MOScout Daily Update: Some Candidates Silent on Uvalde - More Trouble for Derges - Scrutiny on Fire Districts - 100 PAC $$$ and more...
GOP US Senate Candidates’ Tweets About Uvalde
· Eric Greitens - Absolutely heartbreaking news out of Uvalde, Texas. An unthinkable act of evil carried out against innocent children & teachers. May God provide their families with peace and strength in the days, weeks, and months ahead. Missouri & the nation are grieving with Texas tonight.
· Vicky Hartzler - Today’s horrific and senseless tragedy in Texas is simply pure evil. These victims were elementary students, a teacher, and a grandmother. Lowell and I — alongside the entire state of Missouri — are praying for all those lost and their loved ones.
· Billy Long – nothing.
· Mark McCloskey – nothing.
· Dave Schatz – nothing.
· Eric Schmitt – nothing.
House Candidate: 2020 MO Vote Illegal
Ali Graeff, running in a four-way Republican primary, in House 106 (St. Charles, Tom Hannegan district) appears to be a single-issue candidate: voting fraud in Missouri.
Her website doesn’t list any other issues, but it goes into great detail alleging that the 2020 vote in Missouri was “illegal.”
Per documents received via open-source information from the Missouri Secretary of State sharefile website and Sunshine requests, there is solid evidence all EAC Laboratories used to test and certify MO’s voting machines for the 2020 election were and are still not lawfully accredited. They are not in compliance with the federal 2002 HAVA ACT and EAC policy guidelines. Therefore, none of the machines used in Missouri in the 2020 election were certified to be in use. Rendering any vote tabulated on any of these machines not legal.
Mulligan to MOState
Zora Mulligan announced yesterday that she will be leaving the Missouri Department of Higher Education & Workforce Development on July 1. She will become Executive Vice President at Missouri State University in Springfield.
Commissioner Mulligan has served as commissioner since August 2016. She is the longest serving commissioner in the last 20 years. Through her leadership and at Governor Mike Parson’s direction, the department underwent a major transition to create the new Department of Higher Education & Workforce Development in 2019, absorbing two offices previously housed within the Department of Economic Development.
The Coordinating Board for Higher Education named current Deputy Commissioner Leroy Wade as interim commissioner.
· The Coordinating Board will start a formal search process. One name floated… former Rep. Kathy Swan who herself was once on the Coordinating Board. One lobbyist says, “She’s itching to get back [into the mix].”
More on Senate’s Interim Committee
Sen. Brian Williams will lead the Senate’s Interim Committee on Firefighting Districts. It’s going to look at “opportunities to increase efficiencies… in areas where a fire protection district provides service in a municipality that has a fire department including… municipalities that continue to pay fire protection districts following the annexation of a municipality.”
One situation which may have raised eyebrows in this regard is in Hazelwood.
Last month, Fox2 reported that “citizens in Hazelwood sued the Robertson Fire Protection District in north St. Louis County, accusing board members of wasting their tax dollars. Among other things, the lawsuit criticized the board’s spending on vehicles. They said salaries are too high, and they don’t like the board getting free health insurance at taxpayers’ expense… Hazelwood has three fire districts providing fire protection. One is the Florissant Fire Protection District. The other is Hazelwood’s own fire department. Then, there’s Robertson that Hazelwood pays $4.5 million a year to protect a part of the town. Hazelwood’s mayor told FOX 2’s Elliott Davis his city could cover Robertson’s area in Hazelwood for $1.5 million less than it’s paying the fire district. Hazelwood inherited the Robertson Fire Protection District when it annexed the area, and the fire district came along with the deal…”
100 PAC Starts Giving $$$
100 PAC, the Jim Lembke-led political action committee aimed at expanding the Senate’s Conservative Caucus gave $10,000 to BB Freedom PAC, the PAC supporting Ben Brown.
Brown is running in a five-way primary in Senate 26 (Franklin County, Schatz termed). His main rival is business Bob Jones.
· Yesterday a PAC supporting Mary Elizabeth Coleman’s bid in Senate 22 reported a contribution from the 100 PAC as well.
No Fish From Greitens’ Fishing Subpoena
Missouri Independent reports that “phone records show Sheena Greitens didn’t talk to Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell ‘or any person working for these men’ in the weeks before she made explosive allegations of child and spousal abuse against Eric Greitens, her attorney said Tuesday. Sheena Greitens’ call logs and text messages for the period Feb. 1 through March 22 were subpoenaed by her ex-husband in an effort to show she lied about the abuse to undermine his campaign for U.S. Senate.
“Helen Wade, Sheena Greitens’ attorney, wrote in a statement to The Independent that the subpoenaed records were turned over last week. The information contained, Wade wrote, contradict Eric Greitens’ assertions that his ex-wife conspired with his political enemies to lie in an affidavit made public on March 21.”
Meanwhile, Greitens continues to get the national spotlight as folks consider possible Trump endorsements. From Politico Nightly… “A number of Republicans have been concerned that Trump could endorse former Gov. Eric Greitens, either because he’d prove unelectable or because they think he'd be a destructive force in the Senate. So look out for that one. Greitens, you may recall, resigned from office as fellow Republicans prepared to impeach him over allegations of sexual assault and blackmail.”
More Trouble for Derges
Springfield News-Leader reports on a medical malpractice suit filed against Rep. Tricia Derges. See it here.
· Rep. Tricia Derges, a Nixa Republican, will go to court next month on charges from federal prosecutors that she sold fake stem cell treatments, fraudulently used $300,000 in Greene County pandemic aid and wrote illegal prescriptions.
· A new lawsuit, filed in state court earlier this month, alleges that she advertised and used amniotic fluid injections to treat a patient's back pain in 2020 at her Ozark Valley Medical Clinic; however, the patient says they provided no relief. He says she charged him just over $6,000 total for two sessions of the injections…
· According to the lawsuit, the patient had scheduled surgery to relieve back pain before seeing an advertisement for Derges' services on a billboard. It alleges that Derges provided literature to the patient that said she was a full physician, rather than an assistant physician, and that she could treat his pain with "amniotic fluid with mesenchymal stem cells."
· Derges' attorney Al Watkins called the allegations "absolutely erroneous."
Lobbyists Registrations
Ryan Rowden deleted Steven R Carroll & Associates, Ranif Corp., DBA Invisible Defender, and Quantify Health LLC.
$5K+ Contributions
BB Freedom Fund (pro-Ben Brown) - $10,000 from 100 PAC.
Birthdays
Happy birthday to Tim Jones, Amy Blouin, Jason Hall, and Gus Wagner.