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Blunt strikes at Kander over St. Louis election debacle

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – An ad released Friday from the Friends of Roy Blunt campaign committee is hitting Secretary of State and U.S. Senate challenger Jason Kander with the election debacle in St. Louis County.

The campaign video shows press clippings of Kander, who is running against Blunt, saying that he is the “chief election official” in his state and that his office is designed to help local election authorities, while contrasting it with other clips showing the myriad of problems that occurred in St. Louis County Tuesday in an attempt to link the two.

On Wednesday, Kander noted that the St. Louis County Election Board had already claimed responsibility for the litany of errors that occurred during their elections while repelling attacks from Jay Ashcroft and Sen. Will Kraus, the two Republican contenders for the Secretary of State’s office.

“The state does not run local elections. There is an element of local control here,” Kander said. “The secretary of state’s office does not the authority to force the St. Louis County Election Board to do anything… Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know the law and should learn it before launching attacks on my office.”

Andy Blunt, Sen. Blunt’s son and campaign manager, accused Kander of passing the buck and used that opportunity to employ the “#doyourjob” hashtag that many Democrats, including Kander, have levied at Republican U.S. Senators, like Blunt, that have refused to hold confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

The Kander campaign was quick to respond.

“As a former Secretary of State in the 1980s, Sen. Blunt knows as well as anyone that the Secretary of State’s office does not run local elections,” Chris Hayden, a mrepresentative of the campaign said. “With this web video, Sen. Blunt is deliberately lying to Missourians for political gain.”

Updated: 5:23 p.m. April 11, 2016 – With comments from the Kander campaign.