JEFFERSON CITY – Candidate Jay Nixon supports allowing lobbyists to use legislative caucuses to hide gifts given to individual lawmakers by publicly calling on Gov. Matt Blunt to veto campaign reform and ethics legislation that includes new reporting requirements preventing individual expenditures from being laundered through legislative caucuses.

The legislation would require lobbyists to report specific expenditures to majority and minority caucuses and expenditures not made to the entire House, Senate or minority and majority caucuses to be attributed to individual lawmakers. The governor has said he would sign the bill because it opens up the elections process to the public and media.

Kansas City Star Columnist Steve Kraske on Sunday, May 21, said Nixon was wrong and that the Republican-sponsored legislation would provide more transparency to the elections system. Bob Connor, head of the Missouri Ethics Commission, told Kraske that the law is “a step in the right direction.” And Kraske wrote that Democrat State Sen. Victor Callahan believes his fellow Democrats “blew it” by opposing the legislation and that he was “frustrated” by his party’s actions.

“Jay Nixon’s ludicrous opposition to this bill defies the will of the vast majority of Missourians who support a more open campaign finance process that includes preventing individual lawmakers from hiding lobbyist spending. Jay Nixon is more focused on trying to launch political attacks rather than enhancing the integrity of our governmental system,” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “It is quite unnerving that the attorney general of our state would oppose ethics reforms that significantly limit the influence of special interests and instead embrace the old system that perpetuated the influence of special interests while Democrats were in control.”