The Missouri Senate race between Todd Akin (R) and Claire McCaskill (D) continues to make news with ever more astonishing statements from Akin, followed by McCaskill’s responses. Not long ago, he made waves with women of all political stripes with his offensive “legitimate rape” comment. This time Akin’s facing a challenge from a different direction.

On September 26th, the Missouri Democratic Party filed ethics complaints against Todd Akin. The complaints allege that Akin is guilty of coordinating with a Super PAC in order to garner campaign money. As Stephen Colbert has so comedically demonstrated several times this year,  super PACS are legally prohibited from coordinating with political candidates, even as they amass unlimited contributions.

It may come as no surprise to conscious Missourians that Akin is facing ethics charges. This is, after all, the same Todd Akin who may have broken Missouri election laws (in progress), has a long documented history of being one of the worst offenders regarding earmarks, but a recent history of being against them, and seems to have gone all in with his party’s war on women. Last year, he faced local scrutiny after it was discovered that he voted multiple times in the wrong town. Not exactly a paragon of ethical behavior.

The ethics complaints come after local news broke a story in early September regarding Todd Akin’s disappearing political ads, allegedly due to an inability to pay for them. At the time, Akin’s campaign disputed the story, but these new ethics charges may lend credibility to the claim.

With Todd Akin still in the race and yet another deadline gone by, the question is now whether and how these ethics charges will affect his already failing campaign. I look forward to hearing what Claire McCaskill has to say on the subject.

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If you’re not sure how to be ethical in a Missouri election campaign, you can find out by watching a new, on-line tutorial posted by the Missouri Ethics Commission (MEC), says MissouriNet.

The Ethics Commission has taken several steps in the last year to improve their online presence and provide more resources that both candidates and the public can utilize. MEC director Julie Allen says the online tutorial makes the rules clear.

The newest section of the tutorial deals with “Campaign Materials Identification Requirements.” As with the previously posted tutorials on campaign-finance reporting and lobbying, the tutorial features a friendly, although perhaps a bit sing-songy, voice who talks you through all of the definitions, requirements and exemptions–of which there are many–while helpfully displaying the forms to complete and the web pages where rules are spelled out.

For someone who hasn’t run for office before, the process of staying ethical in a Missouri election campaign comes across as quite daunting, replete with multiple deadlines, complicated forms and a maze of twists and turns, depending on which office you’re running for. I suspect that this complicated process is not unique to Missouri, and I’m sure that the need for these rules arises from the sorry history of unethical campaign behavior that has plagued our democracy from its earliest days.  Following along with the tutorials, I can see why campaigns often must devote one or more staffers to the job of complying with the ethics rules.

MEC’s tutorial offers a good step-by-step walkthrough–but the campaign-ethics process itself remains complicated and burdened by terminology that only a lawyer or lawmaker could love. One form that’s available in special situations, for example, is called an “Exemption Statement of Limited Activity.” In a section on the complaint process, our friendly trainer notes that complaints must be filed by “a natural person.” (As opposed, I guess, to a zombie or a robot.)

Bottom line: MEC’s on-line tutorial represents a well-intentioned and valiant attempt to help candidates stay on the high road.  I’ve long believed that most candidates know, in their hearts, when they’re being ethical and when they’re being dirty,  that the labyrinth of ethics  rules serves mostly to restate the obvious, and that it’s very hard to legislate morality. But, as legislatures have felt the need to set the rules down on paper, it helps a lot to have guidance. Kudos to MEC for the effort.

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