Post-Dispatch article explores pressures that were facing Schweich

The pressures that were facing State Auditor Thomas Schweich in the days before his death are explored in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article by veteran reporter Virginia Young:

But the tension in a run for governor was becoming clear.

Though the election is more than 20 months away, Schweich faced a mocking radio ad comparing him to Mayberry Deputy Barney Fife; constant barbs through fake accounts on social media; and a pending Sunshine Law request for every email he had written the last three years, apparently part of “opposition research” aimed at digging up dirt.

Moreover, at the Kansas City Reagan-Lincoln Days event last weekend, party leaders sided with his opponent in a straw poll and elected a new chairman whom Schweich believed was involved in a whisper campaign against him based on religion.

“We knew he was bothered by this, but we didn’t know how deeply he was bothered by it, by the negativity of it all,” said Spence Jackson, his office spokesman.