State Auditor's Race

Posted to YouTube today:

Just posted to the SusanMontee4Auditor YouTube channel: "Missouri State Auditor Susan Montee is a CPA, a lawyer and the independent watchdog Missouri needs to protect its tax dollars from waste, fraud and abuse. As the best-qualified person for the job, Susan Montee has earned your vote on November 2nd."

The Post-Dispatch endorsed Auditor Susan Montee this weekend:

Ms. Montee, who is seeking a second term, has taken a less flamboyant approach to the job than did Ms. McCaskill, her predecessor and now a Democratic U.S. senator. Ms. Montee often goes into the field and does hands-on auditing.

Mr. Schweich accuses her of politicizing the office, but there’s little evidence to support that charge. Ms. Montee says the audits are released when they are complete. Mr. Schweich promises a full audit of the state’s use of federal stimulus funds. Ms. Montee says such audits have been underway since the funds began flowing to the state in 2009.

What politics we’ve noticed in the auditor’s office come from the Republican-controlled Legislature cutting the size of Ms. Montee’s staff.  Perhaps that’s just because of state budget problems, but Ms. Montee has streamlined the office to make sure the work gets done.

Either candidate would make a fine auditor, but we’re not sure the auditor’s office can contain Mr. Schweich’s ambitions. He toyed with making a run for the U.S. Senate this year, and Ms. McCaskill will need a Republican opponent in 2012.

Voters should re-elect Susan Montee so that Mr. Schweich can begin full-time campaigning for the job he really wants.

Posted today at JoplinGlobe.com: "Our nod goes to Montee because she has shown us that she does look for fraud in state government. Her work for the taxpayers should not be interrupted. The position of state auditor is a nonpartisan one. We’ve talked with politicians on both sides of the aisle, and they agree that Montee has done a good job. Let’s keep her in office."

A few folks have asked about where to find debate footage and audio for the various campaigns.  It's all over the place, and we'll post everything we can here.

Thursday's Senate Debate in Kansas City, from KCPT

Watch the full episode. See more KCPT Specials.

Friday's Senate Debate at the Lake of the Ozarks, from Missourinet

Friday's Auditor Debate at the Lake of the Ozarks, from Missourinet

During this morning's debate between Auditor Susan Montee and Ambassador Thomas Schweich, both candidates promised to serve full terms in elected in November.  

Such a promise wouldn't normally be all that interesting, but it is notable given Schweich's previous warnings to other Republicans that he might mount a revenge campaign in 2012 if there were deemed to be insufficiently supportive of his 2010 race.  Gossip writer Jerry Berger also wrote recently that Schweich's deal to get out of the Senate race included some promise of support for a 2012 Senate run.  Here is video of Schweich contemplating his revenge on camera from KY3:

Speaking of Schweich's decision to cut a backroom deal to get out of the Senate race, he was unable to give a cogent response to a direct question about it.  Hope to post video of that soon... 

h/t The Star

Thomas Schweich, on stage with "the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state" (his words) in Kansas City today, said that "what you’re seeing in the current auditor [Susan Montee] is a hyper-partisan auditor, protecting the Obama agenda, flip-flopping on the issues and also issuing politically motivated audits.”

Really?  This is the same guy who promised Republican donors one short year ago that he would use the office of the Auditor to "aggressively" pursue Gov. Jay Nixon "leading up to the 2012 gubernatorial election."  In Schweich's words, "There's an important policy reason that this auditor's race is so important, and there's also a very significant reason from a political standpoint if you're a loyal Republican."  Talk about a change in approach. 

And I just can't get over the idea of Schweich making a huge deal of his campaign fly-around with John Ashcroft, Kit Bond, Jack Danforth, Margaret Kelly, Peter Kinder and Jim Talent after calling out said group of GOP leaders for their backroom deals and "sedentary, uncreative" leadership.  "The Missouri Republican Party seems to have no plan for responsible Missourians. Just saying no to what Obama or Nixon wants is not a plan," he wrote in March 2009.  Then he makes a deal to excuse himself from the US Senate race and secure financial and political support for a lower office, and his skewering of the MOGOP disappears from memory and the press coverage of the race. 

Pretty soon, I expect Schweich to say that revenge candidacies and rock and roll will be the downfall of our democracy.

On the list of things Thomas Schweich will not talk about in his fly-around today the "uncreative Republican leadership in this state," you'll find this column by Thomas Schweich condemning the "uncreative Republican leadership in this state," printed in the Post-Dispatch in March 2009 before he revealed himself to be a remarkably unprincipled hypocrite with a deal to drop out of the U.S. Senate race and run for State Auditor. :

The end of the Missouri Republican Party
By Thomas A. Schweich

Across the state, large numbers of forward-looking Republicans are concerned that a small group of Missouri Republican leaders have - without a serious dialogue or discussion about the future of the party - anointed U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt as the GOP candidate to replace retiring Missouri legend Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond. There has been an active effort to crush, pre-emptively, any possible challenger. Yet most of them acknowledge that Blunt will have very difficult time winning.

Roy Blunt is a dedicated public servant, a patriot and a worthy man. But I believe he should not be the nominee of our party for Bond's seat.

As a lifelong Republican and Missourian - and a former ambassador and senior international law enforcement official under President George W. Bush - I am at a loss for why the Republican Party of Missouri would rather be united in defeat than fight for victory. Blunt's vulnerabilities have been discussed widely on talk radio and the Internet. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who has announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the seat, will paint him as a leader of the Congress that delivered us a multi-trillion dollar deficit. She will say he turned a blind eye to the greeding frenzy on Wall Street.

Worse yet, I already can see the advertisements showing grainy pictures of his family members, trumpeting that they are lobbyists for some powerful industries that have hurt ordinary Missourians. And, like it or not, Blunt's son - another well-meaning guy - left the governor's office under a cloud that has not yet lifted. Can you imagine the field day that Carnahan will have? For Republicans, it is in all likelihood a recipe for disaster. Most everyone knows it, yet only a few will say it out loud.

Missouri already has popular Democrats serving as governor, senator and attorney general. If we lose the second Senate seat, the party will be in such shambles that it could take a decade or more to recover. While there is no denying Blunt's commitment to serving his country, he represents the Republican Party of the past, not the party of the future. We need to change direction before it is too late.

The new head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, has said that the party is looking for fresh faces - people with a lot of energy and a commitment to rebuilding the party with a completely new image. Blunt is the opposite of what Steele has said he wants. I guess we have not learned anything from the elections of 2008.

Moreover, the Missouri Republican Party seems to have no plan for responsible Missourians. Just saying no to what Obama or Nixon wants is not a plan.

We need a party that is devoted to preserving the free-market system against the Obama onslaught on private enterprise, while recognizing that hard-working, responsible Missourians who have lost their jobs and health care should have a pretty strong federal safety net until they are back on their feet. We need to close regulatory loopholes and crack down on economic criminals, not nationalize our financial and auto industries with huge new federal bureaucracies.

We need to stick by our core values of protection of life and the right to bear arms but get out of people's bedrooms and private lives with our mean-spirited moral dictates. And we need a nuanced foreign policy that achieves our security objectives without using tactics that backfire and actually make us even more enemies around the world.

We need a party that is more economically responsible, more tolerant, more energetic, less closed-minded and less judgmental. Blunt cannot credibly take Missouri forward on that sort of a platform.

We should not discourage competition in the race for the Republican nomination for Senate. We should shed some light on the back-room politics of the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state, which appears to be in denial about the unfortunate route that we are traveling right now. They either should stop crushing the competition and start looking for a new direction or stand aside and let others take on the task.

Thomas A. Schweich is ambassador-in-residence and visiting professor at Washington University. He served the Bush administration as ambassador for counter-narcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan, deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement affairs and chief of staff of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

From the MOGOP's announcement of "Tom Schweich for Auditor Day:"

Tom is not afraid to stand up to his own party and he will not bend to political pressure because he is dedicated to protecting taxpayers.

Apart from the fact that Schweich folded like a lawn chair when he tried to stand up to his party, this is right on.

What's going on here?  Ambassador Thomas Schweich is telling people that he would be an "independent" State Auditor if elected in November.  From the Washington University Student Life newspaper.

Although Schweich is a Republican, he said he would bring an "independent" mind to the job.

This is most certainly at odds with the rhetoric he employed during his primary fight with Allen Icet.  As printed last September in the News-Leader:

"There's an important policy reason that this auditor's race is so important, and there's also a very significant reason from a political standpoint if you're a loyal Republican," said Schweich, a Washington University law professor and former ambassador to Afghanistan.

It's almost like Schweich has completely changed his message now that he's talking to general election voters. 

Uberconservative gajillionaire Rex Sinquefield donated $25,000 to the Rep. Allen Icet campaign this weekend, his first direct contribution in the contest between Icet and Ambassador Thomas Schweich. 

Still, Sinquefield's late money isn't even enough to keep up with Schweich's last-minute money.  Prominent GOP donor Sam Fox donated an additional $30,000 on Friday, and Lt. Governor Peter Kinder upped his total investment to $220,000 on Thursday.

Lt. Governor Peter Kinder donated an additional $120,000 to Ambassador Thomas Schweich's campaign for State Auditor yesterday; this week's contribution comes on top of the $100,000 check Kinder wrote to boost Schweich's numbers on the final day of the fourth quarter of 2009.

All told, Schweich has been required to raise more than $1.2M from the Missouri GOP establishment to fend off House Budget Chair Allen Icet in the State Auditors race, since cutting his deal to drop his bid for the U.S. Senate.

Schweich expected Icet to get lost and let him have a clear primary (one of those things that Schweich used to hate), but it obviously didn't work that way.

Once upon a time, Schweich declared that "the Missouri Republican Party seems to have no plan for responsible Missourians," decried the "back-room politics of the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state," noted that Matt Blunt "left the governor's office under a cloud that has not yet lifted," and remarked that Roy Blunt "represents the Republican Party of the past, not the party of the future."  But now that he's found himself the choice of said sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership -- and the beneficiary of their financial largess -- Schweich has been somewhat reluctant to say this sort of thing. 

Tom Schweich loves to be called Ambassador.

He calls himself the "Ambassador in Residence" at the Washington University Law School.

His copyright infringing band is called "Ambassador Tom and the Mortgaged Youth."

His web page is littered with references to his favorite title.

And that has political insiders speculating that, if elected, Schweich will insist the State Auditor's staff refer to him as Ambassador, rather than Auditor.

That would be unprecedented, but perhaps short-lived.  His heavy flirtation with the US Senate race, his constant gaze east and the standing one-way ticket to DC tucked inside his diplomatic sash all suggest that Ambassador Tom has bigger things planned in life than serving the hard-working, plain-speaking people of Missouri as their humble State Auditor.

The Allen Icet campaign found some scary music to go along with their complaints that Ambassador Thomas Schweich doesn't hate Democrats enough.  Behold:

In his new television ad, Tom Schweich is a "former law enforcement official," and not a "former Bush Administration ambassador." Please update your files.

Responding to a complaint filed by the Thomas Schweich campaign with the Missouri Ethics Commission, Allen Icet has decided that Steve Tilley's $25,000 check was just a loan, not a contribution.

Icet spokesperson Steve Walsh: “It’s a clerical oversight. That’s what we're calling it. A clerical oversight."

UPDATE: Icet spokesman Steve Walsh: “It’s a clerical oversight. That’s what were calling it. A clerical oversight."

The Star reports this afternoon that the Thomas Schweich campaign has filed an ethics complaint against Allen Icet, alleging that a $25,000 campaign contribution from Majority Leader Steve Tilley should have been recorded as a loan instead of a contribution.  The whole complaint rests on an email exchange between Tilley and GOP fundraiser Sam Fox.

It sure looks like Tilley was trying to save some face with Fox (a big supporter of Schweich's "outsider" campaign) , eight months after his donation to Icet was made public.  If Tilley thought Icet had improperly reported the transfer as he told Fox this week, then why didn't he take that up with his House colleague a long time ago? 

The Beacon has the story today of Allen Icet and Thomas Schweich bickering about who is the biggest "insider" in the contest to see who will take on Auditor Susan Montee this fall. Schweich points to Icet's lobbyist gifts, and Icet points to the fact that Schweich is a lawyer and has campaign donors.  Schweich says Icet's accusation that he was a lobbyist is "bizarre and false."

All this is fine, I suppose, but I'm not sure how any discussion of alleged insider/outsider status can be complete without noting that Schweich once said that MOGOPers need to "shed some light on the back-room politics of the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state."

Shortly thereafter, of course, Schweich revealed himself to be a big fat hypocrite when he made his own back-room deal to drop out of the Senate race and run for Auditor. Schweich has complained that Icet didn't drop out of the race like he thought he should.

Thomas Schweich might have had some credibility as a fresh-faced reformer in early 2009, but those days are long gone.