In late 2003, then-Secretary of State Matt Blunt started laying the groundwork for an ambitious agenda as governor. He planned to adopt changes to workers' compensation and medical malpractice lawsuits, rein in state spending and ensure education funding was not used as a political football during tough budget negotiations.
As Democrats were dividing up into corners for a bitter primary between sitting governor Bob Holden and state auditor Claire McCaskill, Blunt and his associates were drafting policy position papers for legislation that could only be accomplished with Republicans in control of the governor's mansion and General Assembly.
"Really, no one should have been surprised at what he wanted to do, because it was all set out in (the policy papers)," said Ken McClure, the outgoing governor's first chief of staff who is now a vice president at Missouri State University.
Elected at age 33, Blunt had political advantages that no Republican governor had had since 1921 -- the last time Republicans controlled the governor's office, House and Senate.
"We will be willing to experiment. We will not fear failure. We will bear setbacks with resolve and press forward with determined innovation," Blunt said during his Jan. 10, 2005 inaugural address. "Change begins today, at this hour, in this place."
And change is what Missourians got -- whether they liked it or not.
State Rep. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, said Blunt's legislative achievements were "unprecedented in American history for a one-term governor."
"He's a doer, not a talker," Emery said. "He basically checked everything off his list."
Blunt started by addressing the state's troubled budget, which had been balanced in previous years by withholding money from schools and universities in the middle of the fiscal year.
He made it clear education funding would not see the sharp end of his budget ax, McClure said. "And he honored that," he said.
In Blunt's four years, the state dedicated $1.2 billion in additional tax dollars to K-12 schools, community colleges, universities and scholarships.
Based on the growth of government instituted under former Gov. Holden's administration, Blunt routinely says he inherited a $1.1 billion structural deficit.
On just his 17th day in power, Blunt took aim at Medicaid, the state's health care system for the poor, elderly and disabled.
"Someone had to do something to get a handle on Medicaid costs that were spiraling upward of 17 percent a year," said Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau. "That simply is just not sustainable."
Blunt started down the controversial road of eliminating what he called a "welfare" benefit for nearly 100,000 Missourians and reducing benefits for another 300,000 residents by checking eligibility and rooting out fraud and waste.
When Blunt took office, the financial need of only 70 percent of Medicaid recipients was checked to verify they qualified for aid.
The Blunt administration found 32,000 people on Medicaid who either weren't poor or refused to cooperate with an investigation to verify their eligibility. Those people were the first to be thrown off Medicaid.
The rest were squeezed out of the program when Blunt and Republican-controlled legislature changed the income eligibility limits.
"Reducing spending is never easy, or Washington D.C. would do it and state governments across the board would do it as they like," Blunt said in a telephone interview for this story.
"I knew that would be difficult when we started."
At the time of the cuts, Blunt said the "new system is going to rely on personal responsibility and reward good behavior."
Blunt and his supporters are quick to point out that they reined in the budget without raising taxes.
In fact, they cut a few taxes -- and carved new tax credits into law to entice businesses to create jobs and expand the production of renewable fuels.
"Here's a governor who led our state to a sound balanced budget without having to enact one tax increase," said state Rep. Shane Schoeller, R-Willard, who was a top aide for Blunt in the secretary of state's office.
In Blunt's first two years, Republican legislators sent him bills reducing how much juries could award in medical malpractice cases, changing workers' compensation program, and mending an unemployment insurance fund that was going insolvent.
Lawmakers also rewrote the state's K-12 education funding formula. "That could have been the only thing we passed that year and it would have been a big session for the General Assembly," Blunt told the News-Leader.
He won praise from the business community and doctors and scorn from trial attorneys.
"The business community literally told us, 'Hey, Missouri's open for business again,' " recalled state Rep. Bob Dixon, R-Springfield.
Controversy Arose
But with legislative accomplishments came political backlash.
Democrats zeroed-in on the Medicaid cuts, calling them inhumane. Cuts to one program eliminated state coverage for essential items like wheelchair batteries and catheters.
Democrats, including Attorney General Jay Nixon, criticized Blunt and Republicans for seeming more willing to dish out tax credits to big developers than restoring the health care coverage entitlement.
In late 2007, Blunt attempted to tamp down criticism about the Medicaid cuts by proposing a new program that would use tax dollars to subsidize private health insurance plans.
But his Insure Missouri program -- designed to help provide health insurance to 200,000 Missourians -- couldn't muster enough support among Republicans in the House, particularly the leadership.
"I think Insure Missouri is one of the frustrating failures of the last four years to get enacted. It was a very promising plan and we should have done it when Gov. Blunt proposed it," Kinder said.
Blunt's renaming of the Medicaid program as Mo HealthNet was dismissed as a ploy. Democratic critics and some sympathetic Republicans pointed out that the changes Blunt made led to higher private health insurance premiums and $1.6 billion less in federal matching dollars -- tax money that went to other states.
The cuts motivated Nixon to start raising money in late 2005 for a 2008 gubernatorial showdown with Blunt. Nixon has called the Medicaid cuts a "fundamental public policy mistake" and pledges to reverse them as governor.
"These are all a series of bumper-sticker plays to try to restore a wounded reputation -- not restore the health care of Missourians, not put the public dollars back in there," Nixon told the Associated Press in early 2008, before Blunt bowed out of the race.
For most of Blunt's term, he and Nixon -- or their staff and political operatives -- have been at each other's throats. They've sparred over everything from the e-mail retention controversy to the Medicaid cuts to Blunt's sale of assets of the state's higher education loan authority to fund $335 million in university building projects.
The sale of MOHELA's assets and loans caused Nixon and two former students to sue the agency's board -- which the governor appoints -- in an attempt to stop Blunt and the legislature. But the sale went forward in 2007, creating the Lewis & Clark Discovery Initiative.
MOHELA transferred the first $230 million to the state in September 2007. But since then, MOHELA has fallen $12.5 million behind in quarterly payments. The organization took a loss last year and had to lay off staff.
Officials at the agency and Blunt administration blame MOHELA's financial woes on the nation's credit crunch and deny it has anything to do with the fact its assets have been diverted from loaning students money for college to construct buildings on the campuses of the state's universities and community colleges.
Given the collapsed securities market, Blunt said the sale of some of MOHELA's assets at the time was a good financial move at the height of the market's value.
"We sold exactly at the right time and brought the dollars home to invest in Missouri," Blunt said. "We did absolutely the right thing."
Clash Over Cloning
In February 2004, Blunt filled out a candidate survey for Missouri Right to Life, the state's leading anti-abortion rights group with an important grass-roots network for Republicans seeking statewide offices.
On the second question, Blunt was asked whether he "would support legislation" that would "completely ban human cloning -- both 'reproductive' and 'therapeutic,'" according to the survey.
Blunt circled "yes."
He also said "yes" to supporting legislation that prohibits state funding from going toward human cloning through embryonic stem cell research, according to the signed form, which the News-Leader inspected.
"Matt responded that he supported a ban on both therapeutic and reproductive cloning," said Republic resident Dave Plemmons, chairman of Missouri Right to Life's political action committee.
But later that summer Plemmons stumbled upon a Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce survey in which Blunt indicated he would support the scientific research of therapeutic cloning, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer.
"He answered a survey differently for them than he did for us," Plemmons said. "Matt assured us privately that there would be no problem and that we'd have a friend in him in not standing in the way of banning human cloning if it reached his desk."
But Blunt did stand in Missouri Right to Life's way, publicly backing the controversial Amendment 2 to legalize stem cell research using human embryos, which anti-abortion advocates consider the destruction of human life.
Blunt disputes Right to Life's claim, saying he's "been consistent on that issue."
Plemmons credits the governor for signing a law restricting abortion doctors from practicing outside of their home cities. That law caused a Springfield abortion clinic to close its doors.
"I think that to sign the legislation was the good and right and normal thing to do for someone who says he was a pro-life governor," Plemmons said. "I'm pleased and proud of him for doing that."
But Blunt and Right to Life part ways on Amendment 2.
Social conservatives believe Blunt betrayed them to appease business groups that want to make Missouri the life sciences hub of the Midwest.
Blunt dismisses the criticism and makes no apologies for backing of Amendment 2 in 2006, which voters approved.
"There may be some verbal battles, but I obviously agree with Missouri Right to Life far more than I do over this one therapeutic treatment," Blunt told the News-Leader.
The Retention Of E-Mail Controversy
In August 2007, a News-Leader columnist sent an open records request to the governor's office seeking copies of e-mails Blunt's former chief of staff Ed Martin had exchanged with anti-abortion groups.
The governor's office said the e-mails didn't exist, but the columnist had a copy proving otherwise.
The simple request set off a controversy about whether Blunt's office had to retain e-mails. An attorney who advised the governor and his top aides that e-mails were public records found himself out of a job.
Blunt's staff says Scott Eckersley was fired for doing private work on state time and other unrelated reasons. Eckersley is suing the governor and his staff for wrongful termination and defamation. The case remains unresolved.
Nixon appointed two former highway patrolmen to investigate the governor, setting off a probe that's cost taxpayers $1.5 million. The Nixon case was settled last week and a report on the Blunt administration's e-mail retention practices is due out at the end of the month.
"It is a contrived controversy, with no real outcome other than to try to make false accusations against a number of public servants," Blunt said. "If the e-mail team had never been appointed, much of that would have been avoided."
At issue was whether Martin should have been coordinating with political groups -- with the message aimed at political enemy Nixon -- on state time and the taxpayer's dime.
The governor said he "disputes" any suggestion that Martin was performing political work.
Blunt contends his office had a right to do so because it involved defending an abortion-related law. In the past, Nixon, who supports women's right to an abortion, has recused himself from defending such cases for the state because of his personal conflict.
"It's reasonable for the chief of staff to try and ensure that the state has representation that adequately defends the law," Blunt said.
Blunt said he doesn't think the nearly year and a half-long e-mail controversy will impact his legacy.
"I don't worry too much about that because I don't know how much governors are remembered," Blunt said.
A Loss Of 'Mission'
At the start of last year, Nixon and Blunt were gearing up for one of the most closely watched governor's races in the country.
Both men had been squirrelling away millions of dollars into their campaign war chests for what they believed would be the most costly and nasty governor's race in state history.
But then Blunt dropped a bombshell, announcing on Jan. 22 in a taped video message alongside his wife, Melanie, that he would not seek a second four-year term.
"After a great deal of thought and prayer, and with the knowledge that we have achieved virtually everything I set out to accomplish, and more, I will not seek a second term in the upcoming election," Blunt said at the time. "Because I feel we have changed what I wanted to change in the first term, there is not the same sense of mission for a second."
For friends, Blunt's decision seemed more aimed at protecting his family from the slings and arrows of a high-profile political life.
To political observers, it seemed the ambitious governor had just run out of steam.
"The successes got sidetracked by the politics," said George Connor, chairman of the political science department at Missouri State University. "Blame can be shared for the political distractions between both the governor and the attorney general."
About a year later, the outgoing governor hasn't changed his tone or shown any visible signs of buyer's remorse for his decision to leave politics.
"I think we did what I set out to do," Blunt said.
His decision to drop out of the race less than 10 months from Election Day sent the Missouri Republican Party into chaos.
State Treasurer Sarah Steelman and U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof sparred in a bitter primary contest that exposed a split in the Republican Party between the establishment wing and ordinary conservative voters.
After accomplishing most of his 2004 campaign agenda, Blunt says he didn't think as much could be achieved in a second term. "After four years, where I think session after session where we delivered real results," Blunt said. "It was time to move on."
A Lasting Legacy?
As Nixon prepares to take office amid the nation's economic crisis and the specter of a multimillion-dollar budget deficit, many Republican legislators are pointing to Blunt's leadership for getting the state's fiscal house in order.
Unlike many other states, Missouri is not lobbying Washington for a federal bailout.
Dixon said the state's budget situation could be much worse if it hadn't been for Blunt's often controversially lean budgets.
"The public doesn't realize it yet, but when they do realize it, they'll have to thank Matt Blunt for that," Dixon said.
Kinder, the lieutenant governor who has defended Blunt's most controversial policies, agreed.
"Governor Blunt, I believe, will be vindicated over the next four years and more," Kinder said.
Rep. Jay Wasson, R-Nixa, predicted Blunt will be remembered for never wavering from his clear agenda and promises.
"Whatever else you think of Matt Blunt, he's one of the few politicians who accomplished what he campaigned on," Wasson said. "Nobody can take that away from him."
blished: Sunday, May 31, 2009 9:20 AM CDT
