Blunt's New Ethics Commissioner Ran Webster Front Group During '92 Campaign

Last week, Governor Matt Blunt nominated John P. King for a post on the Missouri Ethics Commission. Given his history, that seems like an awfully strange appointment to me.

During the 1992 election cycle, Mr. King served as Treasurer for a Bill Webster front-group called the Fund For Missouri's Future. According to the Post-Dispatch archives, that committee made contributions totalling $636,975 to the Webster campaign.

Here's some detail from campaign finance records:

Given that there were no contributions limits in Missouri at the time, the only purpose in raising money into a committee like the Fund For Missouri's Future and then turning around and giving almost all of it to Webster, was to make it more difficult to determine the ultimate sources of the massive contributions to the Webster campaign.

If you looked through the donors for the Fund For Missouri's Future, do
you suppose you would find any second-injury fund lawyers giving?

During the period in question, Mr. King's brother, Kevin, was the General Counsel to Attorney General Webster and oversaw the operation of the second injury fund.

So it appears that the Governor hand-picked Mr. King for a position on the Ethics Commission based on his experience in concealing the original source of campaign contributions.

This reflects profoundly poor judgment on the part of the Governor.

Here's a sample page from Mr. Webster's 1991 campaign finance report.

Update: Senate Republicans have pulled Mr. King's name from the list of Blunt's appointees to be heard by the Senate Gubernatorial Appointments Committee.

Meanwhile, because of Governor Blunt's incompetence and poor judgment, the Ethics Commissions sits idle, incapable of enforcing Missouri's ethics laws.

Thankfully, Governor Blunt isn't responsible for appointing the FBI.