Advertising issues heat up races

After 7 p.m. Tuesday, political advertising is meaningless - because the polls will be closed and voters' choices made.

That's why the final days before an election see extra advertising efforts in the newspaper, in the mail, on radio and television - and, these days, sometimes even on social media.

And those ads may please one candidate and supporters while frustrating or angering the other side.

Cole County voters have seen a lot of that in the race for circuit judge between incumbent Democrat Pat Joyce and challenger Brian Stumpe, a Republican who currently is Jefferson City's municipal prosecutor.

But the battle for prosecuting attorney between incumbent Mark Richardson, a Republican, and former assistant Anji Gandhi, running as an Independent, also has had some finger-pointing issues.

Circuit judge's race

Several people attending last Thursday's candidate forum didn't like Stumpe's claim he can't control ads attacking Joyce that are mailed or put on TV by other people, such as the Washington, D.C.-based Republican State Leadership Committee.

He said in an interview last week the same thing he told Thursday night's forum: "While people say we should denounce them and tell them to stop - you can't do that.

"You can't tell them what they can, or can't, do without being in violation - so your hands are tied when it comes to what people do."

He told the forum he used the $100,000 donated to his campaign by the RSLC "to send out some more mailers and buy some more TV ads," and that his own ads talked only about his campaign and didn't say anything about Joyce.

In last week's interview, he acknowledged the anti-Joyce ads are a two-edged sword.

"Is there a benefit (to them)? Possibly," he said. "Is there a negative backlash? Clearly."

When asked about the GOP's ads, Joyce said she's "alarmed at the way this campaign has played out. ... We want our judges to feel that they can do their jobs, without worrying about what's going to be brought up in the next campaign."

She said voters should "take a look at my whole record - people have been known to twist things around.

Several of the ads have accused Joyce of allowing sexual predators to live closer to schools and daycare centers than allowed by a 2006 state law.

She ruled, and a unanimous Missouri Supreme Court agreed, that lawmakers could impose those restrictions except on people who lived in the homes before being convicted of sex offenses, because Missouri's Constitution says "that no ex post facto law ... or retrospective in its operation can be enacted."

Lobbyist James Harris, a frequent critic of Missouri's courts, said: "I find it troubling that Pat Joyce ... won't tell sexual predators they can't live next to our children's schools. If Pat Joyce wants to legislate from the bench, she should run as a Democrat for State Representative."

Joyce also has had some ads against Stumpe, both from her own campaign and, especially, from the Democratic State Committee.

They challenge his experience and his taking the out-of-state money from the RSLC.

Prosecutor's race

One basis for Gandhi's campaign is her belief she could run the prosecuting attorney's office better than Richardson, who's seeking his third, four-year term in the post.

In a story published in last Sunday's News Tribune, Gandhi said "the straw that broke the camel's back" in her reasons for leaving Richardson's office last year was his decision to rehire a former assistant prosecutor with a $20,000 raise over the staff who had stayed and continued working without raises while the assistant was gone.

Richardson disputed that account, saying the assistant left Cole County in May 2010 when "his salary was $43,967 yearly" and the county commission had rejected Richardson's proposed $8,000 raise.

When the assistant worked in a nearby county, he earned $65,000 a year. But his family remained in Jefferson City, so he returned to Cole County in April 2013 for a $58,000 paycheck.

Richardson noted that pay "was $10,000 less than Ms. Gandhi (was making), even though the two had similar jury trial experience at that time in terms of numbers of trials."

Gandhi repeated her complaint that the assistant "got a 30 percent raise when he came back (while) not one prosecutor got a raise" during the three years the assistant was working in the other county.

Gandhi's ads seek to make several points supporting her belief that Richardson isn't effective in the prosecutor's office.

• One claim is that "Cole County has paid over $15,000 to defense attorneys due to jury trials Mark personally lost."

Gandhi said the number came from the circuit clerk's office, after a "Sunshine Law" request.

Richardson said: "The assessment of court costs in the event of a not guilty verdict by a jury or judge is a risk of going to jury trial. ... Out of 21 jury trials, five came back with not guilty verdicts."

He said no prosecutor "can guarantee a win every time."

• A Gandhi ad accuses Richardson's "inexperienced office" of losing "an unprecedented eight jury trials in the last year and a half, including a murder trial, resulting in thousands of wasted dollars."

Richardson disputes those numbers: "In the last year my office has tried 16 jury trials with four not guilty results. In 2013 I personally tried four jury trials (all for murder) - none were not guilty."

Since 2007, he said, his office has had "only 31 not guilty verdicts while having tried a total of 114 jury trials."

Gandhi said her number was based on a Sunshine Law request "for (all) lost jury trials since I left in May of 2013. And the result was eight."

• Gandhi's ad accused Richardson of costing "taxpayers more than $4,000 in lost reimbursements by failing to sign Bills of Cost."

Richardson said Saturday that was the result of a major communications problem between his office and the circuit clerk's office.

"(She) failed to contact me personally by email or by cell phone alerting me to the fact that signing those costs statements was an urgent matter because her office had just discovered them," he said.

He added there were a couple of phone messages, but the bills never were delivered to his office to be signed.

• Gandhi's ad accused Richardson of "prosecuting fathers for failure to pay child support" while he was more than $100,000 behind in his own support payments.

Richardson, who was divorced in 2000, said there was a legal dispute over money he'd paid directly to his daughters while they lived "in their own apartments and outside my ex-wife's home," but that the court later determined to be "gifts" rather than child support.

• A separate ad mailed last week contains photos of Elizabeth Olten, the 9-year-old girl murdered five years ago by neighbor Alyssa Bustamante, then 15.

The ad includes a statement from Patricia Priess, Elizabeth's mother, that Bustamante's trial "dragged on for more than two years," that she "felt excluded" by Richardson because he "rarely communicated ... about the trial process," and that Richardson "decided to reduce the charge from first-degree premeditated murder to second-degree murder ... without my consent and despite all evidence to the contrary."

At the time, Missouri law allowed only a death sentence or life in prison without parole for a first-degree murder conviction.

Because Bustamante was 15 when Olten died, both Missouri law and U.S. Supreme Court rulings prohibited the death sentence, and the Supreme Court ruled five months after Bustamante's guilty plea that life in prison without parole also is unconstitutional when applied to teens.

Richardson said Saturday the two-year time frame isn't unusual for complicated cases like that one.

"This is a case where the punishment handed down was life imprisonment and a consecutive 30 years imprisonment," he noted. "Bustamante's defense attorney has claimed these sentences make the chance for parole for Bustamante "virtually nonexistent."

Richardson said Gandhi's ad was "reprehensible," and "many other family members of victims, including some of this victim's family, have been greatly appreciative of my efforts, the victim advocate's efforts and the entire staff of the prosecutor's office efforts in the prosecution of murderers."