Rex Sinquefield-backed PAC Grow Missouri trying to pay local reporters to blog for them

Rex Sinquefield wants to grow Missouri with blimps and payola.

Grow Missouri, a Sinquefield-affiliated political action committee, took to the skies of various Missouri cities this week and last with a blimp that reads “Create a Great State.”

The message seems to imply that Sinquefield thinks Missouri, the state that the billionaire calls home, isn’t that great already. Sinquefield thinks Missouri taxes are too high. He has spent no small portion of his personal wealth trying to convince legislators that the road to prosperity is paved with income-tax cuts, with varying degrees of success. Grow Missouri is the vehicle through which Sinquefield is pursuing his goals.

Blimps haven’t been a terribly successful marketing ploy for any cause outside of Goodyear Tires. But it’s Sinquefield’s money, so he can spend it how he sees fit.

Even less impressive is Grow Missouri’s latest idea: Hitting up local reporters and offering to pay them to write the PAC’s blog entries.

Alex Stuckey, the statehouse reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, received an e-mail from some functionary who starts the message by fawning over Stuckey’s work for the newspaper, followed with an offer to have her pen entries for Grow Missouri’s website, with or without a byline. The going rate was $250 per dispatch. 

Other reporters, including St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum, received similar offers, which were posted on their Twitter feeds and roundly lampooned.

Jonathan Shorman, a statehouse reporter for the Springfield News-Leader, got ahold of Aaron Willard, treasurer for Grow Missouri, for an explanation.

“In no way, shape or form,” Williard reportedly said, “we absolutely don’t condone trying to pay for, buy, get influence with reporters or journalists.”

They may not condone it, but they still tried to do it.