Top aide to Blunt resigns

   James Harris, whose work as head of Gov. Matt Blunt’s appointments to state boards and commissions attracted controversy, resigned today to start his own campaign consulting company.

   Harris, 29, announced his resignation, effective Friday, in an e-mail to colleagues in the governor’s office.

   "As another campaign season begins, I feel I can best serve our Governor and his vision for our state by working to ensure we maintain our majorities in the General Assembly," Harris wrote.

   Spence Jackson, the governor’s spokesman, said Harris was starting a campaign consulting firm focusing this year on helping Republicans maintain their majority in the Missouri Senate.

   "He got his start in campaigns and that work always appealed to him," Jackson said. "His first love was campaigns and this was an opportunity to continue in that work."

    Jackson said Harris had been approached about helping in the effort to elect Republicans to the Senate by Sen. Chris Koster, a Harrisonville Republican who is heading that effort.

    As head of appointments, Harris was involved in finding and recommending people to serve in the Blunt administration. His position put him at the nexus of allegations that many of Blunt’s appointments were based more on the appointee’s willingness to raise campaign contributions than on competence for the job.

   Harris was instrumental in choosing the people who received often lucrative contracts to run the state’s 183 driver’s license fee offices, including 11 offices that previously were operated by state employees. The FBI is now investigating  the fee office system.

    Jackson said Harris’ departure was unrelated to any criticism of the job he did.

   "He is leaving on good terms with the governor and with everyone he worked with," Jackson said. "He is leaving of his own accord."

Posted by Kit Wagar 4:45 p.m.

Comments

[St Louis Oracle]

Harris is starting a campaign consulting firm focusing this year on helping Republicans maintain their majority in the Missouri Senate? But all the Republicans need to do to maintain their majority in the senate is to keep a third of the seats that they already hold and which Democrats are contesting. (There are 17 seats up this year (half the senate). They can't lose the 5 that the Dems already hold, and they can't lose three others where the Dems failed to recruit a candidate. The other nine are all GOP seats, and they could lose all but three of them and still keep their majority (with Lt Gov Peter Kinder's tie-breaking vote.) Harris is either setting the bar really low, or the Republicans are concerned about a huge rejection this year.

[porter]

James has been talking about leaving for 6 to 8 months. He is an elections guy. he was wasting his skills as a bureaucrat. The Dems will soon see once again how skilled James is at helping republicans get elected. Onto Blunt 2008. THe gov. will be bettered served by James being out in the field.

[Steel Leader]

James' service to our Great State will only be overshadowed by the havoc that he will wreak on the Democrats this fall as he ensures the GOP maintains control of both Houses of the Legislature.

[An observer]

After all the rumors about Harris have been ciculated in blogs and so called "credible" news sources I don't blame him for wanting to do what he does best - make sure Republicans continue to lead our state. In the past year and a half there's been more funding for education, a bill passed to raise state employees' salary and more jobs created in Missouri. If Harris thinks he can do more working on campaigns to get smart, responsible Republicans elected then more power to him.

[Alex Stanley]

James Harris was one of the hardest working members of the Blunt administration. He was almost always in his office, as those who called him late at night could attest. He was an exemplary public servant, regardless of what the Democrats and their allies would have us believe. And his departure had apparently been planned, despite bloggers’ statements to the contrary. The “FBI Corruption” investigation is nothing more than a Democrat fantasy, stemming from the fact that Governor Blunt ended the Democrats’ control of the Governor’s Mansion—their last vestige of power in Missouri. The desperate Democrats, led by Roy Temple, are lashing out at James Harris, one of the chief architect’s of Blunt’s victory. Harris’s encyclopedic knowledge of this state, and his astute political acumen, honed through years of experience in national and state politics, have earned him the nickname as the “Karl Rove” of Missouri. He is a major force in Missouri politics, in or out of the Governor’s office. With James back in the saddle, Democrats should be worried. Note to Democrats—“be careful what you wish for; you may get it.”