration, never re-registered for the six clients most prominently related to Paul McKee (Datotel, Fusiva, McEagle Properties, Netlabs, Paric, and Stone Leyton Gershman).

Let's be clear about what transpired: on the same day that a blogger pointed out the connection between Kinder and a certain lobbyist paid by McKee, another lobbyist with close personal ties to Kinder who also being paid by at least five McKee businesses went through the trouble of re-registering as a lobbyist under a new name and of trying to separate herself from her past relationship with McKee.  Moore even went so far as to begin using the new name on the websites of two of the outfits for whom she is still working, Partners for Progress and the Economic Development Center of St. Charles. 

This behavior is, at best, highly abnormal.  Why would a woman who had worked professionally under her married name, Melanie Moore, (even well after her divorce) and  named her business after those initials (MM Governmental Consultants is the name of Moore's consulting firm) begin using her maiden a different name on the same day that news of connections between close Kinder allies and McKee lobbying contracts became public unless she was concerned that some sort of improper transactions would be discovered? 

Kinder and Moore should each be called to answer for what activities they participated in that they felt necessitated the cover up of Melanie Moore's involvement with businesses owned by Paul McKee.  The odd timing of Moore's attempt to erase her lobbying record can only raise more questions about the nature of the Kinder-Moore-McKee triangle.

*It is worth noting that two outfits --Life-Style Magazine Corp. and Link-Style International Publications-- appear also to be McKee outfits that hired Moore, and which were also "dropped" when Moore terminated the "Melanie Moore" lobbying registration in favor of the "Melanie Withrow" registration.  However, I can find no evidence at this time that conclusively links those two companies to McKee.

UPDATE, 7/10/07 at 3:26pm: Peter Kinder's blog takes issue with our post, claiming that the Melanie Moore name change is attributable to a new marriage.  If indeed that's the case, I'll happily amend the post to reflect the fact that Withrow is her new married name rather than a maiden name.  Regardless of that point, I think the larger meaning of the post (that someone with close ties to Kinder was a paid lobbyist for McKee during the time Kinder was pushing the tax credit) continues to stand on its merits.  Interesting that Kinder's blog makes no effort to refute any of those claims.  

But to pursue the initial point further, even if the name Withrow is resultant from a second marriage, a critical fact in the discussion of probable obfuscatory motives centers on when the marriage took place and when Moore began using her new name.  If she got married in June 2007, her adopting the new name for business purposes on June 26th makes a fair amount of sense.  But if she got married four months ago and only began using her marrried name professionally when her professional name began being tied to some questionable lobbying relationships, it hardly matters whether she got the new name by virtue of marriage.  At that point, the marriage simply becomes a convenient excuse for a move intended to frustrate transparency --otherwise she'd presumably have begun using the new name when the nuptials occured.

As I said, if anyone wants to come forward with further facts, I'll be happy to amend the above post.

UPDATE II, 7/10/07 at 8:47pm: After seeking more data on the issue of the genesis of the name Withrow, a source tells me that the name is the result of a subsequent marriage by Melanie Moore.  As I said I would, I have updated the post above by striking through the incorrect assertion that Withrow was Moore's maiden name, replacing it with the fact of Moore's second marriage.  Though I was incorrect on that fact, the implications of the post are entirely unchanged. 

Sources also indicate that Moore's second marriage also took place several months prior to her changing of her name on her lobbying registrations.  The assumption that these changes were made only after the exposure of Kinder's connections to other McKee lobbyists in the June 26th FiredUp post is still operative, notwithstanding this new fact.