GOP ATTORNEY GENERAL CANDIDATE VISITS CAPE

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has put politics ahead of the public good, Republican challenger Mark Bredemeier charged Friday.

"The office of attorney general has been cheapened by politics and blind ambition," he said.

The 38-year-old Lee's Summit lawyer leveled the charge during a campaign stop in Cape Girardeau.

He said Nixon has been more interested in grabbing headlines and having his "minute in the sun" press conferences than in running a professional office.

Bredemeier said Nixon has been criticized by lawyers in both parties. Some Democratic prosecutors have accused Nixon of being reckless in the handling of the alleged gambling-connections case against then-speaker of the Missouri House, Bob Griffin.

Bredemeier said Nixon has been portrayed as taking on gambling interests at the same time that he has taken gambling money from other gaming interests.

The Republican candidate said the attorney general doesn't have to be the state's best courtroom lawyer, but he still must have a good legal mind.

"It is more than being an administrator of a bureaucracy," Bredemeier said.

Nixon has fought to end the state's costly federal-court-ordered funding of desegregation in the St. Louis and Kansas City public schools.

But Bredemeier argued that he rather than Nixon is more philosophically opposed to heavy-handed federal courts.

"I am the real thing," said Bredemeier, general counsel for Landmark Legal Foundation in Kansas City.

The non-profit public interest law firm is active in a variety of constitutional lawsuits and public policy debates throughout Missouri and the nation.

Bredemeier and the foundation played a key role in the Kansas City desegregation case, opposing a federal judge's authority to impose taxes and helping to obtain $40 million in refunds for Missouri taxpayers.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has historically backed federal-court intervention in all aspects of American society, he said.

"The irony is you have got Jay Nixon and his party who have been supportive of federal judges taking over vast areas of American life."

Bredemeier lost an election bid to be Jackson County executive in 1990.

Bredemeier plans to raise and spend $750,000 to $850,000 in his campaign for attorney general.