Blunt-Kinder Administration

After a week of pitched GOP in-fighting, an issue finally came along that was so compelling, it moved former intra-party combatants to beat their political swords into plowshares and leave small-village thinking behind.

That unifier?

We've written before about the candidacy of Republican Mike Lair for the 7th House District and how his campaign is largely financed by Blunt administration fee agents installed by son-in-law James Harris.

Harris, who served as the Blunt administration's appointment secretary and now counts the gubernatorial campaign of Sarah Steelman among his clients, looks to be sharpening his talons on Mike Lair's opponent in preparation for Kenny Hulshof.  

Earlier this week, Matt Blunt issued one of the most important press releases of his administration.

It warned motorists about the dangers of seeking shelter in automobiles during tornadoes.  The news release followed the death of an entire family in their car during Saturday's storms in southwest Missouri.

Without doubt, this was information every Missourian needed to know--- the kind of dispatch they expect and deserve from their Governor and government.

But it's the kind of information that's getting harder and harder for Matt Blunt to effectively communicate.  Story Continued »

Judging by what he's been doing since announcing in January that he wouldn't seek a second term, Matt Blunt believes it is his role to be a guy with a big megaphone who can use his ample official resources to benefit GOP candidates by regularly attacking Democrats.  Yesterday's contrived assault on Jay Nixon and last week's childish tilt at Jeff Harris are but the most recent examples.

But despite a concerted effort to be the anti-Nixon, Blunt has been heretofore silent about the specifics of his support in the Republican gubernatorial primary.  One can only imagine that, at some point before August, the sitting governor will roll around to announcing his support for one candidate or the other in the race to succeed him.

The big question about that, of course, is whether his is support anyone wants.

As you all know, yesterday Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared in Cape Girardeau, MO to talk about the economy.

A spokesperson for the Missouri GOP was trying to spin that everything was just fine in Southeast Missouri and sent around this pic as proof.

Unsurprisingly, KC Star reporter Dave Helling picked right up on the GOP spin and quickly put up this smarty pants post trying to suggest that the Obama campaign was foolish to be appearing in Southeast Missouri because unemployment is "so low" in Cape Girardeau County.

When did it become okay to run an anti-Nixon attack machine out of the office of Governor?

Makes one think that Team Blunt should be reporting the hours spent on drafting this stuff as in-kind contributions to the eventual GOP nominee.  Of course, I'm not sure Hulshof or Steelman would take the help if it meant having to list Matt Blunt on a report as a supporter. 

What to say about Tony Messenger's story today about Scott Eckersley's recording of the conversation with Ed Martin during which Eckersley was informed he'd been fired?  It's hard to do it justice via description, so here's an excerpt:

Yesterday saw a couple news stories about how GOP legislators have grown livid about the increase in fees for driving records charged by the Blunt Department of Revenue.  From the KC Star:

A new fee structure for Missouri motor vehicle and driver records has insurance companies enraged and a lawmaker promising action in the waning days of the legislative session.

The state Department of Revenue on May 1 raised the fee to $7 per record and has said it would not provide a bulk discount to companies that use the data for things such as calculating insurance rates. That means companies now must pay about $28 million for the entire database.

The story notes that the fee increase pushed through by the Blunt Department of Revenue represents a 300,000% increase in the fee previously charged.  We get more clues about why from the AP's story:

Like Mike Hendricks, I've often wondered what it is Matt Blunt had in his emails that he seems so intent on hiding at all costs.  In fact, I've even posted here about it and suggested that the finding out what was in those emails was the "most important" question.  Hendricks spends his entire column today asking the same thing:

What secret Blunt and his top aides want to protect, we still don’t know. But keeping it from becoming public was and continues to be all-important. ...

Just what is Blunt trying to hide by refusing to turn over the e-mail tapes that those two bureaucrats refused to destroy?

Certainly not the fact that his administration engaged in a cover-up of something. That we’ve known for months.

Now, as I said, I'm as guilty as anyone of focusing in on the nature of the documents hidden instead of the hiding itself.  But something about reading Hendricks' explicit formulation (and apparent endorsement) of that concept in print makes me suspect that I've been very wrong to do so.

So we asked this morning for Freddy Hulshof and Sarah Steelman to weigh in on Matt Blunt's alleged involvement in ordering the destruction of computer backup tapes.  Sarah courageously refused to answer the question:

Meanwhile, at a news conference to announce her intention to make a variety of tax cuts if she’s elected governor, state Treasurer Sarah Steelman said it would be inappropriate for her to comment on the lawsuit.

It would be "inappropriate" for her to comment, she says.  More inappropriate, even, than the Governor and his top aides leaning on subordinate employees to break the law and destroy public records?  This seems a strange conception of propriety.  

Here are questions to ponder while it sinks in that a special prosecutor's investigative team has concluded that "Matt Blunt or his top deputies ordered the destruction" of computer backup tapes that included embarrassing or politically damaging emails.

Shouldn't Sarah Steelman and Kenny Hulshof weigh in on the matter?  Don't Missourians have the right to know whether Steelman and Hulshof, if elected, would engage in the practice of destroying electronic backups of public records as Blunt apparently has?

Oh my.

Gov. Matt Blunt or his top deputies ordered the destruction of Missouri's backup e-mail tapes in an attempt to avoid complying with an open-records request from The Associated Press, a government lawsuit alleged Monday.

No one could have predicted that Blunt was involved in deep sixing computer backup tapes.  Except, of course, for those that did. 

Matt Blunt and his administration have gone to great lengths to tell anyone who'll listen that they have "fixed" Missouri's economy.  This week they were even crowing about Blunt's being named a "person who made a difference" by something called Southern Business & Development magazine.

Yet days later they are once again taking out the trash on a Friday afternoon and dumping some bad economic news when they think no one's watching.

This time it was the Blunt Office of Administration putting out word that April revenues weren't so hot, and that it now appears the state won't reach the budget year revenue figure it estimated last year: