FUMO's Best & Worst of '08: Ten Dumbest Moves of the Year

The year of 2008, with a full slate of state and federal elections and all the attendant posturing, had more than its fair share of ridiculously dumb moves.  Republicans in state government as well as current GOP elected officials and hopefuls spent inordinate amounts of time doing very foolish things.  Submitted for your approval is our assessment of the year's ten dumbest moves...

Honorable Mention: Ward Connerly spends millions for nothing -- Professional interloper Ward Connerly spent gads of cash in Missouri (and a half-dozen other states) trying to ban affirmative action via the initiative petition process.  For his money and his trouble he got absolutely nothing done.  It's sometimes hard to figure who is dumber, though, Connerly for wasting the money or the rich mopes who give him the millions that he fritters away.

10.  Doyle Childish makes crazy parting rant -- Transition between administrations (particularly administrations of different parties) is naturally a turbulent time.  Notwithstanding the uncertainty and flux that comes with it, most departing political appointees in top-level government positions manage to comport themselves with a fair amount of dignity and professionalism.  Not Doyle Childish.  Childish, who had run Matt Blunt's Department of Natural Resources, decided that instead of saving some face by retreating quietly into the private sector he would call the newspaper and announce to the world that he "didn't respect" incoming governor Jay Nixon.  One should be forgiven for confusing Childish with a 14 year-old girl, jilted by the homecoming king at the junior prom.  Anybody want to hire Doyle now?­

­

9.  Blunt looks to Simpsons for inspiration and leaves party in lurch -- In making the most momentous decision he'll ever face in politics, Matt Blunt opted to borrow his public rationale for not seeking a second term from an episode of a satirical animated sitcom.  Worse than that, Blunt reportedly gave no notice of his abrupt withdrawal to leaders of his own party, leaving even his preferred GOP heir apparent with a paltry 45 minute heads-up on the announcement.  The style and manner of his departure played no small part in Democratic ascension to the mansion.  We may not have known it then, but the 2008 Missouri's governor's race was effectively finished at that moment.

8.  Bond confesses to Steelman About Todd Graves -- According to the dean of Missouri political reporters, Sen. Kit Bond had a remarkable conversation with Sarah Steelman just weeks after her primary loss which caused her sufficient concern to have her lawyer report the conversation to federal investigators.  With re-election just around the corner and one of his former staffers already pleading guilty for connections to the Jack Abramoff corruption scandals, Bond's admissions to Steelman can serve only to further undermine his already dissipated strength as a candidate.  Bond's apparent inability to leave bad-enough alone as he kicks off a critical two-year period is dumb enough to crack the top ten.

7.  Brocky V: The Run for Congress -- Take your good name, earned carrying the football and making special team tackles at the state's biggest school.  Announce you are running for Congress, with your chief qualification being your having taken social studies classes.  Identify Abraham Lincoln as your favorite Founding Father at a candidate forum.  Let it leak out that you've never before voted.  Fail even to reach the five-figures raised mark in your primary campaign's most critical quarter.  Take a beating the likes of which you haven't seen since your junior year against Nebraska.  Find yourself on a list of the top ten dumbest moves of 2008.  If your name is Brock Olivo, this is the story of your year.

6.  Kinder gives official staff pay raises when colleagues hit the campaign trail -- It was revealed this year that Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder regularly gave what amounted to pay bonuses --some that were as large as 84% increases in pay rate-- to his official staff when their colleagues took leave from the office to work on campaigns.  The thin cover was that these staff were also given "additional legislative duties" at times when the legislature wasn't even in session.  And several of the beneficiaries of this policy actually worked fewer hours after being given the increased pay rate.  For a guy whose campaign slogan was "every dollar counts", Kinder's staff bonuses stand out as one of the year's most tone-deaf and dumbest moves.

5.  Republicans repeal campaign contribution limits -- Maybe it seemed like a great idea at the time.  GOP legislators and governor Matt Blunt got together to erase the state's campaign contribution limits --limits that voters implemented overwhelmingly via the ballot in the previous decade.  Surely Missouri Republicans believed that the repeal of limits would confer some political advantage on its candidates, and was therefore worth bucking the strong public opinion against.  But then Democratic gubernatorial candidate went ahead and outraised GOP rival Kenny Hulshof by about two-to-one, hoisting Republicans by their own campaign finance petard.  Even worse for GOPers, Democrats now control the five most powerful of the six statewide elected offices, putting the Party of Jefferson in a position to make hay from the lack of limits over the next four years as well.  A terrible misjudgment by Republican leaders.

4.  Hulshof hires full-time talk radio personality to run his Governor's race -- Running a governor's race is hard.  It takes time, focus and commitment.  That's why it was among the year's dumbest moves for Kenny Hulshof to hire a guy to manage his race who was concentrating a fair amount of his effort on chatting about politics on KMOX with fellow consultants.  Additionally, Hulshof's retention of a clearly distracted Hancock was an obvious factor in wife Renee's stepped-up involvement in campaign strategy, a development which didn't seem to be helpful to his run.

3.  Someone gives $1 million to Mike Gibbons campaign -- The Virginia-based Republican State Leadership Committee made the largest campaign contribution in Missouri history, sending $1.1 million to Mike Gibbons' attorney general effort.  The cash would've been better invested with Bernie Madoff.  Even with the million-plus in help from the national committee Gibbons was wiped out, losing by nearly 6% of the votes cast.  Oops.   

2.  The Match.com probation violation -- Peter Kinder's chief of staff, Eric Feltner, got a big break after getting pinched for sending pornography over the internet to someone he believed to be a 13 year old girl.  Somehow, Feltner managed a plea which kept him from serving any time behind bars, so long as he registered as an offender and agreed to stay off the internet.  But his desire to seek, uh, companionship via the web was apparently unquenchable, and earlier this month Feltner was sentenced to shock time in jail for logging on to Match.com and violating his probation.  Dumber than dumb.

1.  Congressman Kenny's DC announcement -- Of all the things that propelled the American electorate in 2008, an anti-Washington undercurrent was among the most prominent.  Tired of George Bush and Republican rule, voters sought a change from the ordinary manner of doing business in the nation's capital.  So it was remarkably foolhardy and tone-deaf when Congressman Kenny Hulshof decided to kick off his campaign for governor of Missouri with an announcement made on a media conference call while Hulshof sat in Washington.  The announcement showed that Team Hulshof just didn't get it.  They would immediately be plagued in their primary campaign by attacks from Sarah Steelman over Hulshof's longstanding support for budget earmarks, and their own kickoff enhanced the impression that Kenny was a DC insider who was part of the problem.  The DC announcement may have seemed a small thing, but it presaged a campaign that never set its feet and never developed a coherent rationale for why Hulshof should be governor.  The seeds of the campaign's destruction were dumbly sown in its earliest moments.

Other suggestions for the year's dumbest moves?  Feel free to leave them in the comments...