Faced with a Supreme Court ruling that will likely result in the Missouri Ethics Commission demanding that his campaign return more than $3 million [1] in special interest contributions, Matt Blunt has apparently begun applying intense pressure to the Ethics Commission's members and staff, urging them to go back on their previously stated position.  Commission Executive Director Robert Connor, with Matt Blunt and staff likely squeezing him unmercifully, was quoted in the Post-Dispatch [2] contradicting the commission's earlier statements:

Nixon's office issued a statement Monday declaring that the Ethics Commission's position is that all candidates have to return over-the-limit contributions unless they can prove "undue hardship." A Nixon spokesman said the statement was issued in the attorney general's role as the commission's lawyer.

But Connor, of the commission, later disavowed the statement. He said the commission "never voted" on the question of the over-the-limit donations.

Just a month ago, the Post-Dispatch was reporting on the Ethics Commission's filing of a brief supporting retroactivity.  Jo Mannies and Matt Franck [3] wrote:

The Missouri Ethics Commission, which governs the state's campaign-finance system, has asked the state Supreme Court to order all candidates to refund any donations larger than the state's resurrected contribution limits.

The commission's request was part of its legal brief filed Wednesday with the high court, which restored the state's 12-year-old donation limits last week. Contributors now can give no more than $325 to $1,275 per candidate per election, depending on the office sought.

Neither Connor nor anyone else from the Ethics Commission, in that story or in the month between the time its brief was filed and the court's ruling yesterday, has ever spoken up to suggest that the brief was contrary to the Commission's position on the matter.  But now, all of a sudden, the Ethics Commission wants to step away from its past opinion. 

What's changed?  Nothing, except Matt Blunt's level of concern that he'll actually have to give back the millions over campaign finance limits that he took from Swift Boaters and other special interests.  Now faced with the prospect of returning all that loot, Blunt is returning to form and doing what he does best --threatening any government actor who refuses to make his or her agency a subsidiary of Missourians for Matt Blunt, Inc.