Team Blunt Father, Adam Smith Foundation Board Member Files for Office

Lost in the torrent of stories that emerged during the first days of candidate filing in late February was the official entry of Mike Lair into the Republican primary for the 7th District House seat.

Lair, aside from being one of the board members of an organization created by Team Blunt to scrap the non-partisan Missouri Court Plan in favor of a hyper-political alternative, is also a family member to some of the key players in the cabal responsible for the Blunt Administration's cash-and-carry appointment policy.  It is those players who are fully engaged in helping push Lair's candidacy for the general assembly seat formerly held by ally Jewell Patek. 

It was James Harris, of course, who teamed with now-incarcerated illegal immigration facilitator Nathan Cooper to sell Blunt administration appointments to Cooper's friends and clients.  Despite Cooper's absence from the scene, Harris has nevertheless dusted off his list of contacts in order to recoup even more lucre for past services rendered. 

Harris, in addition to tapping his own family members for $1,950 in checks to Lair's campaign, has compiled contributions for the Lair campaign from a number of his former buyers.  A quick sweep of the most recent report reveals checks from:

-- Tracey Alcorn, who he set up with Blunt's West Count fee office;

-- Naveed Razzaque, the Cooper business partners whom he tapped for the State Board of Nursing Home Administrators;

-- Buddy Hardin, who got the O'Fallon fee office;

-- Ernest Dempsey, to whom Blunt and Harris awarded the St. Charles fee office.

If history is any indicator, more Blunt fee agents and appointees will show up on subsequent reports. 

If there's anything to be learned from the recent developments in the 7th District House race, it's that even as the Blunt administration's power and relevance wanes to unprecedented levels of gubernatorial meaninglessness, the Team which his term spawned continues to exercise the practices it learned while minding his failed tenure as Governor.  Once you open the door to pay to play government and the jackals rush in, it becomes exceedingly difficult to pry the trappings of power from their jaws.