Dave Spence's Degree of Difficulty in Missouri,

Given that the economy is the top issue in just about every statewide race right now, it's only natural for a candidate to tout his or her credentials on the subject.

If, say, you have an economics degree, it would be prudent to point that out -- as Dave Spence, Republican candidate for governor in Missouri does.

"After high school, Dave attended University of Missouri-Columbia and earned a degree in Economics," says the biography on his campaign website.

Not a bad idea to include that information ... unless it's not completely accurate, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch finds: 

According to the university, Spence's degree is not in economics. It is in home economics.

The school says that Spence majored in family economics and management -- also called consumer economics -- which earned him a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Home Economics in 1981.

...

"I was not the greatest student in the world," Spence said. "I'll make fun of myself: I was a 60-watt bulb in a 100-watt society."

Courtesy of NationalJournal


Our addition:


After he was caught fudging his college credentials, Home Economist Spence updated his biography to say "After high school, Dave attended the University of Missouri-Columbia where he majored in family economics and management (also known as consumer economics) and earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Home Economics." He no longer claims to be an economist.

Mo. candidates for governor given low profile at GOP conference, ...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Republican candidates seeking to challenge Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon characterized him Saturday as a "spectator governor" who has transformed Missouri into one of the "least business-friendly states in the country."

Yet few of the roughly 1,000 Republicans gathered for their annual state Lincoln Days conference heard the remarks from St. Louis businessman Dave Spence or Kansas City attorney Bill Randles. That's because the two declared gubernatorial candidates were held to a relatively low profile by party officials.

There was no gubernatorial debate, unlike for the three leading candidates to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill. And the gubernatorial candidates had no speaking role at any of the weekend's big banquets. Instead, Spence and Randles got two or three minutes each to speak to the several dozen members of the Missouri Republican State Committee — and that's about as big as it got for them.

Spence wasn't complaining, but Randles was — claiming that the slim agenda was an attempt by party officials to prevent him from sharing the stage with the self-financed Spence, who has the support of some former Missouri Republican Party officials.

State Republican Party Executive Director Lloyd Smith said the conference agenda wasn't crafted with the intent of benefiting any particular gubernatorial candidate. He said the schedule merely was crunched for time and that Missouri's U.S. Senate contest took top billing because it is a critical race in the Republican quest to regain control of the chamber.

Spence and Randles are making their first run for public office and perhaps could have benefited from some more microphone time in front of the party faithful as they head toward an August primary. But Spence said he was satisfied speaking to smaller groups and shaking hands with individuals. Randles was relegated to doing likewise.

Randles claimed Nixon has transformed Missouri into the least business-friendly state in the nation.

Given a chance, both sought to blame Nixon for several years of unemployment rates above 8 percent. "He has not done anything for three years — he's been a spectator governor," said Spence, who stepped down recently from the St. Louis-based packaging companies he had run. "I've been a leader all my life."

Randles, who left a Kansas City law firm before launching a gubernatorial bid, said Missouri's economy was suffocating because of Nixon.

"He's reduced Missouri to the least business-friendly state in the country," Randles claimed.

To the contrary, Nixon has stressed that Missouri's economy is improving, noting that its unemployment is down from its peak above 9 percent, and the state's international exports are at record levels.

"These two candidates are obviously desperate for whatever attention they can get, but the reality is that Jay Nixon balances the budget, keeps taxes low and protects the state's AAA credit rating," said state Democratic Party spokeswoman Caitlin Legacki.

Some Republicans at the conference said they hoped for another gubernatorial alternative. Republican state Auditor Tom Schweich has considered the race but steadfastly declined to comment during the weekend's activities about whether he would run for governor this year. While campaigning for auditor two years ago, Schweich pledged that he would serve his full four-year term. Courtesy of Associated Press

Our addition:

Both Bill Randles and Dave Spence couldn't even square with their GOP Lincoln attendees. They are extremely weak candidates. Randles is cashless and has no message. The millionaire Home Economist Spence is scandal-ridden and is already a national joke.

What We’re Reading By THE NEW YORK TIMES

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: I, for one, would be more inclined to vote for a candidate with a home economics degree (not economics, as Dave Spence, a Missouri gubernatorial candidate, has been claiming). — Julia Moskin. Source: Diner's Journal: Notes on eating, Drinking, and Cooking, New York Times

Our addition:


Poor Dave Spence! He can't take it anymore! Even the poorly-funded Bill
Randles is attracting more GOP attention than Dave Spence! How will then
Spence face Nixon in November 2012?

Dave Spence Once Again Misleads Voters About His Role at Bailed Out Bank

"As further evidence that David Spence's role in Reliance Bank's $40 million bailout is becoming an increasing liability, Spence was asked about it again during an interview with KCMO's Greg Knapp on February 15. Once again, Spence misled voters about his role in Reliance Bank's $40 million dollar bailout, his board's decision not to pay back the taxpayers, and the circumstances around Spence's decision to leave the bank's board."


A New Website and Online Ad Campaign Calling on Dave Spence to Come Clean About Bank Bailout (click the link).


Our addition:

Give credit where do! Home Economist Dave Spence looks dapper in an apron and cooks good meals!

Give credit where do! Home Economist Dave Spence looks ritzy in a chef's hat and cooks good meals! Finger licking good! Lip smacking good!

"I was not the greatest student in the world," Spence said. "I'll make fun of myself: I was a 60-watt bulb in a 100-watt society." , Dave Spence

Home Economist Dave Spence makes fun of himself for fudging his college credentials

Read more>>

Our addition:

Why wouldn't home economist Spence, a guy who lives in a $8,000,000 home and is worth $260,000,000 not just look dapper in a chef's hat and apron and stay home to cook, knit, manage home budget etc. for his family instead of fudging his college degree and now poll, and making fun of himself? What forces a multimillionaire home economist to ridicule himself to Missouri voters?

Dave Spence Fudges Own Website Poll

Millionaire Home Economist Spence in trouble again for fudging  poll data!

Being a scientist - I can call myself that since I have a background in Political Science, right? - it's always really frustrating when, after spending ages collecting my data, it doesn't support my hypothesis.  When this sort of occurrence happens, I go by the old when all else fails, manipulate the data rule of science (global warming style, ya know).  Because of this, you'll imagine my surprise that someone who doesn't have a degree in science would know of this, especially since those of us scientists tend to keep this on the DL so no one calls us on our faulty experiments until 20 years later and we're teaching at one of those left-wing, brain-washing, elitist universities and can't be fired because we finally have tenure, to see that none other than degree-fudging home economist expert Dave Spence did exactly what we in science do!
You'll remember that governor wannabe Dave Spence had a poll running on his website yesterday asking if we should be more like Wisconsin and Ohio and try busting unions here in Missouri.  Well, the data Spence was collecting wasn't really going his way - when I checked yesterday afternoon, the question of whether we should keep Gov. Nixon and not bust unions was well ahead with 74% of the vote!  SEVENTY-FOUR PERCENT.  That's almost a 3-1 margin AGAINST Spence on his own website. Read more>>

Missouri Governor hopeful Dave Spence smartly tried to hide home economics major, Punching Kitty

Doesn't GOP Home Economist Dave Spence look dapper in the apron?

Dave Spence is a Missouri businessman trying to make a run at the Governor’s office, leaning on the slogan “A Conservative for Missouri” which is brillant because we really don’t have many of those around here and he would really be a shock to those liberal hippies that usually the Missouri state government. Regardless, his plan might have worked had he managed to successfully hide his true college major behind his cloak of “important word dropping”.

STLToday’s Jake Wagman reporting:

On his campaign website, Republican Dave Spence, the plastics guru running for governor, says he “earned a degree in Economics” from the University of Missouri.
That may be true — but it is not entirely accurate.
According to the university, Spence’s degree is not in economics. It is in home economics.
The school says that Spence majored in family economics and management — also called consumer economics —which earned him a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Home Economics in 1981.

Well way to go Mary! Something tells us that Dave went around saying that he was in it for the chicks, but one look at those chubby cheeks and you know it was for all the homework cookies.

Spence said Monday that, while at Mizzou, his grades did not meet the threshold to enter the Business School. So he chose a different academic path that would allow him to graduate on time.
“I was not the greatest student in the world,” Spence said. “I’ll make fun of myself: I was a 60-watt bulb in a 100-watt society.”

Your future Missouri Governor!
Granted you don’t need a specific degree to be a good leader, but admitting that you had to take the easy route to get out of college isn’t something we’d be admitting if we wanted to be in charge of a whole state. Where does this slippery slope lead us? “Someone mentioned that this bill had a bunch of stuff about allowing some rich folks to establish a camp where they can capture, tag and release Puerto Ricans for hunting just outside of Columbia, but this thing just had a ton of pages in it. I’m sure it’s fine. Signed! …um, I’m just gonna put an “X” ok? Is that ok? *Ding* Oooh, my brownies are ready!”
Spence’s campaign website’s biography section has since been updated to reflect the truth.
via STLToday and Talking Points Memo. Courtesy of Punching Kitty


Our addition:

Doesn't GOP gubernatorial candidate & home economist-in-chief Spence look spiffy in  a chef's hat?

Spence Has Been Lying About Academic Record Since At Least 1989 – And STILL Hasn’t Corrected Campaign Website

Mo. gov candidate fibbed on bio

Spence campaign defends academic record

Spence statements on degree concern conservative group
(Governor candidate admitted degree was incorrect on website)

Spence Joins the Attack on Workers

What you see above is a poll that Republican Home Economist in Chief of Missouri wannabe Dave Spence is running on his website. Please go ahead and take a minute to vote in it to let Spence know your thoughts on the issue.  It essentially asks whether or not we should attack workers and bust their unions.  He couches the question in terms of whether Missouri should be more like Ohio and Wisconsin where last year their republican governors passed legislation that stripped workers, particularly public workers like firefighters and police, teachers and nurses, and other critical public servants, of their rights to organize and bargain collectively for fair wages and just benefits.


I just have one question for Spence: Are ya not paying attention to what the voters in Ohio and Wisconsin have to say about your union busting buddies, Kasich and Walker?  Below is a crash course:

Ohio: workers stopped dead in its tracks Senate Bill 5 and collected over a million signatures to ensure that it appeared on the ballot to face a vote of the people.  When they delivered the petitions to the state, the building engineer stopped them from taking all of the petitions to the secretary's office because they were concerned about the structural stability of the building. Then, when election day rolled around, guess what? Senate Bill 5, the anti-collective bargaining bill, was defeated by a margin of 2-1. Not only that, but it's said that lingering voter anger over the SB 5 fight played a part in yesterday's Ohio primaries.

Wisconsin: Gov. Walker and his cronies passed a budget repair bill that included language that would also strip public workers of their right to bargain collectively, even carving out police and firefighters in an effort to wedge labor against labor, but guess what? The Wisconsin labor movement stuck together and even after the legislature passed and Walker signed his ridiculous, anti-freedom legislation, workers and their allies collected enough signatures to trigger six recall elections last year, removing two from office.  Not only that, but when Walker became eligible for recall this year, Wisconsinites again went out in the snow and the cold to collect signatures to recall the governor himself as well as more of his anti-worker republicans in the legislature.

So, Dave Spence, if you want to ask whether or not Missouri should be like Ohio and Wisconsin, I say to you this: given the incredible solidarity shown by the citizens of those two great states, sure, I wouldn't mind being more like Ohio and Wisconsin - they are defeating politicians like you left and right and rejecting the anti-worker legislation you think would be so wonderful with huge majorities.  As for the actual question you ask, I won't even dignify it with an answer, and why should I? You won't ever make it to the Missouri Governor's Mansion, so you won't ever have a chance to legitimately ask it. Courtesy of Fired up Missouri.

A version of the truth

“I wasn’t dumb.  I was simply the opposite of smart — which at the time meant slow, unfocused, undisciplined, and uncooperative… I’m not a bad person, really.”

The quote above is by the main character in Jennifer Kauffman and Karen Mack’s A Version of the Truth, a novel praised by one critic as “the ultimate story for late bloomers of every exotic shade.”

“I was not the greatest student in the world… I was a 60-watt bulb in a 100-acre society.” — Dave Spence, Republican candidate for Missouri Governor.
“After high school, Dave attended University of Missouri-Columbia and earned a degree in Economics.” – Dave Spence for Governor website. 7:10 a.m. Jan. 11, 2012.

Memo to political candidates.  Don’t pad your credentials.  We know from long years of covering candidates that padding accomplishments and simplifying records are part of the game. Thousands of dollars are spent each year on consultants who are hired to, in effect, put lipstick on a pig.

Well, that’s not entirely fair.  Most candidates are not pigs.  Most are decent people with ideals and causes they believe others will find attractive enough that the candidate will be asked to be a leader in some position.  But thousands of dollars are spent on their image. But image is a fragile thing and one tap has been known to shatter some of them.

We’ll have to see if the revelation that Republican Governor candidate Dave Spence really did not get a degree in economics from the University of Missouri as his website claims this morning.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports his degree was really in HOME Economics.  Spence confesses he wasn’t bright enough to get into the business school.   So he pursued business-type courses in what is now the University of Missouri College of Human Environmental Science, one of those manufactured department names that says, well, nothing.  It was the College of Home Economics in our day, but those days were distinctly different from today’s academic disciplines within that field, whatever it is.

Anyway, Dave Spence studied family economics and management on his way to a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics.

Ask yourself, guys, how eager you would be to admit that your studies in college gave you a degree in home economics.  Talk about image!   Economics is economics you might think.  And a BS in Home Ec is a degree in economics of a sort.  And after all, are voters more likely to support someone who understands Keynesian (and other) economic theories, the role of the Federal Reserve Bank, the flow of money, and so forth or someone who is perceived by his degree to have studied cooking in college?

And how much should those of us in the media make of this?   Other news organizations have picked up the Post-Dispatch story and have circulated it far and wide.  It’s even in national publications. But should we give it a longer shelf life?

You see, the thing about stories like this is that they invite further probing by reporters, further looking for cracks in the image, further questions about veracity. Versions of truth can be drops of blood in the water. for candidates and reporters—and for rival candidates.

Candidates such as Dave Spence—who has no political experience and thus no callouses from past campaigns—sometimes find that their substantial personal accomplishments are obscured by the simplest shading of the truth.  Leaving a version of the truth on his website three days after telling the Post-Dispatch, “If you want me to change it, I will” is likely to invite questions.

It also is not a case of what the Post-Dispatch wants him to do.  Whether Spence corrects the information is up to him not up to the newspaper. Some folks might make judgments about him because that one line remains on his website.

Reporters also have to evaluate how much of the story of Spence not being smart enough to get into the business school is worth reporting today. He did go on to study economics through a different venue.   Does this issue really matter thirty or so years later when Spence has taken his own company from a startup to a plastic container manufacturer that he sold for $260 million?  Does the kind of college degree he got make any difference in light of that?

(As a matter of full disclosure, this reporter must note that he graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism with a grade point average that would not come close to getting him into the school today).  At some point many years after those great days on campus, are grade points and the kind of degree a person got as meaningful as what the person has done with his or her life?

For Dave Spence, for now, apparently it is which is why his “degree in economics” remains on his website.  For reporters and possibly for political opponents it also is.  For the same reason — because VERSIONS of the truth are always important. Courtesy of Missourinet: The Blog

Randles Capitalizes on Spence Missteps

Attorney Bill Randles and Home Economist Dave Spence

Post-Dispatch: "On Thursday, [Bill] Randlesannounced the support of a half-dozen state lawmakers, his most prominent endorsers to date. The list includes state Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, and State Rep. Ward Franz, R-West Plains, who attended Southwest Missouri Baptist University with Randles, an ordained minister and former attorney...The other lawmakers to endorse Randles are State Reps. Paul Curtman(Pacific), Bill White (Joplin), Barney Fisher(Vernon County) and Melissa Leach (Springfield.)" Courtesy of Fired Up Missouri.


Our addition:


If Bill Randles, a cashless GOP gubertanorial candidates is picking up support over millionaire Home Economist Spence, then how is Spence going to face the formidable incumbent Gov. of Missouri?

Home Economist Spence: A GOP Governor's candidate for 2012 scanda. He is scandal-ridden and messageless!

Spence Takes Another Round of Heat After Admitting to Academic Dishonesty

Click the right-pointing arrow to watch the YouTube video

Home Economist Spence makes fun of himself: "I was not the greatest student in the world," Spence said. "I'll make fun of myself: I was a 60-watt bulb in a 100-watt society."

Read more here (click the link).

Doesn't Home Economist Spence look dapper in the chef's hat? The man is a joke! He  had the audacity of standing in front of  a rural crowd of mostly low income folks hit hard by this recession and telling them that he doesn't support the federal minimum wage of $7.25 yet he is worth $265,000,000 and lives in a $8,000.000 home with golf course! Is this the man who wants to be the next Governor of Missouri? He is a joke! Home Economists are tough and intelligent. What's wrong with this guy? Evert time he opens his mouth he creates a fool of himself!