• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

MO Governor & NY Congressman

A

Anonymous

Guest
What's this all about? After declaring for re-election, even running re-election TV ads, the Republican governor of Missouri, Roy Blunt, has suddenly announced he's not running for re-election. it was a surprise to the party, even his own campaign staff. Is there a scandle brewing in MO for the Republican party? Political pundits had expected the balance of governors to stay pretty much the same. This may give the Dems a chance to pick up one.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/8074.html

And NY Republican Congressman Jim Walsh has announced his retirement. He's the 21st Republican representative not to seek reelection in 2008. That district is winable for the Dems.
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Scott Eckersley, a lawyer fired from Gov. Matt Blunt's office, filed a suit today that accuses several top Blunt aides of ordering the illegal destruction of state e-mails to prevent potentially damaging messages from being turned over to reporters.

The suit contends that Eckersley was fired for repeatedly pressing Blunt aides with warnings that such orders violated state record-retention and open-records laws. Eckersley's firing violated state law protecting whistle-blowers, according to the lawsuit.

So if Eckersley is telling the truth, the Blunt administration not only illegally deleted public documents for political reasons, but fired the guy who had the temerity to advise them that they might be breaking the law.

And subsequently the Blunt team took it upon themselves to destroy his reputation:

The governor's office claimed that Eckersley was fired for doing a shoddy job, tardiness, lying and using his state computer to do work for his father's private health care business.

A media packet provided by the Blunt administration at the time of the firing claimed Eckersley had registered for a "group sex Internet site" and noted that Blunt's chief of staff had questioned whether Eckersley used illegal drugs.

As a response to this, Eckersley has now sued for defamation, wrongful firing, violating whistleblower protection laws, and violation state open-records laws.

And now, of course, the Blunt administration can delete nothing, lest the court sanction them for destroying discoverable evidence.

Blunt was narrowly elected governor in 2004, riding Bush's victory in Missouri to a victory over Claire McCaskill. It's been all downhill from there for the youngest governor in the nation. He is up for reelection this fall, and has had dismal approval ratings for essentially his entire tenure, and is trailing his strong Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jay Nixon, by five points according to Rasmussen.

In fact, Blunt has long been considered the most endangered Republican governor up for election in 2008, even more so than Indiana's own unpopular GOPer, "My Man" Mitch Daniels.

I can't imagine that a lawsuit involving the destruction of public documents, the firing of a potential whistleblower and the subsequent smearing of the whistleblower, would help Blunt climb out of that hole.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/10/01241/3601/80/434173

not sure if this maybe has something to do with it????
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Show Me Progress has obtained a copy of the lawsuit in its entirety and has published it online for viewers to read. http://blog.showmeprogress.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=615
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Maybe that's why he's not running. But the lawsuit has been hanging around for a while and he was still raising money, running ads, announcing that he would run for re-election. The decision to not run was apparently a sudden one since it caught the party and his own staff members by surprise. It just makes me curious. A good Republican scandal in MO would be welcomed at this time. :lol:
 

Tex

Well-known member
A media packet provided by the Blunt administration at the time of the firing claimed Eckersley had registered for a "group sex Internet site" and noted that Blunt's chief of staff had questioned whether Eckersley used illegal drugs.

We have pres. Bush and pres. Clinton who have both used illegal drugs and all the media attack by the Blunt admin. does is ask this man if he used drugs?

If that disqualified you for a job, we need to get our money back from pres. Bush and pres. Clinton and charge them both for using the white house too.

Perhaps someone can ask Blunt too, if he did drugs and ask for his salary back too.

Maybe the chief of staff should ask a few more politicians if they did drugs. I for one would like to see more fired and if this excuse is good enough, it will be real easy. Maybe the chief of staff can clear up his own powers that come from merely asking questions.

Can we get a media release on that?
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Well, FF, here's your scuttlebutt on a Republican.... Kitty.... whom I'm glad to hear might be retiring as I'm voting him out next election... the rascal keeps voting for amnesty. I think that's rather low to threaten to withdraw FEMA funds if his crony wasn't endorsed by the mayor..................

It all started when a Fann campaign worker put together a piece of campaign literature with a picture of Fann and Pagano on the back, with words of praise from Pagano about Tom. Those words were in quotation marks, but weren't actually quoted. They were only the gist of remarks Pagano had made about Fann. Fann himself, preoccupied at the time with his daughter's kidney infection, didn't proofread and approve the literature before it went out on a doorhanger to several thousand homes.

hotflash :: Bond Puts the Heat on St. Peters Republican Mayor
The substance of Bond's conversation with Pagano was: THREAT--according to a well connected birdie I know. St. Peters is waiting impatiently on FEMA funds needed to complete the Highway 370 project there. Bond said he could make those FEMA funds go away permanently. He also mentioned that there were still a few days left before the filing deadline in the mayoral race and that if Pagano didn't disavow endorsing Fann, the Republicans would find themselves a primary challenger.
OK, that last was not a very credible threat, but it made Pagano understand that Bond was seriously displeased. And naturally, he did what the senator told him to do; he wrote the local papers to complain that those words on the flyer were not an accurate quotation of anything he had said and that he was not endorsing either candidate.

Not surprisingly, Pagano is not advertising the conversation with Bond to the press, but anyone who cared to check Kit Bond's travel records would find he was in the metro area at the time.

http://blog.showmeprogress.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=672
 

Latest posts

Top