I’m even more disturbed by racist, conservative culture whereever it exists in the world than outright anti-semitism. So we have in a horrible way cut-throat politics in a backward state – Show Me Missouri.
Tom Schweich will be missed by family and friends, Missouri wasn’t worth it to die for! RIP Tom …
Statement by Clayton Police Chief Kevin Murphy | KOMU |
CLAYTON – Clayton Police Chief Kevin Murphy said Missouri Auditor and gubernatorial candidate Thomas A. Schweich, 54, died Thursday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his home.
Murphy said at 9:48 a.m., Clayton police officers responded to a call for a gunshot wound in the 7100 block of Wydown Boulevard. Paramedics attended to the victim, who was identified as Schweich. Clayton fire officials transferred Scweich to Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s Trauma Center, where he was subsequently pronounced dead from a single gunshot wound.
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Please join with all Missourians in praying for Tom's family,
including his wife Kathy and children, Emilie and Thomas, Jr.…
Schweich was born on Oct. 2, 1960, in St. Louis, and was educated in the St. Louis County Public Schools. After earning his undergraduate degree from Yale, he studied law at Harvard University. He worked as an attorney before serving with the federal government under former U.S. Sen. John Danforth.In 1999, Schweich was appointed Chief of Staff for Danforth’s investigation of the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He also served under Danforth and three other ambassadors in the United Nations.
Schweich worked as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the Bush administration. In 2007, he was named ambassador by President George W. Bush himself.
Schweich’s death prompted swift and shocked reaction from politicians. Lawmakers held a prayer service in his honor inside of the Missouri House of Representatives.
He is survived by his wife Kathy and his
two daughtersson and daughter.
Missouri Republican Candidate Commits Suicide Amid Jewish Ancestry ‘Whisper Campaign’
Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich, a Republican candidate for governor, died on Thursday in an apparent suicide after he went public with allegations that rivals in the GOP planned to mount an anti-Semitic `whisper campaign” about his Jewish heritage.
The suicide came minutes after he called the Associated Press to accuse John Hancock, the head of the Missouri Republican Party. of making anti-Semitic comments about him.
Schweich was a churchgoing Episcopalian but his grandfather was Jewish.
Hancock later denied making anti-Semitic remarks about Schweich, but admitted that he believed Schweich was Jewish because of his last name.
“I don’t have a specific recollection of having said that, but it’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion,” Hancock told the AP.
Political columnist Tony Messenger wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Schweich had disclosed the existence of the anti-Semitic “whisper campaign” a few days ago.
Even though the columnist conceded he didn’t know if the campaign drove Schweich to suicide, he believed it deeply disturbed the candidate, especially in a deeply conservative state where racism and anti-Semitism still loom large as evidenced by last year’s shooting rampage just across the border at a JCC in surburban Overland Park, Kansas.
The Post-Dispatch reported that Schweich had contacted the Anti-Defamation League about his allegations.
Messenger: From voicemail to voicemail: The short political life and times of Tom Schweich
He was my BFF.
That’s how my editorial board colleagues jokingly referred to my relationship with state auditor Tom Schweich, who on Thursday morning raised a gun to his head in his Clayton home and shot himself dead.
We weren’t actual best friends forever. We didn’t vacation together. I didn’t have his kids’ names memorized. We didn’t exchange birthday cards or hang out at the corner pub drinking beer and talking football.
But we had a relationship, which in today’s highly charged political world is saying something. In the age of Twitter, in the age of billions of dollars being spent on political consultants who control messaging to voters, in the age of depressed newspaper budgets, politicians and reporters generally don’t have the relationships they once had. Ditto athletes and sports reporters.
Times have changed. But Schweich and I had developed enough of a relationship since he was first elected state auditor in 2010, when I was still a political reporter in the state Capitol, that we exchanged phone calls and sat down for meals now and then. He confided in me. I found him to be an awful politician, which is to say he was an effective auditor but bad at the business of politics.
Maybe that’s why I liked him.
BC Attorney Tom Schweich Authors Book on Staying Power’ | April 2003 |
In his first two books, Bryan Cave LLP St. Louis Partner Tom Schweich guided readers around some of life’s biggest personal and professional pitfalls. In his third book, due in bookstores May 1, Schweich reveals 30 characteristics of “invincibility.” Staying Power: Thirty Secrets Invincible Executives Use for Getting to the Top…and Staying There uses anecdotes and personal examples from some of our time’s top CEOs, four-star generals, rock stars and political leaders to devise how people rise in prominence and what helps them stay put.
Dubbed a “primer for everyone interested in getting to the top of their field and staying there – through good times and bad – while avoiding the scandals that are dominating today’s headlines,” Schweich’s latest effort pinpoints 30 sometimes counter-intuitive “Rules of Invincibility” (ROIs) that guide successful people, including do not plan your career; use anger as a tactic, not an emotion; don’t rely on your connections; and consider work a member of the family.
See my earlier diary – Freedom For Hate and Murder – Frazier Glenn Miller.
