Jane Cunningham spends $30,000+ in desperate attempt to stay in Senate

The biggest enemy public schools and teachers had in the Missouri Senate, Jane Cunningham, won't be back in 2013, but it is certainly not for lack of trying.

As I noted in the Feb. 27 Turner Report, when Mrs. Cunningham saw that redistricting maps would put her out of a job unless she chose to run against an incumbent in another district, she begged for her job, asking supporters to petition the committee making the redistricting decisions (without mentioning her name, of course) to save her job.

After that, she spent more than $30,000, paying a high-dollar Kansas City law firm to explore a legal challenge to the redistricting. And though Mrs. Cunningham is a wealthy woman, the legal advice (quite legally) was paid for by her campaign committee.

The quarterly report of the simply named Cunningham Campaign Committee shows the Chesterfield Republican, paid $31,788.54 to the Kansas City law firm of Graves, Bartle, Marcus & Garnett for "legal defense on redistricting maps," on April 22 and another $819.50 on June 23.