JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Late Wednesday afternoon, Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens and his campaign released one of the first substantial attacks of the campaign by criticizing the ethics reform measures expected to be at the forefront of this legislation.
Although Greitens only decried the tactics by Gov. Jay Nixon and Attorney General Chris Koster, the de facto Democratic nominee, included in an image shared to Facebook, Greitens grouped Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, one of the other Republican candidates for governor, in with the two. The ad could hint at a Greitens’ possible strategy in coming months as he seeks to bolster his outsider credentials.
The picture states that “Real ethics reform starts with removing career politicians,” with pictures of Kinder, Nixon and Koster attached to it.
Greitens said in a statement that attempts at ethics reform in the Capitol are only emerging from Nixon and other politicians because of embarrassments in the past.
“Now that it’s politically convenient for Governor Nixon in his last year, he’s pushing for watered-down ethics reform,” Greitens said. “What a joke. To Nixon and the politicians in Jefferson City, ethics is what you do when you’re wrapped up in embarrassment and failure, and you’ve been caught.
“To me, ethics is set of moral principles that guide your daily life. When I’m governor, we’ll clean this mess up. Ethics will mean more power for the people and less for the lobbyists. It’ll mean we restore the people’s trust in government. And it will mean the government works for the people again. These common sense moral principles don’t exist in government today. The first thing we have to do for ethics reform to work is to rid Jefferson City of career politicians like Jay Nixon and Chris Koster. Removing those who have caused the ethics problem will go a long way towards fixing the ethics problem.”
So far, members of the House and Senate have both pushed for new ethics reform, and Nixon has conditionally favored more lobbying regulations.
“A lot of people on both sides of the aisle are saying that is the issue that is front and center as we begin this session,” Nixon said at a press conference Tuesday. “Unfortunately, I’ve seen that kind of talk before… It has to be significant real and appropriate. I know the Speaker [Todd Richardson], one of his strategies this year is to have a series of bills, which I’m fine with.”
Republican lawmakers have also offered the bills most likely to pass in the coming months. Most notably, Rep. Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, has offered legislation which would ban lobbyist gifts to elected officials, put a one-year minimum time constraint on legislators seeking to become lobbyists, and force legislators turned lobbyists to dissolve their campaign finance committees.
Other legislators from both sides of the aisle have also offered other pieces of ethics reform legislation after the 2015 session which saw multiple legislators leave the General Assembly to become lobbyists as well as private committee hearings in restaurants.
