McCaskill In Hot Water

The McCaskill for Senate campaign was in trouble from last week for saying "George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black." That problem got bigger when Rush Limbaugh took her to task over that statement yesterday. Now she's got bigger problems.
Speaking at a public event last Thursday in St. Louis sponsored by Environmentalists for Claire, McCaskill revealed a plan to use publicly-financed employees for partisan political purposes in violation of the civil service rules of St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Jackson County which bars employees from participating in political campaigns and specifically prohibits 'coercion' of any taxpayer funded employees to participate in partisan political activities.

",here (St. Louis) and in Kansas City the mayor and the county executive have donated 150 employees to work on the election on Election Day," McCaskill said. The audio of McCaskill's comments can be heard here.
As I said, McCaskill was already in trouble for her racist comments. This problem, though, is potentially much bigger because of the corruption. The Missouri Republican Party memo also includes this:
Using public employees to aid her political ambitions is nothing new for McCaskill. The federal Office of Special Counsel is probing charges that Jackson County law enforcement employees were improperly directed by the sheriff, a McCaskill political ally, to appear in McCaskill campaign ads in uniform, on public time during her failed 2004 campaign for governor. McCaskill also has come under fire by faxing campaign materials to state offices during state time in her current campaign. At least three such faxes have been received by the Missouri Department of Economic Development even after McCaskill's campaign said the issue would be dealt with following revelations of the first faxes to state offices during the workday.
It's a little bit of a stretch to say that McCaskill hasn't met a campaign statute that wasn't worth breaking but it isn't an big stretch. Don't expect this race to stay in the toss-up category much longer.



Posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006 10:41 AM

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