STL Post Dispatch Reporter Gophers for Mo Dems Against Peter Kinder

St. Louis reporter Jake Wagman is taking heat for a slanted piece he ran over the weekend in the city’s daily paper.

It looks as though Wagman has tried to turn oppo on Lt. Governor Peter Kinder — the unofficial 2012 GOP challenger to Democrat Governor Jay Nixon — into some sort of scandal. All of this attention to a non-story may be why Wagman allowed the story of the season to slip between his fingers. Politico, a news outlet halfway across the country, broke the story of Missouri’s own Sen. Claire McCaskill and her plane.

In the latest Demo-oppo story, Wagman reports:

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder spent the night at the Chase Park Plaza hotel after speaking at a charity ball hosted by some of his largest campaign contributors.

[…]

Since 2006, Kinder has billed the state for an average of more than two months per year at hotels in the St. Louis area.

Even with a discounted government rate, Kinder has charged taxpayers a total of $35,050 for at least 329 nights at hotels in St. Louis and St. Louis County during that time period. That includes 236 nights at the Chase and 42 nights at the downtown Four Seasons, his most frequented hotels.

Kinder, a Republican who is widely expected to run for governor next year, declined to be interviewed for this story. “I’m not talking to you,” Kinder told a reporter before hanging up the phone.

Why would he? Did Wagman do enough digging on his own to even merit the byline? Or should an italicized “Information provided by Jay Nixon” run below the piece?

Wagman was careful to the details:

– Kinder was audited twice by Democratic auditors (one is the state chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party) who found no wrong doing. Kinder returns all unspent funds every year and this year will return the largest amount of unspent funds ever from his budget. If there was a problem, then it indicates that the former auditor, a Democrat, was incompetent. If that’s not the case, then this was as it seems, a baseless hit piece.

– Nixon hasn’t been audited a single time for his travel. Not once. In 27 months.

– In Nixon’s last audit when he was Missouri attorney general and he had to reimburse the state $47k for apparent misuse of the state car.

– Nixon’s travel in the first two months of 2011 totaled $33k, nearly the amount it took six years for Kinder to accrue.

In an interview on our Editor-in-Chief, Dana Loesch’s, radio show, Kinder responded to the media hit job:

[youtube fJjj78y0CPw nolink]

He also preempted the lopsided Post-Dispatch piece in the St. Louis Business Journal:

Over the last six years, I have spent 280 nights at hotels in the St. Louis region for my official work as Lieutenant Governor. I was almost always charged the standard government rate, currently $105 per night, ranging from $98 to $111. I have been told that the Post-Dispatch is focusing on the name of hotels at which I have stayed, mainly the Chase Park Plaza and occasionally the Four Seasons, and not the rate. What readers should know is that many St. Louis hotels, including the Sheraton, Westin and Hampton Inn, often charge a government rate higher than the Chase and other hotels where I stayed.

[…]

My travel has been twice audited in the past six years, both by a Democratic Auditor. The first was in 2007. The second audit was last year and it was published December of 2010. Both audits gave my office a clean bill of health and neither questioned my hotel expenses or billing.

As Lt. Governor, I have continued to cut my budget and return unspent money to the state every year. Further, I am the only statewide elected official who voluntarily offered a cut in my own office budget last year. I am a full-time Lt. Governor living off the statutory salary. Unlike most of my predecessors, I have renounced outside income for the duration of my tenure in office. I travel the state almost exclusively by car. This includes my weekly drive home to Cape Girardeau, through St. Louis.

Wagman never asked any such questions of Nixon, nor to my knowledge has the Post requested McCaskill’s records. Earlier yesterday after Kinder discussed how he’d acquired a condo in which to stay when coming to St. Louis, the Nixon camp was quick to shoot out a press releasing stating they’d even have a problem with that. Apparently, they don’t want Kinder in St. Louis at all.

From the AP:

“Particularly at a time when families are saving money to make ends meet, it’s unconscionable to think that Peter Kinder is asking Missouri taxpayers to pay for his odd and extravagant lifestyle,” said Matt Teter, executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party, in a statement Sunday.

“Odd and extravagant?” It’s not odd an extravagant that Nixon spent in two months near what Kinder spent in six years?

Also, I find it interesting that the party who tripled the deficit and spent the public’s money on temporary busy work, and the party who refuses to allow drilling to commence in the Gulf by way of stalled permits, is suddenly concerned about Joe Taxpayer. The words would mean more were there actions behind them.

As for the Wagman article, the next time the St. Louis Post-Dispatch/STLtoday wants to do the bidding of the Missouri Governor, the least they could do is extend the respect due him by allowing him to use his byline instead of Wagman’s.