Washington Post outlines how Bond's staff set stage for ouster of Graves as U. S. attorney

An article in today's Washington Post details how petty warfare between the staffs of Sen. Kit Bond and Congressman Sam Graves led to the firing of Graves' brother Todd as U. S. attorney. The article opens with this description of Missouri politics:

In Missouri, evidently, Republican politics are exceptionally bloody, with clans fighting like rival mobs whose carnage spreads to other locales and sweeps in innocent civilians.

According to the article, everything came down to a petty dispute between Bond's chief of staff, Jason Van Eaton, and Sam Graves' chief of staff Jeff Roe:

But then he got caught in the crossfire between Bond's office and his brother's staff. It came to a head when the Bond aide demanded in October 2004 that Todd Graves persuade his brother to fire Jeff Roe, then his chief of staff. Although the report does not identify the caller, multiple sources told The Washington Post it was Roe's archrival, Jason Van Eaton, the chief of staff for Bond's Missouri office.

Van Eaton and Roe, a longtime Republican political operative, are roughly the same age, and each sought an influential reputation, the sources said. Their bosses worked well together, but for the two aides "it was all about personality clashes, who is the more important and powerful staffer," said a Republican who knows the two.

They became foes in 2004 partly because Roe was then assisting a Republican congressional candidate who was challenging a longtime Bond ally, former Kansas City mayor Emanuel Cleaver II, according to a source familiar with the episode. They also disagreed over which official -- Bond or Rep. Graves -- deserved principal credit for obtaining a highway construction grant for northern Missouri, and over sharing a database of voter opinions compiled by Graves's office, two other Republican sources said.