51ºÚÁÏ

The best that could be said about that shady scenario is at least Bailey wasn’t assertively doing something for his financial benefactors.

For that, the price is apparently higher. Like, twice as high.

As the Post-Dispatch’s Jack Suntrup reports, a PAC supporting Bailey last month accepted a $50,000 campaign contribution from a New York-based LLC just two months after Bailey offered his official support to its Missouri-based subsidiary in a lawsuit involving the lead poisoning of children in Peru.

It’s a complicated story but one worth untangling for what it reveals about Missouri’s top legal official and the ethical swamp in which he and so many other state politicians dwell. It deserves the attention of state ethics officials — and certainly of the state’s voters.

The Maryland Heights-based Doe Run Resources Corp. is being sued over the lead poisoning of more than 1,400 children, allegedly linked to a smelting complex the company owned in a mining town in the Peruvian Andes.

The case is playing out in federal court in 51ºÚÁÏ because the company is based here. But the defendants have repeatedly sought to have it transferred to the Peruvian court system. It’s a strategy experts say is common for corporate defendants because developing countries tend to have less vibrant legal systems that are less likely to render big judgments.

Though the case doesn’t involve Missouri’s state government, the defendants have repeatedly tried to get top state officials to help get the case moved to Peru.

Gov. Mike Parson agreed, sending multiple letters in 2018 and 2019 to the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 51ºÚÁÏ and to the U.S. Secretary of State’s office urging the change of venue.

It was amid that flurry of letters in late 2018 that Doe Run’s parent company, the New York-based Renco Group LLC, gave $25,000 to a political action committee in support of Parson’s 2020 election campaign. As Suntrup has previously reported, Renco’s CEO followed up days later with a $2,500 contribution directly to Parson’s campaign.

That $25,000 donation was the only Missouri contribution made by Renco until a second one this year — which came under remarkably similar circumstances.

As Suntrup reported last week, Bailey’s office on July 11 filed an amicus (“friend of the court�) brief in the Doe Run suit, arguing that it should be moved to Peru.

On Sept. 18, Renco donated $50,000 to Liberty and Justice PAC, which was formed late last year to support Bailey's 2024 candidacy.

“The amicus brief was filed on behalf of the people of the State of Missouri to protect their judicial system from abuse by foreign plaintiffs,� Bailey spokeswoman Madeline Sieren told Suntrup last week. She said any suggestion that Bailey’s office is influenced by campaign contributions is “absurd.�

Doe Run similarly dismissed any suggestion that this was classic pay-to-play politics, saying in a statement: “There is absolutely nothing improper or even newsworthy about Doe Run’s parent company supporting political officials in Missouri.�

Interestingly, that hasn’t actually happened very often. While Doe Run itself has given to various Missouri political committees over the years, its parent company has only done it twice — and only when the political official in question has used his public office to aid the company in the pending litigation.

Consider what it is that Bailey and Doe Run are claiming is pure coincidence. Records show that over the past 20 years, Renco Group has written checks to Missouri politicians exactly twice: once to Parson in 2018, and then to Bailey last month. And in both cases, the contributions came within months of official action that Parson and Bailey took to aid the defendants in the lawsuit.

As the plaintiffs put it in a recent filing: “Renco seemingly has only ever made two donations to Missouri state politicians — and both closely coincided with the recipients intervening in this litigation to help Renco.�

Go figure.

Bailey’s two predecessors as attorney general, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, both were lobbied by Renco to weigh in on the case. Both refused.

As a former state official told Suntrup in 2019, Hawley’s office “didn’t believe there was a real state interest at issue� — and had concerns about “the moral ramifications� of siding with “people poisoning Peruvian children.�

For whatever reason, neither Hawley nor Schmitt ever received a dime in donations from Renco, according to records. Again, go figure.

The plaintiffs in the case last week asked a federal appeals court to either order Bailey to amend his amicus brief to formally disclose the $50,000 donation from the defendant’s parent company or to throw out the brief altogether.

That’s the least that should happen. If there was ever a situation that cried out for a formal investigation by the Missouri Ethics Commission, it’s this one. And voters shouldn’t forget it next year when Bailey, who was appointed to his current post this year, asks Missourians to elect him to a full term.

As with his refusal to rein in illegal gaming, Bailey here appears to have forgotten that he is supposed to work for the taxpayers of this state, not for campaign contributors — and certainly not for the alleged poisoners of children.

This editorial has been updated with additional information about the Liberty and Justice PAC.