Buying Vouchers, One PAC at a Time

What's the hottest story coming out of the recent quarterly reports. No, it's not Jay Nixon raising more than Blunt when the caps are in effect. Its not even Dr. Sam Page having a great quarter. Its BILLIONAIRE Rex Sinquefield creating 100 PAC's and giving each of them $2,500 to get started. Yep, he just dropped $250,000 in to the old political bucket and quess who got almost half of it..

The Post did a pretty extensive write up on this extremely strange move. Why would someone do such a thing, even if they are worth a billion. Rex is the kind of guy that can and HAS written Blunt a hefty $100,000 check. As the Post pointed out, "A network of PACs, with each giving $1,275, would be a legal way for donors like Sinquefield to get around the limits while helping favored causes and candidates."

Who is Rex Sinquefield? Let's see what his friends say - "We just click on so many levels, on so many issues," said Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican who agrees with Sinquefield’s quest to abolish Missouri’s income tax. According to Wikipedia, Rex Sinquefield was the co-founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors and was its co-chairman until his retirement in 2005. In the 1970s, he did influential research on historical stock market returns and pioneered many of the nation's first index funds. Rex is a huge pro-voucher supporter.

Rex Sinquefield set up these 100 PACs and who got the money? Chris Koster. The Columbia Daily Tribune did a great job tracking Koster getting $99,450 from Rex's new PAC's. The Tribune also reported "the campaign spent $63,384.73 during the fundraising quarter, with bulk of that money going to Axiom Strategies - a firm run by GOP strategist Jeff Roe." Here's the link to Koster's recent MEC filing.

All Democrats want to welcome Senator Koster to the party. It's a big tent. Two issues that don't fit under our tent, however, are school vouchers and Jeff Roe. Expect an uproar from Harris and Donnelly about their position on school vouchers.