Jefferson City - Missourians are scratching their heads wondering who in the world is the real Jay Nixon. After the Missouri Republican Party pointed out the hypocrisy of Nixon’s defense of Medicaid cuts under Bob Holden and his criticism of Republican reforms, a Nixon spokesman responded:

“As Attorney General, Jay has a responsibility to defend the state’s laws, whether he agrees or disagrees.”

Interesting. Nixon recused himself when his personal pro-abortion beliefs contradicted a state law that he was charged with defending. Nixon had a Special Attorney General appointed saying: “I’m pro-choice, I have a conflict of interest.” (P-D, July 30, 1999). And Nixon did not hesitate to sue his client, the state, to try and misappropriate a bridge that the state had no legal claim to. Nixon later lost that case at every level of court in the state.

So the Missouri Republican Party is calling on Nixon’s campaign to correct the record and make clear to Missourians that Nixon plays politics with every decision he makes and his defense of Bob Holden’s Medicaid cuts was in fact diametrically opposed to his new-found outrage about Republican reforms. The Missouri Republican Party would also like Nixon’s campaign to answer the following simple questions about his healthcare proposal:

1. Should millionaires’ children really benefit from government subsidized healthcare?
2. What taxes will you raise to pay for the $1 billion dollar cost of taking Missouri back to the failed Medicaid program that did not deliver quality care to the people who needed it? Additionally, how will you pay for the ballooning ongoing costs of your irresponsible proposal?
3. Why have you been campaigning for governor for three years and not developed any new ideas or initiatives to improve healthcare in Missouri?

JEFFERSON CITY - Democrat Sam Page has been exposed as a hypocrite after talking the talk but failing to walk the walk when it comes to Missouri’s Sunshine law by hiding behind legal jargon and not releasing his emails in spite of a lawful request by the Missouri Republican Party.

“As we expected, Sam Page has failed to walk the walk regarding Missouri’s Sunshine Law despite his transparent and pathetic political attacks seeking emails from the Governor’s Office which are a desperate attempt to buttress his non-existent campaign for lieutenant governor,” said Tina Hervey, communications director of the Missouri Republican Party. “Like Democrats before him, Page will shout from the highest mountaintop that he supports the principles of the Sunshine Law then hide behind legal interpretations of that very law to skirt complying with it.”

Page now joins the likes of Democrat Paul LeVota and other House Democrats who previously cowered behind legal interpretations of the Sunshine Law after first trying to use it as a political tool against Republicans. Late last year, more than a dozen House Democrats including the cowardly LeVota used legal doublespeak in refusing to respond to a Missouri Republican Party Sunshine Law request similar to the one made of Page.

“Sam Page and his fellow Democrat House members have this Sunshine Law bait and switch down pat and the only losers are the people of Missouri who demand that the rule of law apply to both sides of the aisle,” Hervey said.

Jefferson City - In a pathetic attempt to garner attention Nixon is traveling to 3 cities today, hoping that Missourians will ignore the fact that the last Democrat governor slashed health care benefits for as many as 400,000 low-income Missourians – and Nixon gladly defended those cuts.

“In 2003, Jay Nixon, without a word of dissent, went to court to defend Holden-enacted Medicaid cuts,” said Tina Hervey, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “Now, Nixon has built his gubernatorial bid solely upon criticism of Republican enacted overhauls of out-of-control welfare programs, refusing to acknowledge that 5 years ago, without hesitation, he defended significant state health care cuts. Nixon continues to show Missourians that he has nothing more to offer but empty rhetoric, hypocrisy and a record of failure.”

Throughout the Holden Administration, Jay Nixon defended the governor’s Medicaid cuts without complaint, comment or hesitation. It was not until it became politically expedient that he decided to object. Now we find him clinging to a failed health care plan that alone would require a nearly $1 billion state tax hike. It is hard to accept this “tour” as anything more than a disingenuous political stunt.

Jefferson City - After Cole County’s Circuit Judge Callahan dismissed the sham of a lawsuit filed by Nixon’s political attack machine, Nixon decided that he has not wasted enough of Missourians’ taxpayer dollars. On Friday, he asked the court to allow him to continue this charade of an independent investigation by appointing a Special Assistant Attorney General.

“Jay Nixon’s actions confirm what we have been saying – this is a politically motivated witch-hunt orchestrated by Nixon,” said Tina Hervey, communications Director of the Missouri Republican Party. “Nixon’s pathetic attempt to use this as a smoke screen to hide from Missourians his lack of a vision to move Missouri forward is disgraceful and unbecoming of someone seeking to be the next governor. It was our hope that when Judge Callahan ruled, Nixon would show some character by allowing this nonsense to end. Unfortunately for the people of Missouri, Nixon is much more interested in playing politics with his office than doing the job people elected him to do.”

Recent press reports present conflicting stories on how Nixon’s office handles e-mails but make it clear that Nixon’s employees continue an office policy that includes the routine destruction of e-mail records. It was reported as recently as May 6, 2008, that Nixon "…has declined to sign on to Blunt’s policy of saving all e-mails forever." And on July 11, 2008, an AP story says, "The attorney general’s office says its e-mails are retained on a separate backup system." However, Nixon’s office continues to hide any information about this system from the public and to keep any details about the system a secret.

Everyone knew that Jay Nixon’s political witch-hunt was being driven from the Attorney General’s office in spite of public claims to the contrary.” This proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jay Nixon has been orchestrating every move, wasting taxpayer dollars in the process, and that he will stop at nothing to distract from the massive amount of political baggage that he is carrying.

Jefferson City - Barack Obama is supposedly something different – an agent of change.  But over the last few months, Americans have been introduced to a few of Obama’s closet friends and trusted advisors, men like Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers and Jim Johnson.  These men are best known respectively for being convicted of fraud and money laundering, being an unrepentant domestic terrorist and receiving highly questionable loans while millions of Americans struggle to pay their mortgages. 

“It is associations like these that have Missourians concerned – these friendships don’t represent the kind of change that the American people are looking for,” said Tina Hervey, communications director of the Missouri Republican Party.  “Equally concerning is Senator Obama’s close relationship with Senator McCaskill who has repeatedly demonstrated a serious lack of judgment with her Bermuda tax shelter, conflicts of interest, shady financial dealings, ethics troubles and even a meth scandal in her former office."

Below are a few of the reasons why Missourians do not trust Senator McCaskill’s judgment:

1. McCaskill and her millionaire developer husband, Joseph Shepard, have a family fortune of between $13 million and $30 million amassed though taxpayer-financed tax credits, hundreds of government subsidized real estate partnerships and an offshore tax shelter in Bermuda – she is out of touch with mainstream Missourians. 
2. Although there is documentation that clearly shows that her family has benefited from more than $10 million in MHDC financing in recent years, McCaskill lied to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2006 when she said her household coffers had not received any benefits from the Missouri Housing Development Commission (MHDC). 
3. McCaskill said she would “fight to improve ethical standards in Washington… follow all ethics rules and disclosure rules of the Senate to the letter, as she’s done throughout her campaign.”  Yet seven months into her term the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee launched a probe into Claire McCaskill’s failure to release complete details about the source of her family’s publicly financed fortune. 
4. In 1998 in a political ad, McCaskill pledged that she would hold bad nursing homes accountable, “. . . as state auditor, I’ll stop the payments of all state funds to any nursing home that allows elderly abuse. They’ll not only face prosecution, they’ll lose millions of dollars in state funding. Because our parents deserve better."  But that all changed when she married Joseph Shepard - Shepard’s nursing homes have been cited for serious violations against senior citizens, the most serious being 26 plaintiffs filing a wrongful death suit against a Shepard senior care facility in St. Louis. During her tenure as State Auditor, McCaskill conducted three audits of the nursing home industry, none of were of her husband’s facilities.
5. Senator McCaskill betrayed Missourians trust when she hung a “for sale” sign on her United States Senate Office.  McCaskill petitioned the FEC to allow her to accept unlimited campaign contributions to retire a campaign debt.  This behavior was so egregious that even the liberal Post-Dispatch described the behavior as “tacky”.