The campaigns of Rick McCully, Clarence Nowak, and Buzz Ball for the Republican nomination for Newton County presiding commissioner have barely started and they are already more than $90,000 in the hole.
That is the advantage the fourth candidate in the GOP primary, Rep. Marilyn Ruestman, gained with the stroke of a pen May 25, according to documents filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission.
That was the day Mrs. Ruestman officially shut down her Citizens for Ruestman campaign committee, which had guided her successfully through election to four two-year terms in the Missouri House of Representatives. A day earlier, Commission records indicate, another committee, also tagged Citizens for Ruestman, filed papers to handle the finances for her run for presiding commissioner.
The first contribution received by the newly formed Ruestman committee, was $91,349.47 from the now-defunct Citizens for Ruestman committee.
Most, but not all of that money, came during the last few years of her tenure in the House. Even after her final term began the big money interests in the state were still putting their money into Mrs. Ruestman’s committee.
The committee’s January report showed the following contributions:
Realtors PAC, Columbia, $600
Empire District Electric Company, Joplin, $1,200
Missouri Cable PAC, Jefferson City, $800
Motor Carriers Public Affairs Committee, $400
Crossland Construction Company, Columbus, Kan. $1,500
Larry Snyder & Company, Ozark, $1,790
Citizens for Ruestman’s April 2009 report, also well after she no longer needed money for re-election to the state legislature, showed a $400 contribution from AT&T, $500 from the Boeing Company, Seattle, Wash., and $1,200 from Empire District Electric Company.
And now, through a perfectly legal use of contributions, this money, which was designated for someone who was running for an office in state government, could very well be used in an effort to buy a position in Newton County government.
Ethics Commission records do not indicate that any of Mrs. Ruestman’s opponents, whether they be Buzz Ball, Rick McCully, or Clarence Nowak in the primary, or Robert Brumback of Neosho or Roxie Fausnaught of Granby, candidates on the Democratic and Libertarian tickets in the general election, have filed the papers to form a campaign committee with the state, meaning they are unlikely to raise enough money to make it necessary for them to do so.
The $91,000+ is obviously not the only advantage Mrs. Ruestman has in this election. Though her primary opponents are well known in pockets of the county, none has the name recognition Mrs. Ruestman has garnered, both through her eight years in the House, and from her previous work for Congressman Mel Hancock.
She also has a weekly news report, which is published in at least three newspapers, this one, the Neosho Daily News, and the Seneca Dispatch, which she has used effectively since the beginning of the year as an attack on federal government mandates, most of which are beyond the control of the state legislature, rather than as a method of enlightening her constituents on the truly important issues that faced the legislature during the 2010 session.
That space, being provided free of charge to Mrs. Ruestman, enables her to put the bulk of her $91,349.47 into television advertising, or perhaps into the Joplin talk radio stations, which have also provided her with considerable air time over the past few months, free of charge.
None of this is meant to say that Marilyn Ruestman would not be an effective presiding commissioner. But as someone who has written time and time again over the years about the damaging effect money has on politics on the state and national levels, I hate to see that money seeping into the county races.
If Mrs. Ruestman truly believes that the federal government needs to keep its hands off state government, and I have no reason to doubt her sincerity, then it also stands to reason that the state government and those who have attempted to make it work their way by contributing to Mrs. Ruestman, should be kept out of Newton County politics.
Perhaps the best method of doing this would be for Mrs. Ruestman to donate that money to state candidates who share her views and then run for presiding commissioner on the strength of her knowledge and beliefs.
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Note: I have also run Rep. Ruestman's columns from time to time on The Turner Report. I offer space, free of charge, to her Republican opponents, to help get their qualifications and views out before the August election.
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