This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 30, 2012 - Gov. Jay Nixon was grateful for the auto workers crammed into a Wentzville diner, even if some of them looked a bit weary.
“I know some people had to work last night, I appreciate them coming out,” said Nixon to an overflow crowd Tuesday morning at Pete’s Drive-In. “You know, it’s good to see people tired from working, isn’t it?”
The governor, a Democrat seeking re-election, rolled through the St. Charles County community to tout his record encouraging the automobile industry. That record, he said, includes commissioning an auto task force early in his first term and calling a special session to pass an economic development package to encourage car manufacturing.
“We worked with the legislature to get a targeted package so we could be competitive and get these investments,” Nixon said. “Unfortunately, the legislature didn’t get that done the first time. So I had to call them in for special session. I did not pay them time-and-a-half for the extra work.”
The legislature ended up passing that bill, along with another measure making significant changes to pensions for state workers. And Nixon said the incentives spurred major investments to a Ford plant in the Kansas City area and the General Motors plant in Wentzville. That, he said, helped auto workers get work.
“And you know? Throughout the entirety of time of sitting across the table with folks and talking about that, you know the one thing that was never questioned ever?” Nixon said. “[It] was whether the workers of the Show Me state could deliver a competitive product on the world stage.”
Nixon’s visit to Wentzville comes a day after Republican opponent Dave Spence held a press conference overlooking the empty site of what used to be the north Chrysler plant in Fenton. In addition to blaming bad governmental policies for shuttering the two Chrysler plants, Spence blamed Nixon for not doing enough to fight the plants’ closure.
A union official pointed out to the Beacon that the announcement of the plants' closings came in 2007 and 2008 under Gov. Matt Blunt, a Republican.
While most public polls show Nixon in the lead, Spence recently infused $2 million of his own money into the final push of the campaign, for a total $6 million. He released an ad Tuesday with GOP legislators – including House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka – angling to dispel the idea that Nixon worked well with a Republican legislature.
Among other things, the ad asserts that the General Assembly, not the governor, balances the budget. (Actually, the governor has the last word and must make any final trims to the budget to ensure it is balanced by the end of the fiscal year, as required by the state constitution.)
The legislators also sent out a letter to news outlets around the state that asserts Nixon "will say and do anything to save his job."
"As members of the legislature, we have watched quietly as Gov. Jay Nixon has made numerous false claims," the letter says. "Among his many misleading claims, Nixon states that he has worked with Republicans to get things done. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did Nixon fail to provide leadership on almost every major issue addressed by the legislature, Nixon repeatedly worked to block investigations into uncovering fraud, abuse and mismanagement of taxpayers' monies."
Nixon's campaign issued a statement in reply: "It’s unfortunate that some people are more interested in partisan politics than in working together to get things done, but Gov. Nixon is proud of the things he’s been able to achieve by bringing Democrats and Republicans together, like balancing the budget every year, cutting taxes for small businesses and passing the bipartisan bill that revitalized Missouri's auto industry and created thousands of jobs. If Dave Spence doesn’t think the governor is ultimately responsible for balancing the state budget and managing the state’s finances, he should probably consider applying for a different job.”
Nixon's camp also took note that one of the letter's signers -- state House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka -- praised how the governor had worked with legislators, in a recent interview with KMOX's Mark Reardon.
But while Spence’s ads have tried to argue that the state’s economy is declining under the governor’s watch, Nixon noted that Missouri’s unemployment rate recently went down below 7 percent. That's almost a percentage point below the national unemployment rate.
“We’re not done,” Nixon said. “But, boy, we’re headed in a direction that clearly sees us continuing to work.”
Nixon hits Spence again on TARP
Nixon’s short speech also encompassed his campaign’s primary criticism of Spence: that he voted against repaying TARP funds when Spence was on the board of a St. Louis-based bank.
Spence was part of Reliance Bancshares’ holding company board -- the governing body -- when it voted in February 2011 to delay repaying $2.2 million of TARP funds. He told the Beacon earlier this year the bank was advised by federal regulators to hold off.
Nixon’s campaign has been pillorying Spence for that decision for months. A recent ad, for instance, asked viewers, “Are you angry about Washington’s bailout of Wall Street and the banks?” The ad then launches into criticism of Spence’s actions. And he laced that criticism into his speech.
“As we approach the election, it’s important to note who was with you and who wasn’t – it’s part of the education process of getting out there and doing it,” Nixon said. “And quite frankly, he was taking bank bailouts but not for supporting workers. And that’s his call. That’s clearly a defining difference.
“As we sit here now a week before an election, my call for ya’ll is easy,” he added. “We get up every day and work. And more of you folks are going to be working. By the time we get here next year, this isn’t going to be a big enough place to hold everybody.”
Asked Tuesday if he thought Congress made a mistake in passing TARP – the program aimed at helping banks after the economic collapse of 2008 – Nixon said, “I just know that my opponent had a choice.”
“As a member of that bank, he had a choice whether or not to pay the taxpayers back or whether or not they should use those dollars for insider loans,” Nixon said. “He made that choice. It may be uncomfortable for him that he made that choice. But that was his choice. And we deal with taxpayer dollars all the time at the state level. And I think that responsibility with dealing with taxpayer dollars is important. And I am confident that difference is real.”
Spence also took out at least three bank loans when he was on the board, which he said were encouraged by the bank to help its business. One loan was a mortgage for a new building at Alpha, another was a home equity loan on his residence and the third loan was for the house he built at Lake of the Ozarks.
Some of Nixon’s ads have chastised Spence for taking an “insider loan to buy a $1 million vacation home.” Nixon’s campaign aides note that the term “insider loan” is the technical term used to describe lending to a bank board member.
When asked if Spence – who has spent nearly $6 million of his own money to run against Nixon – would have trouble or require special treatment getting a loan for a $1 million vacation home, Nixon said, “They could have sent the $1 million back to the taxpayers where it came from.”
“The facts here are incredibly clear,” Nixon said. “He got on a bank board. The bank wasn’t doing well. The bank got $40 million of TARP funds. While he was on that bank board, he voted not to pay the taxpayers back. And instead, that $40 million was used not only for him but for other directors for insider loans. Those might be uncomfortable facts for him. But they are uncontroverted, and they are completely true. And they are one of the times in his life where he had a vote on how to use taxpayer dollars.
“When you have that point in your life when you get to vote on whether the taxpayer should get the money or your fellow directors should get money for vacation homes or other things, that’s a clear difference in this race,” he said.
Beacon political reporter Jo Mannies contributed information for this article.
