Over the last few days, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C111177 01/30/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Kenneth McClain 308 W. Maple Independence MO 64050 Humphrey Farrington & McClain, P.C. Attorney 1/30/2012 $10,000.00

C111177 01/30/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Missouri State Council Of Machinist P.A.C. 12365 St. Charles Rock Road Bridgeton MO 63044 1/30/2012 $525.00

C111177 01/31/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Denise Henning 1044 Main, Suite 500 Kansas City MO 64105 The Henning Law Firm Attorney 1/30/2012 $1,000.00

C111177 01/31/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Kenner & Schmitt, PC 117 W. 20th St, Suite 201 Kansas City MO 64108 1/31/2012 $1,500.00

C111177 02/01/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Operative Plasterers’ & Cement Masons’ Local #518 Political Action Committee 301 S Main St Independence MO 64050 2/1/2012 $510.00

C111177 02/03/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Holman Schiavone, LLC 4600 Madison, Suite 810 Kansas City MO 64112 2/3/2012 $2,000.00

C111177 02/03/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Kirk D. Holman, P.C. 4600 Madison Avenue, Suite 810 Kansas City MO 64112 2/3/2012 $2,000.00

[emphasis added]

C121030 02/03/2012 JUDY BAKER FOR MISSOURI Jeanne Seabaugh 3609 Holly Hills Columbia MO 65203 retired retired 1/31/2012 $1,000.00

C121030 02/03/2012 JUDY BAKER FOR MISSOURI Charles Swaney 2709 Westbrook Columbia MO 65203 Radiology Consultants Physician 1/31/2012 $1,000.00

C121030 02/03/2012 JUDY BAKER FOR MISSOURI Randy Mueller 8860 W. Route O Rocheport MO 65279 self physician 1/31/2012 $2,000.00

C121030 02/03/2012 JUDY BAKER FOR MISSOURI Karla DeSpain 1800 Glenbrook Columbia MO 65203 self homemaker 1/31/2012 $1,000.00

C121030 02/03/2012 JUDY BAKER FOR MISSOURI Betsy Winnacker 609 Thilly Columbia MO 65203 retired retired 1/31/2012 $1,500.00

[emphasis added]

Even Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (r) has been having some success:

C091145 02/02/2012 FRIENDS OF PETER KINDER U.S. Tool Grinding,Inc 701 South Desloge Dr Desloge MO 63601 2/2/2012 $5,000.00

C091145 02/04/2012 FRIENDS OF PETER KINDER Friends of Tilley 100 S Jacskon Perryville MO 63775 2/4/2012 $5,000.00

C091145 02/04/2012 FRIENDS OF PETER KINDER Enviromental Operations Inc 1530 South Second St Ste 200 St Louis MO 63104 2/4/2012 $1,500.00

C091145 02/04/2012 FRIENDS OF PETER KINDER Enviromental Contracting, Inc. 1530 South Second St St Louis MO 63104 2/4/2012 $1,500.00

C091145 02/04/2012 FRIENDS OF PETER KINDER EOI Employee PAC 1530 S 2nd Street Ste 200 St Louis MO 63104 2/4/2012 $2,000.00

Evidently the Speaker who is not running for office bestowed his monetary blessings upon a candidate.

Here’s the playing card if you’re interested in keeping track of who’s running:

Election Year: 2012 — Election Date: 08/07/2012 — Political Office: LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

C121030 JUDY BAKER FOR MISSOURI BAKER JUDY 08/07/2012 LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Active

C010984 ELECT CYNTHIA DAVIS DAVIS CYNTHIA 08/07/2012 LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Active

C111206 CITIZENS TO ELECT CHARLES R JACKSON JACKSON CHARLES 08/07/2012 LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Active

C091011 CITIZENS FOR BRAD LAGER LAGER BRAD 08/07/2012 LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Active

C111177 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI MONTEE SUSAN 08/07/2012 LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Active

C111078 PLATTNER FOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR PLATTNER BECKY 08/07/2012 LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Active

C051108 CITIZENS FOR RIDGEWAY RIDGEWAY LUANN 08/07/2012 LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Active

That’s quite a crowd.

Former State Auditor Susan Montee, an announced Constitution Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor, filed her January quarterly campaign finance report with the Missouri Ethics Commission on January 13th.

REPORT SUMMARY

MONTEE FOR MISSOURI [pdf] 1/13/2012

1. Total Receipts For This Election Previously Reported $0.00

2. All Monetary Contributions Received This Period $104,673.00

6. In-kind Contributions Received This Period $8,745.00

10. Expenditures made by cash or check this period $27,089.53

27. Money On Hand at the close of this reporting period $77,583.47

34. Total Indebtedness at the Close of This Reporting Period $0.00

[emphasis added]

And there’s been more coming in since the end of the quarter:

C111177 01/11/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI The Law Offices of Michael L Walton LLC 34 N Brentwood Blvd # 212 St Louis MO 63105 1/11/2012 $525.00

C111177 01/12/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Greg Newell PO Box 407 Osage Beach MO 65065 Self 1/12/2012 $1,000.00

C111177 01/12/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Building Trades Political Education Fund 2300 Hampton Ave. St Louis MO 63139 1/12/2012 $1,000.00

C111177 01/13/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Russell Purvis 10104 N Helana Ave Kansas City MO 64154 Montee Law Firm Attorney 1/13/2012 $525.00

C111177 01/13/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Bartley Goffstein LLC 4399 Lacledge Avenue St Louis MO 63108 1/13/2012 $1,000.00

C111177 01/18/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Dollar, Burns, & Becker, LC 1100 Main Street Suite 2600 Kansas City MO 64105 1/18/2012 $1,000.00

C111177 01/19/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Heritage Residential Services, INC. 1100 N. Commercial Harrisonville MO 64701 1/19/2011 $525.00

C111177 01/19/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Asbestos Workers Political Account 400 S. Main Independence MO 64050 1/19/2011 $1,000.00

C111177 01/19/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Jared Reynolds 200 E. Southampton Dr. Ste 101 Columbia MO 65203 Wilkerson and Reynolds Wealth Management 1/19/2012 $1,000.00

C111177 01/19/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI International Union of Elevator Constructors Local No. 3 – PAC Fund 5916 Wilson Ave. St Louis MO 63110 1/19/2012 $525.00

C111177 01/19/2012 MONTEE FOR MISSOURI Davis, Ketchmark, McCreight, & Ivers PC 11161 Overbrook Road, Suite 210 Leawood KS 66211 1/19/2012 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

These contributions will show up on the next quarterly report.

Let’s look at some of the past quarter’s contributions:

CONTRIBUTIONS AND LOANS RECEIVED

MONTEE FOR MISSOURI 1/13/2012

Sharon Kosek 2 Wishbone St. Joseph MO 64506-1635 Retired — Retired 10/14/2011 $25.00

Stuart Block 3144 N Broadway St. Louis MO 63147 Cash’s Scrap Metal & Iron — President 11/7/2011 $1,000.00

Ham Henderson 223 S. 17th Saint Joseph MO 64501 Retired — Retired 11/10/2011 $6.00

Randy Adams 6810 SE 110th Road Easton MO 64443 KCP and L Lake Road Generation — Union Coal Handler 11/10/2011 $100.00

Charlotte May 2825 Scott St. Joseph MO 64507 Retired — Retired 11/10/2011 $30.00

Fred Jonas 15211 E. Mayes Rd. Independence MO 64050 Local 8 Plumbers and Gasfitters — Training Coordinator 11/15/2011 $50.00

Jeff Bauer 901 E. Battlefield Springfield MO 65807 Strong Garner Bauer Law Firm — Attorney 11/16/2011 $100.00

Operating Engineers #101 6601 Wincheste, Ste 280 Kansas City MO 64133 11/23/2011 $2,000.00

Plumbers and Gasfitters’ Local Union 8 8600 Hillcrest Rd Kansas City MO 64138-2781 12/2/2011 $500.00

Lucile Layne 13226 Old 12 Rd Tipton MO 65081 Retired — Retired 12/2/2011 $50.00

[emphasis added]

You get the picture. It’s coming from retired folks, organized labor (working people!), and attorneys.

Raising money for Democrats is a bit more work than it is for republicans.

The October 2011 quarterly campaign finance reports are showing up at the Missouri Ethics Commission. The active Lieutenant Governor campaign committees:

Since former State Auditor Susan Montee (D) just formed her campaign committee there isn’t a quarterly report:

Date Established: 10/3/2011

COMMITTEE: MECID:C111177

MONTEE FOR MISSOURI

JEFFERSON CITY MO 65102

CANDIDATE: SUSAN MONTEE

JEFFERSON CITY MO 65109

OFFICE SOUGHT: LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

Date of Election:8/7/2012

Political Party:DEMOCRAT

Paper Filed Reports (Scanned)

Amended Statement of Committee Organization 10/03/2011 2011 [pdf]

[emphasis added]

Becky Plattner (D) filed her quarterly report on October 10th:

REPORT SUMMARY

PLATTNER FOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR [pdf] 10/10/2011

2. All Monetary Contributions Received This Period $250.00

10. Expenditures made by cash or check this period $1,767.30

27. Money On Hand at the close of this reporting period $14,444.89

34. Total Indebtedness at the Close of This Reporting Period $20,000.00

[emphasis added]

That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the campaign plan.

There is one republican and an all too familiar representative of the lunatic fringe in the race now representing the Constitution Party:

REPORT SUMMARY

ELECT CYNTHIA DAVIS [pdf] 10/12/2011

2. All Monetary Contributions Received This Period $995.40

10. Expenditures made by cash or check this period $636.97

27. Money On Hand at the close of this reporting period $983.17

34. Total Indebtedness at the Close of This Reporting Period $30,000.00

[emphasis added]

You, too, can run for Lieutenant Governor if you have $30,000.00 in campaign debt. This is priceless:

EXPENDITURES AND CONTRIBUTIONS MADE

ELECT CYNTHIA DAVIS [pdf] 10/12/2011

B. Itemized Expenditures All Over $100

State of Missouri Ethics Commision [sic] Jefferson City MO 65102 8/17/2011 Late filing fee $150.00

[emphasis added]

This inspires confidence in the campaign, no?

And, finally, the big money, for Steve Tilley (r) who filed his report on October 17th:

REPORT SUMMARY

FRIENDS OF TILLEY [pdf] 10/17/2011

2. All Monetary Contributions Received This Period $575,940.00

10. Expenditures made by cash or check this period $96,959.94

27. Money On Hand at the close of this reporting period $1,544,024.01

34. Total Indebtedness at the Close of This Reporting Period $0.00

[emphasis added]

$1,544,024.01 cash on hand. That ain’t no typo. It is good to be the Speaker.

Let’s take a look at the expenditures:

EXPENDITURES AND CONTRIBUTIONS MADE

FRIENDS OF TILLEY [pdf] 10/17/2011

CHASE PARK PLAZA ST LOUIS MO 63108 7/5/2011 TRAVEL $189.31

CHASE PARK PLAZA ST LOUIS MO 63108 7/11/2011 TRAVEL $161.68

CHASE PARK PLAZA ST LOUIS MO 63108 7/11/2011 TRAVEL $195.04

CHASE PARK PLAZA ST LOUIS MO 63108 7/18/2011 TRAVEL $362.43

ST LOUIS BASEBALL ST LOUIS MO 63102 7/7/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $685.08

ST LOUIS BASEBALL ST LOUIS MO 63102 7/11/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $635.35

ST LOUIS BASEBALL ST LOUIS MO 63102 7/11/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $1,361.45

PERKINS RESTAURANT POPLAR BLUFF MO 63901 7/12/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $1,184.45

12 WEST BAR & GRILL FARMINGTON MO 63640 7/14/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $195.10

HILTON HOTELS ST LOUIS MO 63103 8/2/2011 TRAVEL $1,180.38

MORGAN STREET BREWERY ST LOUIS MO 63102 8/22/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $124.62

CHASE PARK PLAZA ST LOUIS MO 63108 8/22/2011 TRAVEL $495.02

SUNSET COUNTRY CLUB ST LOUIS MO 63127 8/25/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $2,310.52

J. BUCKS ST LOUIS MO 63102 8/26/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $108.21

ST LOUIS BASEBALL ST LOUIS MO 63102 9/12/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $315.75

BUFFALO WILD WINGS FARMINGTON MO 63640 9/23/2011 MEALS & ENTERTAINMENT $478.41

[emphasis added]

And on and on…

A lot of lodging, dining out, and baseball(!).

Susan Montee (D), former State Auditor and current Chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, is a candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 2012. Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

Date Established: 10/3/2011

COMMITTEE: MECID:C111177

MONTEE FOR MISSOURI

PO BOX 1536

JEFFERSON CITY MO 65102

TELEPHONE:(573) 635-3955

[….]

CANDIDATE: SUSAN MONTEE

[….]

JEFFERSON CITY MO 65109

[….]

OFFICE SOUGHT: LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

Date of Election:8/7/2012

Political Party:DEMOCRAT

[emphasis added]

There’s a lot of experience running statewide for this candidate. And it ain’t 2010.

Former State Auditor and current Missouri Democratic Party Chair Susan Montee was the keynote speaker at the annual Cass County Democratic Committee “Back to Blue” dinner in Belton on April 30th.

Missouri Democratic Party Chair Susan Montee spoke at the Cass County Democratic Committee “Back to Blue” dinner in Belton on Saturday night.

Missouri Democratic Party Chair Susan Montee ….We now are faced with needing to do something differently. Now, I’m a big proponent of the idea of the self-sustaining party, but it, it wasn’t my idea. It came about after our election in two thousand and four, where we narrowly lost the governor’s election. Um, and it was largely due to the fact that [presidential candidate] John Kerry pulled out of our state with three weeks left. And we had no infrastructure in place to do anything about it and to get our votes out. And at that point we said, never again, we don’t want this to happen to us again. We have to have a party that is active and able to get a message out and to get people out and, and we can’t be reliant on these outside forces.

We actually came up with a plan, we were going down a path, but a couple of wonderful things happened to us. Uh, Claire McCaskill decided to run for the Senate in two thousand and six and a ton of money came into the state so we didn’t need that plan. Uh, two thousand and eight, uh, the Obama campaign dumped a ton of money into the state, was the narrowest, uh, margin in the country, tried everything, we had all this money, things were great, we didn’t have to get our plan in place. In twenty-ten when there was no money coming into the state from the federal and we had never activated our party structure we found out what it’s like if we don’t get our votes out…

…And don’t let anybody tell you that, oh, well, it was the tide, all the independents that had voted Democratic voted Republican.  ‘Cause while you can see some of those things happening on the federal issues and maybe in the federal races that was not what happened to us in our state races and our local races. ‘Cause what happened to us here is our Democrats did not turn out. And I know that. I looked at it. I looked at my numbers from oh-six and ten and I can tell you. I, I can even tell you by county by county. We can go to St. Louis County which is the largest blocks of folks in the state.  In two thousand and six the republican candidate had a hundred and sixty thousand votes. In two thousand and ten the Republican candidate against me had a hundred and fifty-nine thousand votes. And less votes. But I was missing thirty-five thousand votes. So, the margins that we lost were our Democrats not coming home. Believe me, the independents didn’t shift in my race. It wasn’t the Republicans that stayed home in St. Louis County. We know what it was.

The good news about that, another one of those opportunities, is we don’t have to change anybody’s mind. We have to just get our people to get out. And the way that we do that is we talk about issues, and we tell people what means to be a Democrat, and we make sure that people understand the consequences of not voting or not voting right.

And, so what we’re gonna do at the Democratic Party is, we are going to be the place where all of the ideas filter through so people can get information about what’s going on. And so people know what it means to be a Democrat in this state. And what that means for all of our candidates is they should be a reflection of the values that we have put together. It isn’t that the party is there to reflect the values of any of our candidates, it’s the other way around. So, we are going to be talking all the things that are important and all of those candidates. They just need to get in line with us and we will be supportive of them.

Now, I just want to say a little bit about our elected officials and candidates and this whole big concept. Because, not all of our elected or our candidates are gonna agree with me or with all of you on every single issue. And, we are a really big tent and so, we know that that’s the case. And that’s okay. We want our elected officials to be smart, independent thinkers. I mean, I’m glad that they disagree with me sometimes. Okay, I am not glad that they disagree. [laughter] I respect that they disagree with me sometimes. Um, and so I just want to say that because sometimes internally when we’re upset we go, gosh, this person isn’t a good Democrat or this person isn’t doing the thing, but, believe me, we all need to work very, very hard for all of those Democrats this year, to get them reelected, because I have seen the alternative. And all of you guys have seen the alternative. And I see it every day in Jefferson City.

And the alternative that we’re talking about is people that don’t have any, don’t give any value to education in this state. They’re the people that would turn away our federal unemployment dollars to another state and say, hey, unemployed, just get a job. At the same time they’re not offering anything that would create any kind of jobs, unless, of course, you’re talking about doing away with child labor laws. [jeers] At the same time, for those people who are fortunate enough to have a job, they’re saying, hey, it’s okay, we’re gonna let them discriminate against you in the workplace, we’re gonna take away your ability to collectively bargain and, and have your rights, we are gonna cut your minimum wage. So, good thing you have a job, because it’s not gonna be worth anything. That’s the alternative that we are not going to be able to live with. And so, I’m not gonna live with it. I know you guys aren’t and that’s why we’re gonna get out and work a lot, lot harder this year [applause] then we did last time….

CORE PROGRESSIVE MESSAGE:   WE BUILD AMERICA ON A STRONG FOUNDATION, ONE PERSON AT A TIME.

“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion,  and  in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas.”   John F. Kennedy,  September 14, 1960 speech in New York City.

Progressives believe in the dignity of every human being and will rebuild our country from the bottom up. Healthy, educated people can take care of themselves and, when given the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, will create new technologies and business opportunities for themselves and others. A society, just like a tall building, needs a firm foundation or it will crumble.

Progressives believe that strong families and communities are intrinsically valuable, not just for the emotional rewards people feel from belonging to a caring society, but for the stability a strong community provides for economic innovation and advancement toward prosperity.

Progressives believe that the benefits of economic production should be shared by those who actually do the work and produce the wealth, not just by shareholders and top executives.

Progressives believe that the moral mission of government includes the protection and empowerment of citizens.  Protection includes education of all of its citizens,  defense against inhumane working conditions, medical care when needed,  access to safe food, air and water,  and a national defense and intelligence infrastructure commensurate with changing world conditions.

Conservatives and progressives operate from very different world views and with different cognitive mazeways.  Conservatives operate from an authoritarian belief system that stresses following orders rather than following our individual dreams.  They stress  punishment rather than rehabilitation.  They demand accountability from teachers but not from hedge fund managers.  They reject progress toward a sustainable environment because they would rather shift the cost of pollution onto the citizens than make the polluters pay.  They believe that government has no business helping individuals stay healthy or even to have a roof over their heads.

Conservatives, especially the Corpublicans running the country at this point in time believe that empowering a tiny portion of the citizens at the top of the income scale by shifting wealth up to them from the working and middle class will create jobs. There is no evidence that a CEO making $11 million a year plus stock options and bonuses creates jobs. In fact, from what we have seen over the last two  years, the incentive is just the opposite. Corporations and business owners have cut jobs to improve their bottom line despite sitting on mountains of cash and enjoying high profits. In the conservative worldview, workers are just one more expense to cut any way possible.

When people are treated like trash and thrown out in the street, they lose self-respect and faith in the future.  Poverty, homelessness, medical emergencies cause stress on the entire society, but those suffering foreclosure and joblessness pay the highest price.  This is not fair.  The current recession was caused by greedy, reckless money managers who gambled with our life savings.  Now the Corpublicans say we all need to share the pain of reducing the national deficit.  They played and we paid. Like vultures, they circle in the air waiting to suck the lifeblood out of the American people and pick what tiny shreds of dignity we still have.  They won’t be happy until America is a third world nation and we will beg them for any job at any salary just to stay alive.   Corporations have no national loyalty.  Their goal is infinite profit for a few at the expense of the many.    Progressives are rallying to the defense of the defenseless.   We can do better and we deserve better.

Since it is popular these days to reference the U.S. Constitution, let’s remember the Preamble we all learned in grade school.   WE are “the people,” not the corporations.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Progressive Democrats of St. Louis

January 7, 2011

Previous posting:

Susan Montee’s plans for the party, Part 1

In case you don’t know how we got four years of Baby Blunt in 2004 instead  of Claire, it happened partly because of how the Democratic party was organized–and I use that word “organized” with one raised eyebrow. The party has usually been simply an extension of the campaign of the highest elected official, so in ’04 that meant that it was run at the behest and for the benefit of Gov. Holden. Then McCaskill beat him in the primary. Since the party organization that year was full of Holden volunteers, Claire depended on the Kerry organization for workers. Three weeks before the election, Kerry pulled out of Missouri, leaving Claire without any boots on the ground. She lost by a little less than three percent.

So when she ran for the Senate two years later, she did the smart thing: she made the party self sustaining, separate from the highest elected Dem official, and put Roger Wilson in charge (for no salary). He set about fundraising for the party and telling Missourians what Democrats stood for. Those were the days when Jack Cardetti badgered members of the Missouri press daily to print the Democratic point of view.

But after Wilson left in 2007, the party reverted to arm-of-the-highest-elected-official status and has gradually turned into a nonentity. This last cycle it did next to nothing to get an effective message out either to party members or to the populace in general. Furthermore, the party is broke. Susan Montee, the new chairman, hopes to change the dismal performance and the financial picture. At Rea Kleeman’s condo in St. Louis week before last, she discussed her plans with a group of activists who want to improve the quality of the message Missouri Democrats put out and who want to put one out–which would be a refreshing change.

Montee talks to Rea Kleeman and Marty Walsh

That group, Progressive Dems–STL (it adopted its new name at the Sat. Jan. 8th meeting) was pleased to hear what Montee plans. For starters, she wants the party to be independent of the top elected official again, in this case Nixon. And she points that, oddly enough, the lack of campaign finance limits makes doing so more practical. When the governor was limited to taking $1250 from a given individual, people who wanted to give him more routed the money through the party coffers. Since that is no longer necessary, no state official needs to tie the party to his apron strings.

Montee wants Democrats to see her getting our message out effectively, and she figures that when they realize that is happening, they’ll be willing to contribute to the party. She’ll have to work from the ground up, though. Here’s how pitiful the party organization is: there isn’t even a list of contact info for the State Party Committee members. Her first task is to put that together. Then she plans to make local party leaders aware that she’s on the job by reaching out to the county chairs immediately about the ballot initiatives that are already getting revved up.

Another way to get the attention of Democrats is to cover what’s going on this legislative session. The state faces a $700 million budget shortfall, so there will be plenty to report, as the legislature wrestles with where to make the cuts. Montee told the Progressive Dems that the party has a huge e-mail database, and that she plans to make the most of it to spread the word about doings in the lege in the upcoming months. Furthermore, she will send info to party officials in St. Louis and Jackson counties and ask them to forward it to the people on their e-mail lists.

Still another step in reviving the party is to urge county chairs to set up web pages and keep them current. Since she will be sending them articles about what’s going on in Jeff City, at least some of the content for those web pages will be ready made for them.

Montee believes … No, Montee knows that this state has plenty of Democrats. They’re out there, but they were fed up last election by the Walter Mittys in our ranks who were afraid to stand tall and speak out proudly about Democratic achievements and values. She’s not afraid to stand up to the Republican message machine, and she expects that the national party is waking up as well to that necessity. Indeed, the national party has set up a rapid response team to respond to an expected surge of lies and misunderstandings about the new health care law.

Could it be that we have a new party chairman who has some fire in her belly? Rea Kleeman hopes it is so and said that, for the kind of dedication Montee is showing, Montee should be paid. Right now, our new chairman is working part time for a law firm in St. Jo to pay the bills so that she can spend the rest of her work week (and, no doubt, burn lots of midnight oil) trying to give this party new life. Kleeman asked if Democratic Party chairmen in other states work for free.

Montee said that right now, given the recent, uh, less than stellar performance of the state party, she doesn’t feel as if she could ask its members to come up with a salary for her. She’s more intent on getting it reinvigorated. That said, though, she admitted that in other states it is a paid position. In fact, in some states, candidates for the office have spent up to $100,000 to campaign for the job. You can bet that when Ann Wagner chaired the Republican state party, she got paid.

I have no idea how much Susan Montee ought to be compensated for her organizational and political expertise. What I do know is that she’ll need wisdom and energy for the task she’s taking on. So I thank her for taking on the challenge–and hope that eventually she gets monetary thanks commensurate with her efforts.

And by the way, any progressives interested in joining Progressive Dems–STL may do so by contacting Rea Kleeman: (314) 727-7374, beckkleeman@charter.net

Last November, the state of Missouri lost an auditor who won the 2009 “Excellence in Accountability Award” from the state auditors association and gained a financial dimwit in Tom Schweich. So lord knows that I am not going to claim Montee’s loss is a blessing in disguise, but I will say that she plans to make lemonade out of it.

I like lemonade. Her brand of it anyway.

Montee and her aide, Allison Bruns, drove to St. Louis from Jeff City last Thursday to confer with some members of a newly formed group, the St. Louis Progressive Democrats. Rea Kleeman, who founded the group, invited her when Kleeman realized that Montee’s aims as the new Democratic Party Chairman matched the issues the STL Progressive Dems have begun working on. As a member of the group, I attended with an eye toward informing you about changes Montee hopes to make in the party structure and messaging.

Montee considers herself exhibit A that both those aspects of the Missouri Democratic Party need reform. She was well aware of how current weaknesses in the party hurt her chances of reelection. So now that she is in charge of the party, she has plans. First, she wants to get the message out that we are more than merely not-that-corrupt-Roy-Blunt. Missourians knew Blunt was corrupt; yet they voted for him and other Republicans because the Democratic Party didn’t give them a reason to vote for Democrats. We got pummeled at the polls in November for failing to impress on voters what we had done for them. The messaging failure started at the national level and permeated our own state.

Montee and the St. Louis Progressive Democrats in the room last Thursday shared that conviction.

We agreed that there’s no excuse for the fact that many voters think their taxes have gone up under Obama. Democrats haven’t impressed upon them that they not only got a tax cut, but that it was, depending on how you figure it, either the biggest tax cut or the second biggest in U.S. history. Oh, and Republicans voted against it. But if the electorate doesn’t know about its huge tax cut, it’s because Democrats apparently thought they could murmur the news, and it would be widely disseminated. ESP might have worked as effectively.

We also found it maddening that the electorate swallowed the “government takeover of health care” nonsense and never got the memo telling them that health care reform is, among other things, going to create thousands of jobs in Missouri, not to mention making health care available to many thousands of hard working people in this state who don’t have it now.

Furthermore, lots of voters don’t know that Democrats passed a bill to regulate banks, much less that Republicans want to defund the regulatory mechanisms it sets up. Bankers are currently less popular in this country than Satan, and yet Democrats aren’t screaming bloody murder about Republican efforts to let the bankers play as freely with our cash as if it were Monopoly money.

The Democratic Party has passed some excellent legislation. But mum’s the word. Look, in politics, modesty is suicide.

Nor have Democrats pounded Republicans as the culprits in this recession. This economy should have been labeled “Bush’s Blunder” and that phrase should have been seared into American brains by daily repetition. Voters should have been told how Democrats changed the job picture.

They should have seen dozens of thirty second ads showing the chart above with a voiceover intoning something like: “President Bush led us into this recessionary swamp, but Barack Obama has been reversing the damage. We were losing almost 800,000 jobs a month under Bush. Now we’re gaining almost 300,000 a month. That’s what President Obama’s stimulus accomplished. It staved off another Great Depression.” I didn’t see anything laying into the Republicans or educating the electorate on those basic facts. Did you?

The message from the national party was Pit.I.Ful. There was so much to beat the drums about but not enough noise to flush a jackrabbit. The same too often held true at the state level. From many Democratic candidates, the message was, “Barack who? Never heard of him. Got nothing to do with him.” Many such candidates tried to distance themselves from the president and went down with a thud. Ben Franklin had advice about that kind of behavior: “We must all, indeed, hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

So we took a thumping. But Susan Montee maintains that it wasn’t because the Republicans convinced a huge chunk of voters that government can never do anything right and that social programs should be eviscerated. It’s true that when we failed to get our message out, we lost many undecided voters, but even more important we demoralized the base. Montee said:

“I think, on the whole, boy we really had a lot of accomplishments. My criticism is how badly they handled talking about them. There was a huge amount of Democrats that didn’t turn out to vote, and it’s not because they were mad at the policies that came out of the White House over the last couple of years. They were happy about those. They were mad because it was handled so badly. They felt beat up. Everybody kept saying, ‘Oh, you’re going to lose everything. You’re going to lose everything.’ So why would they turn out to vote?”

Brian Wahby, the Chairman of the St. Louis City Democratic Central Committee, who attended the meeting at Montee’s invitation, added that Missouri had a quarter a million fewer voters this year than in 2008 and most of those who stayed away were Democrats. The raw numbers of Democratic voters in St. Louis City were about the same this year and in 2006, but the city numbers should have been much higher than the 2006 figures because of all the new Democrats that were registered in the city in 2008.

Montee echoed that point:

“So when people go ‘Oh, the voters have spoken and now we’re all (inaudible) here,’ I say ‘No we’re not!’ It’s just that people stayed home. You can take the 2006 numbers and the 2010 numbers from my race as a good indicator. You can overlay all these counties where the Republican candidate in’06 and in ’10 got exactly the same numbers. So you go, okay, well, this woman in ’06 got 17,000 votes and Schweich got 17,000 votes. The difference was that in ’06, I got 20 and this time I only got 15. And that’s all over the place. I could pull 10, 20 counties and show those exact same percentages. So it wasn’t that people who in ’06 voted Democratic shifted over. They didn’t show up at all. And that’s why we know that we can do something about it. Because if it was that all these people now are voting Republican, how do we get ’em back, that’s a whole different question than I think the question that we’re dealing with, which is how do we get our people to care enough to turn out.

Montee knows that to do that, we have to communicate effectively. First, we have to decide what we need to let the voters know. Basically, this year that would have been the items in my rant above. She didn’t speak to every one of those last Thursday, so I can’t swear she’d agree 100 percent. But I do know she wishes that both the national party and our state candidates had evoked the same strong message about what we accomplished.

Once we know what we want to say, then we have to figure out how to improve party structure to get tha
t message out to our own people, to start with. They have to believe that we’re going to speak up for their ideals, and that there’s an actual working entity there instead of a black hole where the party ought to be.

Changing party structure to achieve that is a large topic. I’ll tackle that in the next posting.

Pictured above: first, Susan Montee; second, from left to right are Cindy Brown, Rea Kleeman and Marty Walsh; third, Brian Wahby

By now everyone knows that Missouri has lost sufficient population that the state will lose an electoral vote and the concomitant seat in the House of Representatives. The loss means, of course, that Missouri will wield just that much less political clout.  As State Democratic Chair, Susan Montee, puts it in a Politico article:

That missing Missouri vote will make a big difference sometime over the next 10 years – whether it is a Democratic vote or a Republican one.

Several political scientists quoted in the same article note that the loss of an electoral seat packs a psychological wallop since it suggests that the state is in decline.

Which leads us to the fact that in the coming months we can expect to see the change spun in a number of agenda-driven ways. For instance, columnist Michael Barone tried to use the population shifts revealed by the 2010 census to fuel the rightwing tax-cutting bandwagon, claiming that low taxes lead to population growth. Missouri doesn’t seem to have gotten that message since it lost population despite its relatively low tax rates – although I expect to hear the state’s GOP make the same argument in order to cut corporate and upper bracket taxes even further, or to buoy up efforts to institute regressive sales taxes, the so-called “fair” tax, in place of income taxes.

What may be the most extreme as well as the funniest effort to spin the situation to the benefit of a particular political hobby horse was presented in the letters section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (“Behind the numbers,” Dec. 27). The letter writer does his best to lay the blame on – ready for this – the prevalence of abortion in blue states:

A review of the Centers for Disease Control Abortion Surveillance Report for 2006 reveals that, when measured per 1,000 live births, there are often 1.5 to 2 times as many abortions in the most reliably “blue” states versus the most reliably “red” states. The most marked example: Utah had 67 abortions per 1,000 live births and New York had 488. As a result, House seats, electoral votes and federal funding are shifting.

While there might be a certain intuitive appeal to this argument for those with anti-choice proclivities, it falls apart when one delves a little deeper. Apart from the two extremes, Utah and New York, that the writer cites, his red state/low abortion rate,  blue state/high abortion rate doesn’t seem to correlate convincingly to the winners and losers in the 2010 census. For example, during the year cited above, 2006,  the percentage of abortions to total births was between 15-25% for most of the states that experienced significant change in population, whether they lost or won electoral seats; Missouri, with 15.2% of pregnancies in 2006 terminated by abortion, falls into this group. Louisiana, a red state with a relatively low percentage of abortions for 2006 (8.9%), still lost an electoral seat, while states like Washington and Florida, with a higher percentage of abortions (22.2% and 28% respectively) gained seats.  

All this ponderous analysis is silly simply because the reason Missouri lost population is staring us in the face; no one needs to cook up some tortured correlation to random social phenomena to explain it. Think jobs; think about the state’s lackluster job creation record even before the recession. Then consider that CNBCs Top States for Business Survey ranks Missouri 49th for quality of life – widely acknowledged to be a major consideration when it comes to business or personal relocation. Among some of the factors contributing to the low quality of life in the state:  

–Missouri ranks 39th on health related issues such as public health policies, community environmental conditions, and health behaviors. (This while our legislators prance around, threatening to “nullify” health care reform.)

–Missouri receives consistently low scores for its public educational system, falling among the lowest scoring 10 states in the 2009 Quality Counts Report with a rank of 40 and a grade of C-. Evaluations of higher education in Missouri find it to be both mediocre and, relative to other states, expensive.

Add to such facts the state’s  significant unmet infrastructure needs along with a legislature that wants to cut public spending even further, decimate labor protections with a “right-to-work” law, while handing tax cuts to the wealthy (most recently via the aforementioned “fair” tax proposal), and it should be very clear why Missouri may indeed be in a period of decline. Third world political, economic and social structures  yield third world living conditions that will attract few outside of those interested in setting up sweat shops.

An article By Jo Mannies of the St. Louis Beacon on the challenges faced by Susan Montee, the New Chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, raises some interesting issues.  Mannies notes that Montee and a new activist group, the Progressive Democrats of St. Louis, are both concerned about the organizational and communications failings of the state Democratic party. Beyond that point, though, Mannies’ report implies that when the smoke of the last electoral defeat clears and Montee gets down to work she may not see eye to eye with progressives about the correct direction for the state party.

I find it telling that Montee describes the “messaging” failures of the Missouri Democrats in the last election as follows:

We didn’t talk about what makes state Democrats different from national Democrats or California Democrats.

Would the crucial difference that Montee is hinting at have anything to do with the fact that the most prominent elected Democrats in the state, Senator Claire McCaskill and Governor Jay Nixon, are essentially old-time moderate Republicans in disguise? Although the article makes it clear that McCaskill and Nixon aren’t claiming responsibility for Montee’s selection, it seems equally clear that Montee is the choice of the state Democratic establishment which, from my admittedly limited perspective, seems to bless only good, well-mannered little boys and girls like McCaskill and Nixon.

Montee’s view that her job is to distance the state party from what the GOP represents as the socialist-communist-facist policies of the national Democratic Party (or Nancy Pelosi’s Gay California Hippie Party) indicates that she may have taken too deeply to heart the Republican message, as articulated by the Missouri Republican Party Executive director, Lloyd Smith:

… that Missouri is becoming an increasingly conservative state, ….  Susan Montee was soundly defeated because she embraced the failed policies of Barack Obama and national Democrats.

If this is indeed the case, I would invite Montee to ponder the defeat of her colleague, Robin Carnahan, who was at the head of the losing Democratic ticket in November. As a progressive, the first big disappointment that I experienced in regard to Carnahan was her rush to embrace the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthy. Before that time, I had been annoyed by her incipient posturing as a “deficit peacock,” but her lame effort to deprive the GOP of a campaign weapon at the cost of the core Democratic value of fairness was something that no messaging strategy or slogan could have overcome, not even the “caring, fair and smart” refrain that the spokesperson for the Progressive Democrats of St. Louis, Rea Kleeman, suggested to Mannies as a first step in reviving the party message. I don’t think that I am alone in this feeling; I believe that was the point where many in the Missouri Democratic base cashed in their chips.

I ultimately stuck with Carnahan because I decided a vote for her was a vote for a national Democratic majority, and even – in the long run – a vote for Nancy Pelosi (of the California branch of the party). Lots of Democrats that I know weren’t so forgiving. Carnahan lost decisively and, as I remember, didn’t even do that well in the Democratic strongholds of St. Louis and Kansas City. I wonder if her willingness to betray a core Democratic principle might not have been the final straw in the broom that swept away her margin in those regions?

It bears thinking about, and I hope Montee will be able to take it into consideration as she tries to shape the Missouri Democratic message. Democrats are eager for a strong narrative, one that grabs at our core values with two fists, something that nice girls and boys who are worried about offending Grandma and Grandpa Grundy can’t offer.