Tuesday, September 11, 2012

#MOSen: Revisiting the 2006 Ethics Complaint against Claire McCaskill

In Claire McCaskill's 2006 bid for the US Senate, she came under scrutiny because of her husband, Joseph Shepard's, business empire. Shepard develops low-income and assisted living rental properties. Virginia Young of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Shepard's businesses in late August of 2006:
For 30 years, Shepard has used that flair for finance to amass a housing empire that, at one point, included nearly 10,000 apartments in 23 states. 
Now, those far-flung holdings have given the Missouri Republican Party ammunition against McCaskill in the Nov. 7 election. Party officials have accused her of hiding family assets, taking advantage of government subsidies and conducting audits where she has conflicts of interest.
The full text of Young's report is below. The report references an ethics complaint against McCaskill that the Missouri Republican Party filed with Senate Select Committee on Ethics in July of 2006.

A quick comparison of McCaskill's 2005 personal financial disclosures (originalamended, and amended again) and her most recent disclosure filed earlier this year for 2011 shows that Shepard's complicated business structure has not gotten any simpler.

McCaskill is running against Republican Todd Akin in this year's US Senate race in Missouri.

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