GOP gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence makes campaign stop in Sedalia

St. Louis businessman and prospective Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence brought his largely self-financed campaign to Sedalia on Friday, accusing Gov. Jay Nixon of “cronyism” and decrying a number of state departments and regulations.

Spence, 53, served as president of plastics manufacturer Alpha Packaging for 27 years, a business he guided from 15 employees and $350,000 annual sales in 1985 to an 800-employee, $200 million company when he sold it last fall.

He told members of the Pettis County Pachyderm Club he is “a throwback guy,” whose has an outsider status as a first-time candidate for office.

“I love being the underdog. That’s where I am. I relish that role,” Spence said. “I am a believer that simple is better. Let s get rid of some of this clutter. Let’s get rid of some of these regulations. Let’s get rid of the people who make these regulations who have never been in the real world — who sit in a cubicle somewhere and tell us how to run our lives.”

Spence singled out the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which he called “the biggest pain in the neck in the whole state,” the Department of Economic Development (DED) and “the ABCs of regulatory agencies that want to get in your hair” as being inhibitors to job growth and economic development across the state.

He said the DED, under Nixon, has been staffed with bureaucrats disconnected from “real world” experienc,e who wasted money on projects, including the failed Mamtek U.S. Inc., a Chinese-owned artificial sweetener factory offered about $60 million in tax incentives and local bonds to locate in Moberly. The company failed after it was unable to make its bond payments.

“In all the state agencies it is cronyism, cronyism, cronyism,” Spence said, claiming that Nixon tried to duck responsibility for Mamtek.

He said he would support right-to-work legislation that would end contracts that require employees to join unions and pay dues as a condition of employment, and was critical of prevailing wage laws that he said were impeding the rebuilding of Joplin after last year’s tornado.

“I think unions are subject to competition like anybody else. They have to provide value,” he said, noting that unions account for only 8 percent of Missouri’s work force.

Spence fielded a number of questions from Pachyderm members on topics ranging from whether to make Interstate 70 a toll road — he wants to “wait for all the facts” before deciding, and his position on Missouri’s minimum wage law.

Missouri’s 2006 Proposition B, which passed with 76 percent of the vote, raised the state’s minimum wage to the federal level, then tied future adjustments to changes in the Consumer Price Index.

Following his remarks, Spence told reporters he opposes the federal minimum wage, but sees the state law as “the will of the people.”

“I would not try to oppose or repeal that,” Spence said.

He said he would also push for school choice in failing districts, as well as “decentralizing control of schools out of Jefferson City.”

Spence joins Kansas City consultant Bill Randles as potential Republican candidates to face Nixon in the November general election.