JEFFERSON CITY - In an obvious case of political back-scratching, lawyers with firms that collectively made more than $100 million when Jay Nixon hired them to work on Missouri’s portion of the national tobacco settlement recently contributed almost $60,000 to Nixon’s campaign for governor.

Nixon’s campaign finance report for the quarter ending June 30 shows that law firms and lawyers that worked on the 1998 case, led by longtime Nixon supporter and then-lead lawyer Tom Strong of Springfield, contributed approximately $60,000 to Nixon’s campaign.  Out of that amount, nearly $45,000 came from Strong and his firm. The firm of Bartimus Frickleton Robertson and Gorny contributed $10,000 while lawyers at Humphrey Farrington McClain added $4,956. In all, Nixon’s trial attorney friends raked in more than $111 million after he hired them in 1998 for a few months work on the then nearly-completed national tobacco settlement.

The recent contributions from the tobacco lawyers also expose Nixon’s hypocrisy because as an attorney general candidate in 1992, Nixon told The Kansas City Star that he would curtail the use of private lawyers to save the state money and he further pledged not to allow private contributions from those lawyers.  At the time, Nixon also vowed to set up a screening team to evaluate outside counsel the attorney general’s office might consider engaging. The story can be found at: http://www.mogop.org/media/KCStar_Story.pdf

More recently, Nixon’s office’s has refused three Sunshine Law requests from the Missouri Republican Party seeking detailed billing information relating to the work done by the tobacco attorneys and their firms: http://www.mogop.org/media/Request_1.pdf. This stonewalling comes even as Nixon continues to boast that he’s a champion of open government and accountability.

<>p“This is clearly a case of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ between the private lawyers who made more than $111 million and their pal Jay Nixon who gave them the job in the first place. This is disturbingly hypocritical because Nixon pledged in 1992 to disallow political contributions from private attorneys he hired,” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “Instead of saving the state money, Nixon has spent his career padding the pockets of his trial attorney pals in return for campaign contributions and now he won’t even release billing information to Missouri taxpayers. This unsavory relationship is a disgrace.”