Thomas state auditor campaign was all about burying fee office scandal

The story has been overlooked because Fired Up Missouri is a blog started by former Carnahan aide Roy Temple, but Sixth District Congressman Sam Graves has been waist-deep in the state license fee office scandal ever since details first began emerging.

In a July 10, 2006, post, Temple thoroughly delineated the connections between Graves and the scandal and there were many:

At the time of the original fee office appointment announcements, Governor Blunt attempted to name two members of Rep. Sam Graves' staff as fee agents. Those two staffers, Dean Brookshier and Naomi Boss, ultimately did not get the offices after the Missouri Democratic Party pointed out that it would have violated the law to name federal employees to the post. Of course others with close ties to Graves did get those offices.

But those two employees were by no means the only two people with extremely close ties to Graves to receive fee offices or other benefits from the Blunt fee office scheme.

The post continued:

However, much of the story has not been told.

Unmentioned was the role of Marc Radasky, who formerly served as the Labor L.A. for Graves in Washington. Radasky, who is now a law student at UMKC, was awarded the Raytown office, which prior to the Blunt administration, was a branch office run by the state. Though Radasky may seem a bit young and inexperienced to be running a major fee office, apparently, to his credit, he is a pretty snappy dresser.

There has been virtually no discussion by the traditional media of the role played by Stephanie Goodnight. Goodnight is the cousin of Tracy Graves. The Goodnights and Todd and Tracy Graves own adjoining farms in rural Edgerton, Mo.

Goodnight runs KC Management Company. In fact, here's the website registration for kcmanage.com, in the name of the Goodnights. KC Management is the equivalent of the operation that Garrett Lott runs on the Eastern side of the state. KC Management was set up by the law firm of Lathrop & Gage at or near the same time as most of the other shell companies used to perpetuate the Blunt fee office scheme.

According to records obtained from the Department of Revenue, Goodnight acts on behalf of multiple fee agents, including Radasky, who as we noted, is a former Graves staffer.

As questions begin to emerge about the extent the fee office investigation played in the firing of U. S. Attorney Bud Cummins of Arkansas (and perhaps Todd Graves of Missouri), little attention has been paid to the attempts made by Governor Matt Blunt and Congressman Graves to end examination of the fee office contracts in this state.

Despite the candidacies of such GOP stalwarts as Sen. John Loudon, Rep. Jack Jackson, and Rep. Mark Wright, Blunt and Graves threw their support and considerable money to little-known Platte County Auditor Sandra Thomas.

The treasurer of Mrs. Thomas' campaign was CPA Nick Myers...who also happened to be the license fee contract agent for Joplin. The campaign was placed in the hands of Sam Graves' former chief of staff (and political attack dog) Jeff Roe and his firm Axiom Strategies.

As The Turner Report first revealed in a July 29, 2006, post, Axiom Strategies was set up by Lathrop & Gage attorney Jamison Shipman, who also set up the management companies to operate license fee offices for the contract agents.

In the last month of the primary campaign, Mrs. Thomas' contributors included Todd Graves $1,000, the 32nd Senatorial District Committee (whose deputy treasurer Victoria Myers is Nick Myers' daughter) $10,000, lobbyist and first brother Andrew Blunt $500, Election Day Enterprises (run by former State Rep. Jewell Patek, who also set up management companies for license fee offices) $1,275 and the biggest $12,750 from the Sixth District Congressional Committee, which is controlled by Sam Graves.

The connections between Mrs. Thomas and the fee office scandal grew as the campaign continued. In the Oct. 16, 2006, Turner Report, I noted:

Three maximum $1,275 contributions to Platte County Auditor Sandra Thomas' campaign for state auditor came from contract agents running state license fee offices, according to her October quarterly report, filed today with the Missouri Ethics Commission.
Ms. Thomas received the maximum amount from David Jerome, Neosho, Matt Gerstler, St. Joseph, and the Nodler Leadership PAC, which is operated by its treasurer, Joplin CPA Nick Myers, who runs the Joplin contract office. The Nodler Leadership PAC reported contributing $1,275 to her primary campaign two weeks after the primary ended and an additional $1,275 the following month. (It should be noted that Myers, along with Blunt Highway Commission appointee Rudy Farber and Empire District Electic's William Gipson, controls the Nodler Leadership Fund, which is now called the Southwest Missouri Leadership Fund.)
Myers, of course, also serves as Ms. Thomas' campaign treasurer, and has already contributed $1,275 personally, and $1,275 from his CPA business.
The revenue fee office agents' contributions are not the only conflict of interest evident on Ms. Thomas' disclosure form. She also received a $500 contribution from Gene McNary, St. Louis, who was recently appointed by Governor Matt Blunt to head the Missouri Gaming Commission, which is a state agency which must be audited.

Having shepherded Mrs. Thomas successfully through the primaries, all Blunt and Graves had left was to defeat Democratic nominee Susan Montee in the general election and no expense was spared in that effort.

The Turner Report continued to expose the money trail to Blunt, Graves, and the license fee contract agents during an Oct. 30 post:

On Oct. 25, Ms. Thomas received a maximum contribution, $1,275, from Election Day Enterprises, the political consulting firm run by lobbyist and former state representative Jewell Patek. Print reports have indicated Patek was smack in the middle of the license fee office scandal that led to a federal investigation earlier this year. The lobbyist was pushing Highridge Services, a management firm, to operate the lucrative fee offices.

I also noted:

Blunt himself contributed $500 on Oct. 20, one week to the day after three of Blunt's clients contributed to Ms. Thomas' campaign. AT&T Missouri Employee PAC donated $1,200, Burlington Northern Railway $500, and Missouri Hospital Association PAC $500. It was noted on the final page of the report that Burlington Northern Railway often does business with the Missouri Department of Transportation, another department that Ms. Thomas will be required to audit if she is elected.

The largest contribution to Ms. Thomas' campaign is the most disturbing one. She received $10,000 Oct. 25 from the 32nd Senatorial District Committee out of Carthage...a committee which 10 days earlier had only $867.46 in its bank account, according to the October quarterly report filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission. Unfortunately, the 32nd District Committee, whose deputy treasurer is Victoria Myers, daughter of Ms. Thomas' campaign treasurer Nick Myers, will not have to file its next report until more than two months after the election is over, so there is no way of knowing just where this money originated.

The Turner Report noted more of those large contribution mysteries in a Nov. 6 post:

As I have noted before, it is almost impossible to tell who is really funding Sandra Thomas' campaign. The 12th Senatorial District Committee, which contributed $12,250 today, only had $950 in its account one week ago, and it likely will not have to file any documents indicating where its financial windfall came until 30 days after the election.
The treasurer for the 34th Senatorial District Committee is Matt Gerstner, who operates the lucrative St. Joseph fee office, which would presumably be under Ms. Thomas' jurisdiction if she were elected. As revealed earlier in The Turner Report, Gerstler has already personally contributed to Ms. Thomas' campaign.
The laundry operation extends to the $12,750 contribution from the 35th Republican Legislative District Committee. That committee was down to its last $50 one week ago, but received a massive infusion of $31,900 Nov. 1 and 2 from the Sixth Congressional District Committee. The Sixth Congressional District, of course, is home for Congressman Sam Graves, who has been pushing Ms. Thomas, and whose former chief of staff, Jeff Roe, runs Axiom Strategies, the consulting firm which has managed the Platte County auditor's campaign.
The 17th Republican Senatorial District Committee had absolutely no money in its accounts on Sept. 30, the last time it filed papers with the Ethics Commission, but by November it had enough to fund a maximum $12,750 contribution to Ms. Thomas.
It appears the Sixth District Congressional Committee was also at least partially responsible for the maximum $12,750 contribution given by the 30th District Republican Committee. On Nov. 1, the Congressional Committee kicked in to the 30th District Committee to the tune of $25,500, while an additional $3,250 was contributed to the committee by James Thomas, 5920 NW 96th Terrace, Kansas City, the same James Thomas who has been married to Sandra Thomas for 20 years.
The 32nd Legislative District Republican Committee had only $136.30 at the time of its last filing, Oct. 30, with the Ethics Commission, but came up with $12,750 for Ms. Thomas in the meantime. The deputy treasurer for that committee is James C. Thomas, listing the same home address as candidate Sandra Thomas.
For someone who lists not being a politician as being her chief virtue, Ms. Thomas has certainly shown a knack for playing politics.

The source of the contributions to Mrs. Thomas' campaign becomes crystal clear with the most recent campaign disclosure documents. The committees which did not have any money, but miraculously came up with enough to make sizable contributions to her campaign, received massive infusions of cash from Sam Graves' Sixth District Congressional Committee. The late contributions enabled Mrs Thomas to pour almost $200,000 into her campaign during the last few days.

The attempt to buy the election fell by the wayside when Mrs. Montee won with nearly 53 percent of the vote. That has brought on a new strategy from the Blunt administration- simply declare that everything done by the new state auditor is political in nature and refuse to cooperate.

That approach can be seen in an audit released in April of the Missouri Department of Revenue (the same department that handles license fee offices):

According to Department of Revenue (DOR) records, as of June 30, 2006, sales and use tax refund requests of approximately $269 million had been submitted to the department for validation. Of this amount, approximately $210 million was related to the tax exemption addressed in the Missouri Supreme Court opinion handed down on December 20, 2005, in the case of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, v. Director of Revenue. Interest, which could be substantial, continues to accrue on these claims. In a February 5, 2007, letter to the State Auditor, the Director of Revenue indicated that refund claims filed citing a connection to the abovementioned case had risen to approximately $300 million. However, the Director would not provide us with any detailed or other supporting documentation to allow us to verify her statement.

It will be interesting to see what happens the next time the operation of state fee offices is audited.