Blunt Election Board Operative Leiendecker Burnishes Hack Credentials

Just days before he was named to the St. Louis City Board of Elections by Governor Matt Blunt, Scotty Leiendecker was a grand-a-month Republican campaign hack. After a year on the board, he's behaving as though he still is.

A Post-Dispatch story today by Jo Mannies recounts Leiendecker's preference for partisan firestarting over practical problem-solving. Mannies writes from his script:

St. Louis Election Board officials say they've discovered at least
1,492 "potentially fraudulent" voter registration cards ....

City Republican elections director Scott Leiendecker said the board's
staff expects to find even more bogus voter-registration applications
among the thousands remaining to be processed.

A well-meaning public official would probably have taken up the issue of the faulty registrations with the attorney of the group responsible for submitting them, particularly if that official was already meeting with the attorney anyway. But a well-meaning public official Leiendecker is most certainly not.

Leiendecker instead chose to keep the upcoming action a secret from the group, so as not to ruin the surprise for when he pursued his actual agenda: dropping the story with his cultivated media darling, Jo Mannies, for a front-page zinger on his political opponents. Also from Mannies' story:

But [ACORN attorney] Mellor added that he was angry that Leiendecker had said nothing
about the questionable cards during a meeting Tuesday afternoon.
Leiendecker replied the cards weren't the purpose of the meeting, which
he said focused on missing information on some of the voter
registrations.

For Leiendecker, the only issue to be managed in the whole registration affair was the question how of how to derive maximum media coverage and political benefit for himself and his party. If this were not the case, he almost certainly would have informed the ACORN attorney about the problem when the men met on Tuesday so that a solution to the problem could begin to be created.

If ever there were an incident that demonstrates the danger of putting unabashedly partisan political operatives in election director roles, this is it.

Consider the way Scotty Leiendecker wound up an appointee to the St. Louis Election Board in the first place.

Sources tell Fired Up that Leiendecker was already an all-but-announced appointee to the St. Louis City board in the spring of 2005. But when state representative Richard Byrd died unexpectedly, the Blunt Administration hushed up Leiendecker's still-settled appointment and simply put it on hold while he went to manage the ill-fated special election candidacy of Moira Byrd to fill her husband's seat. Just days after Moira Byrd was defeated in a November 8th special election, Leiendecker was officially appointed to the election board.

Since Leiendecker's initial appointment to the Election Board itself was handled as little more than a political convenience for the Missouri GOP, it is small wonder that the performance of his duties there are carried out in the same manner.

We've certainly entered a period with the Blunt administration in which every job or appointment is viewed as an opportunity for even more blatant opportunism. Though in most instances the advantage sought has been financial, Leiendecker's appears strictly partisan and political. When there already exists a culture in this government which excuses self-interested behavior, the last thing we should be encouraging is the advancement of political hacks like Leiendecker to positions of responsibility where the goals are more egalitarian than a desire for Republican hegemony.

I suspect the advancement of such hacks will not slow until the Blunt regime is toppled by a more reasonable successor.