Kenny Hulshof

Tony Messenger has a story today about Kenny Hulshof changing his vote to override the President's veto of a Medicare reimbursement bill just weeks after a fundraiser through which he raised more than $20,000 for his gubernatorial campaign from funders who would benefit from the reimbursement bill.  

The money quote comes from our old friend Spence Jackson:

“You cannot trust Congressman Hulshof,” said Steelman spokesperson Spence Jackson. “He changed his vote explicitly for campaign contributions at Dr. Steve Reintjes house in Kansas City just a few days ago. Missourians can’t afford a government that’s for sale.”

Far be it from me to agree with Spence, but he may be onto something.

Watching this video makes me long for a fifty-five gallon drum of drawn butter.

It seems that Peter Kinder has endorsed Kenny Hulshof. Considering that the success of Kinder's past endorsements have lead to the expression "Kinder's Kiss of Death" a Kinder endorsement can only be "bad news" for the person being endorsed. 

Of course Hulshof will lose to Jay Nixon anyway so maybe "Kinder's Kiss of Death" does not matter in the case of Kenny Hulshof's campaign.

Kudos to Dave Catanese for his video interview with Kenny Hulshof.  Catanese sticks by his guns and refuses to let Hulshof off the hook by forcing him to answer for his history of supporting Congressional earmarks.  Here's Hulshof explaining carefully his nuanced position on the topic:

"In every instance, my principle is that the person that wants to cut this proposal has to make the case to me that it is worthwhile to cut and then whoever proposes the earmark has to defend that earmark."

Watch the video yourself (it's the first of the three clips) if you don't believe it.  Hulshof actually admits that his presumption is that any earmark included in a piece of appropriation legislation should get the benefit of the doubt, and that opponents of a particular earmark have to prove to him that it shouldn't be included.

There was ample time for Republicans of all kinds --Congressional Republicans, statewide elected Republicans, legislative Republicans-- to stake out a position in opposition to Rod Jetton's clearly untoward political consulting business when the issue first arose a couple years ago.   Of course, none of them did. 

Not Sarah Steelman, not Peter Kinder, not Kenny Hulshof.  None of those moral midgets thought Rod Jetton's consulting arrangement, which was as inappropriate then as it was during this session, was something with which they should concern themselves. 

But now that Jetton is a lame duck, term-limited Speaker who has lowered the gavel on his last meaningful legislative session these prominent Republicans are falling over one another trying to find a podium or an open mic from which they can tsk at Jetton and feign outrage at a practice of his they've known about since early 2006. 

A stroke of genius --grab hold of the very thing most responsible for sinking Matt Blunt's term as governor and run on that initiative in your campaign to succeed him:

Hulshof defended the controversial 2005 decision by Gov. Matt Blunt's administration to eliminate tens of thousands of Missourians from being eligible for Medicaid, the government health care system for the poor.

Brilliant!

So Kenny Hulshof was at this party instead of in Washington voting on a package that would have provided millions in flood relief to Missouri.

Another illustration of how Kenny shares Matt Blunt's "donors-first" theory of state government.  Isn't it time for someone with different priorities?­

While Missourians sandbag and head for higher ground to escape prospective flooding like that which has taken several lives in Iowa, they might be interested to know that Matt Blunt and his top aides are headed for the water.  

Instead of nervously watching the levees here in Missouri, Blunt, his chief of staff Trish Vincent and senior policy advisor Adam Gresham will be spending June 19-21 in South Carolina for a Republican Governors Association senior staff retreat.  Among the events on their schedule is a Thursday evening "Late Night Yacht Party."  Never let it be said that Matt Blunt and the Missouri GOP are out of touch with the lives of real people. 

Kenny Hulshof has been locked in a battle with opponent Sarah Steelman over which GOP gubernatorial candidate can rightly claim the mantle of "fiscal conservative." 

But this is a strategy that Hulshof obviously hasn't been pursuing for very long.  Just last May, Hulshof cast a Congressional vote against an amendment that, among other things, would have prohibited the use of federal funds for research on "social relationships and reproductive strategies of Phayre’s Leaf Monkeys."

Quite odd for an anti-research Republican who claims to be in favor of slashing government spending to have voted to pay for studies on monkey sex. 

Talk about dismissive.  

Just days after Kenny Hulshof held an event to talk about keeping Missourians safe from high-tech crimes, he responded to the news of charges against his former district director with a striking lack of concern.

The Associated Press reported on Hulshof's take on Eric Feltner, quoting a statement...

''Abuse of the Internet is a real and growing problem in our society,''...

"Abuse of the internet"?  Is the internet a victim in this episode?  

As first reported here at Fired Up Missouri, Kinder Chief of Staff and former Kenny Hulshof District Director Eric Feltner has been charged with two counts of furnishing pornography to a minor.  

Observers note oddities in the timing of the charges.  According to the charging information, Feltner's criminal acts took place on May 25, 2007 and July 6, 2007 but no criminal charges were filed until May 21, 2008 --just days before the one year statute of limitations would have tolled on a misdemeanor charge.  The reason for the delay is unclear from court filings.

Fired Up Missouri has learned that the Chief of Staff to Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder has been charged with furnishing pornography to a minor.  Eric Feltner served as District Director for Congressman Kenny Hulshof before joining Kinder's staff in 2005.

Charging documents filed by the Cole County prosecutor indicate that Feltner was implicated via sting operation in which he engaged in explicit online exchanges with someone he believed to be 13 years old.

From Kinder's 2005 announcement of his hiring comes this bit on Feltner:

"I am very please to have someone of Eric's caliber and experience joining the staff. I look forward having him as an integral member of my team," said Kinder.

"Eric has been a very effective advocate on my behalf for over eight years," said Congressman Hulshof. "As one of my top advisors, he has played an integral role in both a political and official capacity since 1996. I thank him for his tremendous effort and wish him the best of luck."

Feltner is scheduled to be arraigned on June 27 in Cole County Circuit Court.

A sign of of things to come?

According to the MOGOP's list of delegates to the Republican National Convention in Larry Craig's stall Minneapolis, Congressman and favored candidate of the Party establishment Kenny Hulshof was apparently not among those elected by state conventioneers as at-large delegates to the national nominating convention. 

Among those who were elected as at-large dels are Exxon's Congressman Sam Graves, stem cell research ringleader Jack Danforth and Hulshof's primary opponent, Sarah Steelman.

Heck, even Hulshof's paid help, John Hancock, got his ticket to the Twin Cities punched.  Yet no Kenny.

There's really nothing else one can do besides point a finger in the direction of it and shake his or her head.  With a release from his office yesterday, Matt Blunt officially jumped the shark and became the complete embarrassment that he'd threatened to become for some time.

I won't even bother excerpting any of the release, since it is lunatic in its entirety --a step back through the looking glass to the Spence Jackson era when the governor's press shop was treated as little more than a very expensive right-wing blog.  As you might imagine, it assaults Jay Nixon for holding positions he's never espoused and bothers not with any pretense of relevant or newsworthy action by the governor or his administration. 

It's a taxpayer-funded negative campaign attack, nothing more.

Informed by the latest silliness, a few further thoughts spring to mind about what's going on the waning days of the lame-duck Blunt administration.

Freddy Hulshof and Matt Blunt (in a ploy no doubt constructed by their shared advisor, John Hancock) are anxious to find a convoluted way to turn the clock back to the Republican halcyon days of 2004.  Hence their tortured effort to pull Jay Nixon into California's gay marriage fight:

Like Blunt, Hulshof noted that 10 Republican attorneys general in other states that have such bans ”are asking the California Supreme Court to delay finalizing its ruling to legalize same-sex marriage, because of its national implications.”

“Missouri has a similar ban, but our attorney general has yet to join the list of those calling for a stay,” Hulshof said in a release.

This in spite of the fact that California voters, via initiative petition now certified for November's ballot by their Secretary of State, will have the opportunity to vote to overturn the recent Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in that state. 

So why do Matt Blunt and Kenny Hulshof want Jay Nixon to appeal to unelected state judges in California on gay marriage when the people of California are about to have their own say in the matter?