JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri gubernatorial candidate Catherine Hanaway resumed her campaign Friday after taking a month-long hiatus because of the suicide of Republican rival Tom Schweich, and she pledged her consultants would no longer be involved in the type of negative attacks that had targeted Schweich.
Hanaway suspended her campaign after Schweich fatally shot himself Feb. 26. She canceled three fundraisers and various speeches that had been scheduled at local Republican events.
However, Hanaway re-engaged Friday, meeting with supporters in Springfield before she was to speak at a Republican Party event in Taney County, home of the country tourist destination of Branson. She also was to speak at Republican events this weekend in McDonald and Webster counties in southwest Missouri.
"There's not ever going to be a time when we don't remember and honor Tom's service to the state, but the election is growing nearer every day and it's time to get back out on the trail," Hanaway told the Associated Press.
Schweich's suicide, which occurred just a month after he entered the governor's race, has rocked Missouri's Republican Party as it prepares for an important 2016 election featuring races for president, Senate and governor.
Former Republican U.S. Sen. John Danforth, an Episcopal priest who was
Schweich's friend and political mentor, suggested during his funeral eulogy that Schweich had been driven to suicide by political bullying and a perceived anti-Semitic whispering campaign against him.
Just days before his death, Schweich was targeted by a radio ad that mocked his physical appearance and suggested he was a pawn of Democrats who would "quickly squash him like the little bug that he is" in a general election.
The ad was paid for by Citizens for Fairness in Missouri, an independent political action committee that had shared the same treasurer as Hanaway's campaign and had ties to Axiom Strategies, a Kansas City consulting firm that is helping to run Hanaway's campaign.
Hanaway said Friday that she didn't know about the ad before it ran and she wouldn't have approved it. She said she spoke with Axiom's founder, Jeff Roe, who has agreed not to engage in any independent efforts to influence the governor's race.
"This is going to be a campaign about the positive vision for Missouri," Hanaway said. "I've made it clear to everyone involved with the campaign ... if I'm paying you, whether as a consultant or as an employee, we're only going to have one entity putting messages out there. There aren't going to be third-party committees that you're involved with."
Axiom Strategies Vice President Travis Smith confirmed Friday that an Axiom-owned affiliate produced the ad targeting Schweich. He said Axiom will continue to work as a consultant for Hanaway, adding she "made it crystal clear that we are to have no involvement with any other committee that participates in the gubernatorial campaign."
Smith said Axiom also had paid Republican consultant John Hancock to conduct opposition research on behalf of Hanaway against likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Attorney General Chris Koster. Hancock said he did the work in 2013, before Hanaway officially entered the race and long before Hancock was elected Missouri Republican Party chairman on Feb. 21.
Just minutes before his death, Schweich told an AP reporter he wanted to go public with allegations Hancock had told Republican donors last year that Schweich was Jewish. Schweich, who was Christian but had Jewish ancestry, said he believed the comments were part of an anti-Semitic whispering campaign against him.
Only one Republican donor has publicly come forward to say he heard Hancock say such a thing, and it was during a meeting last September. Hancock has said he has no specific recollection of making such remarks but it's possible, because he mistakenly believed Schweich was Jewish until Schweich told him otherwise in November.