COOK SAYS HOUSE GOP USED HER

Missouri Secretary of State Bekki Cook thinks the Republican minority in the state House used her during the election of a new speaker in January.

~"They were brilliant," she said, in Cape Girardeau Thursday for a visit. "It was a brilliant move on the part of the Republicans to put me in the firelight. It really was.~ They purposefully put me there and they were smart to do it."

Cook, appointed by Gov. Mel Carnahan to the position days before the General Assembly started its session Jan. 3, closed the House election for speaker after incumbent Democrat Bob Griffin retained his position by two votes.

Critics charged Cook with holding the vote open for three hours until the Democrats could build a consensus behind Griffin. Before support for Griffin jelled, House Republicans garnered enough votes, including some disaffected Democrats, to wrest the speakership from Griffin.

Cook said the decision was hers, but if she could do it again, she would have closed the voting after an hour.

~"As a lawyer," she said, "I know a lot of cases get settled the day of the trial, under the gun. That was the role I was playing."

Cook had hoped the parties would compromise, and felt as long as they were talking there was a chance one would be reached.

"I felt the majority should have an opportunity to try and put itself back together as a majority," whether or not Griffin was re-elected.

Cook, a Jackson native, wasn't influenced by anyone during the vote, and said Griffin wouldn't have recognized her had she not been on the dais.

"I had not been paying attention to the problems of the speaker's race," Cook said, and only realized the ensuing controversy minutes after the voting closed.

~"People came up me and said amazing things, like `you should be impeached.' They said that in the first five minutes, that I was dead meat with them and they were going to can me."

Cook said she is preparing to run for election in 1996.

~"I am trying to give it some attention," she said.

"I've begun taking time out to make calls and contact people who would be key to my election efforts," including getting the campaign organized.

Cook said the election is ~"going to be a bigger challenge than the office."

And the new color of the Missouri Annual, after former Secretary of State Judi Moriarty's mauve book?

"It's going to be blue," Cook said.