Campaign finance reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission by Peter Kinder's re-election campaign and a supposedly independent committee suggest that Kinder used an elaborate ploy to retrieve and utilize overlimit contributions raised between January and August of 2007 while campaign contribution limits were lifted.  Monies raised over the limits during that period were ordered returned to contributors by the Missouri Ethics Commission [1].

Ultimately, Kinder benefited by the use of more than $150,000 that had been returned to contributors by his campaign but later routed into another committee over which his campaign retained de facto control.

Kinder's ruse was premised on a simple idea: that tens of thousands of dollars returned to contributors who gave in excess of the limits while limits were lifted could be raised into another committee called Better Leadership for Missouri [2], and could then be spent by that committee on items and staff costs that were actually being used for Kinder's campaign.  As a practical matter, this allowed Kinder to benefit from the overlimit contributions without the dollars actually flowing through his campaign account.

As demonstrated below, Kinder's campaign violated the campaign finance laws by effectively controlling an outside committee and accepting illegal and unreported in-kind contributions in excess of the legal limits from that committee.

An examination of the campaign finance filings by both Kinder's campaign and by the Better Leadership for Missouri PAC leave little doubt that it the Better Leadership committee was used by Kinder or his staff both to re-solicit checks returned to contributors and to finance campaign infrastructure.

Consider that the following individuals or entities gave massive contributions to Kinder's campaign in 2007, had the overlimit portions of their contributions returned, and then gave to the Better Leadership for Missouri (BLM, hereinafter) committee:

• Doug Albrecht gave $5,000 [3] directly to Kinder's campaign on 1/2/07 and 6/25/07.  Albrecht gave $10,000 to BLM [4] on 2/28/08.
• Kerry Holekamp gave $5,000 [5] directly to Kinder's campaign on 1/2/07.  Holekamp's husband William gave $15,000 to BLM [6] on 5/15/08.
• Paul McKee gave $15,000 direct to Kinder's campaign, $5,000 each from McEagle [7] Properties and Paric Corp. [8] on 1/2/07 and $5,000 from McEagle [9] properties on 6/28/07.  McKee gave $15,000 to BLM [10] on 3/29/08, with $5,000 a piece coming from McEagle Properties and Paric Corp., and with $1,000 coming from each McEagle EIC, McEagle O'Fallon, McEagle Overland, Hazelwood Conference Center and Boardwalk Corp. Center. 
  
• Paul Vogel gave $5,000 [11] to Kinder's campaign on 1/2/07.  Vogel gave $3,725 to BLM [12] on 5/1/08.
• Andrew Baur gave $2,000 [13] to Kinder's campaign on 6/25/07 and later gave $5,000 to BLM [14] on 1/5/08.
• CNS Corporation gave $10,000 [15] to Kinder's campaign on 6/28/07.  CNS Corp. gave $8,725 to BLM [16] on 3/29/08.
• First Commercial Bank of Gideon gave $5,000 [17] to Kinder's campaign on 6/25/07 and later gave $3,725 to BLM [18] on 3/13/08.
• Cape Radiology Group gave $15,000 [19] to Kinder's campaign on 6/30/07 and gave $13,725 to BLM [20] on 3/31/08.
• David Humphreys gave $25,000 [21] to Kinder's campaign on 6/30/07 and gave $25,000 to BLM [22] on 2/28/08.
• Ethelmae Humphreys gave $25,000 [23] to Kinder's campaign on 6/30/07 and gave $25,000 to BLM [24] on 3/31/08.
• Hunter Engineering gave $15,000 [25] to Kinder's campaign on 6/30/07 and gave $15,000 to BLM [26] on 3/13/08.
• Clayton Investment Corp. gave $5,000 [27] to Kinder's campaign on 6/28/07 and Robert Wood, of the same address (625 N Euclid, Suite 601), gave $1,275 to BLM [28] on 5/1/08.
• Major Brands Inc. gave $2,500 [29] to Kinder's campaign on 6/28/07 and gave $1,225 to BLM [30] on 1/5/08.
• Ann Michael gave $2,500 [31] to Kinder's campaign on 6/30/07 and her husband Roy Michael gave $1,225 to BLM [32] on 1/11/08.
• Tri-State Motor Transit gave $3,000 [33] to Kinder's campaign on 6/30/07 and gave $3,000 to BLM [34] on 3/13/08.
• Six-States Rental gave $5,000 [35] to Kinder's campaign on 6/25/08 and gave $3,725 to BLM [36] on 3/29/08.
• State Bank of Purdy gave $5,000 [37] to Kinder's campaign on 6/30/07 and gave $3,725 to BLM [38] on 3/13/08.
• Brinkmann Constructors gave $5,000 [39] to Kinder's campaign on 8/27/07 and gave $8,725 to BLM [40] on 2/13/08.
• Rudy Farber gave $2,500 [41] to Kinder's campaign on 8/27/07 and gave $10,000 to BLM [42] on 3/31/08.

Astute readers will notice that many of these contributors simply rewrote a check for the precise amount returned to them, as Kinder's campaign would have kept $1,275 from each overlimit donation (hence the givers of $10,000 who gave $8,725 to BLM, and so forth).  Others simply gave to BLM in the same amount of their initial overlimit commitment, as was the case with the Humphreys and Paul McKee.

Using this mechanism, Kinder was able to recoup into the Better Leadership for Missouri committee at least $152,300 in contributions that had to be returned by his own campaign.

But that's only half of the story.  Once the money was gathered back into the Better Leadership for Missouri committee beginning early in 2008, the committee began to spend the money on items and individuals that comprise the infrastructure of the Kinder campaign.  Some of the Better Leadership for Missouri expenditures really stand out.  Among them are...

• $8,750 paid to former MOGOP flack Paul Sloca for "communications."  Sloca apparently began getting paid $2,500 monthly [43] by the Better Leadership for Missouri committee on May 1, 2008.  Sloca was paid $3,750 on May 1 (for May and half of April), $2,500 on May 28 and $2,500 on June 25.  Interestingly, this coincides almost exactly with the timeline on which Sloca began being paid for "communications" by the Peter Kinder campaign.  Sloca got his first paycheck for Kinder on May 13, 2008 [44] and --like the way he was paid by Better Leadership for Missouri-- he apparently got one-and-one-half months pay on his first check, raking in $4,500 in May and later getting $3,000 for June.

  This is clearly a case of Kinder's campaign having off-loaded (illegally) a portion of his campaign's costs onto the Better Leadership for Missouri committee.  It is inconceivable that Sloca is being paid to do "communications" on behalf of the Better Leadership committee itself, as it is a continuing committee that has done and is doing no public communications and doesn't do much in the way of supporting candidates.       
  

• $56,340 paid for "grassroots development" and reimbursements paid to Pat Thomas of Holts Summit.  There is ample evidence to paint Pat Thomas, a former Hulshof campaign coordinator and Matt Blunt fee agent, as a campaign aide to Peter Kinder.  When she wasn't sending youtube videos to bloggers on Kinder's behalf [45], Thomas was buying supplies for the Kinder campaign [46].  Though Thomas is and has been doing organizing on behalf of Kinder's campaign for some time, she has not been paid a salary by Kinder.  This is presumably because Better Leadership for Missouri is paying the entire freight for Pat Thomas's work --to the tune of more than $50,000 this year and more than $95,000 dating back to February 2007.  
  

• $35,000 paid to David Barklage's firm Strategic Communications for "public relations & strategy."  Really?  $35,000 to do "public relations" for a committee no one has ever heard of and which has no public profile and to do "strategy" for an entity which mostly exists to pay money out to other staffers and consultants?  That hardly seems right.  More likely is that this big check was the way that Kinder paid Barklage, who is his closest advisor and long-time chief strategist.  After all, until he got the $35,000 check from Better Leadership for Missouri on June 1 [47], Barklage hadn't been paid a dime by Kinder's campaign for the entire calendar year of 2008.  A few days afterward on June 10, Kinder's campaign paid Barklage $4,000 [48] for --you guessed it-- "strategic advice and public relations."  But anyone who knows Missouri politics knows that Barklage doesn't work cheaply, and certainly not for $4,000 a year.  It certainly appears that Kinder used the Better Leadership for Missouri committee to outsource the cost of his chief consultant, thereby receiving an illegal in-kind contribution.

• $14,006.62 paid to Stacey Blomberg for "compliance."  Better Leadership for Missouri paid Stacey Blomberg --who was once a staffer in Kinder's official office and with whom Kinder works closely on the Tour de Missouri [49] bike race-- a total of $14,006.62 to do compliance for the committee in the period between January 2008 [50] and present [51].  In that period, the committee had a grand total of 104 transactions that require reporting.  All the checks received and checks written by Better Leadership for Missouri tallied just that many.  On the other hand, Peter Kinder's campaign finance reports for the same period were massive, requiring 64 pages for his January report, 33 pages for his April report and 59 pages for his July report.  Yet Kinder's campaign paid Blomberg, who does compliance for his them as well (What a coincidence!) a total of $4,500 for "compliance" over the same [52] period [53].  While Blomberg was paid just $2,250 per quarter by Kinder's campaign to do compliance, it looks as though he made it worth her while by significantly enhancing her salary  with dollars from Better Leadership for Missouri.
  

There are several other curiosities as well. 

For instance, Better Leadership for Missouri pays rent to the J. Harris Company, sending a check in May for $3,300 and another in June for $660 [54].  Presumably, the rent is $660 per month and the May and June checks were for six months' rent.   Interestingly, the reports from Peter Kinder's own campaign show no [55] payments [56] for rent in 2008.

Another centers on a man named Jared Brown.  Brown gets paid by the Kinder campaign to do "grassroots development" and historically gets $4,000 every month ($4,000 on April 2, $4,000 on May 1, $4,000 on May 30 [57]).  However, in June (on the 12th) Jared Brown got only $2,000 from the campaign for grassroots development.  Fortunately for him, Better Leadership for Missouri was there to pick up the slack, hitting him with a check in amount of $2,000 for "grassroots development" [58] on the same day as the Kinder campaign and making him whole.

Finally, Better Leadership for Missouri bought computers.  $7,262.99 worth of them [59] between the dates of April 15, 2008 and May 29, 2008.   I wonder whose campaign is using those computers?

This is a lot of numbers and a lot of transactions.  But the upshot isn't confusing in the least.  Peter Kinder gamed the system so that he could use the no-limit contributions he raised and wasn't supposed to keep.  He has been accepting what amount to unreported, overlimit and illegal in-kind contributions to his campaign from Better Leadership for Missouri as the committee supplemented the pay of his staff and purchased goods and services intended for use by his campaign.  This is plainly violative of Missouri's campaign finance law.

But further, and more viscerally, the Better Leadership for Missouri committee is a complete and utter fiction on its face.  There is no entity, no campaign, no organization with staff or goals or communications on which the money being raised into the committee is being spent.  It is a slush fund whose only purpose is to allow a candidate to use cash without all the disclosure and transparency we deserve.

The people responsible will have excuses aplenty, but they knew what they were doing.  Collusive coordination of the sort we've seen in the reports of Friends of Peter Kinder and Better Leadership for Missouri isn't coincidental and doesn't happen without effort.  The folks who engineered these reporting farces should pay the price for having worked so hard to circumvent the rules.