I KNOW we’re late getting in on this fight, but other journalistic tasks have intervened.

Yesterday, and again today, state Rep. Sam Page, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor, “called on Acting Governor Peter Kinder to release backup e-mail records being held in violation of the state’s open records law.”

Page was referring of course, to the e-mails that Gov. Matt Blunt’s staff has declined to provide — or as sought large payments for – to news outlets and the investigative team set up by Attorney General Jay Nixon, a Democrat, to probe how Blunt’s office has handled e-mails.

Kinder, also a Republican, is currently filling in for Blunt, who is out of state — and for 18 days, out of the country — for various matters.

 ”Peter Kinder is in a position to separate himself from a cover up
that has gone on for too long,” said Page.  “He will claim the guilt
for himself if he continues the Blunt administration’s policy of
secrecy in government.”

The Missouri Republican Party countered by filing a request for three years of Page’s e-mails.

“Representative Page has been grandstanding on the issue of the Sunshine Law and it’s time for him to demonstrate to Missourians where he really stands,” said Tina Hervey, the state GOP’s communications director. 

 “I suspect that Representative Page is in the same camp as many of his Democrat colleagues in that he talks about the Sunshine Law but doesn’t understand it and, like Jay Nixon, we suspect he and his staff are deleting e-mails.”

Hervey was referring to Blunt’s longstanding assertion that Nixon also is deleting e-mails that should be saved. Nixon’s staff says they save all e-mails that should be preserved.

In any event, Page said today he plans to comply with the Missouri GOP’s request.

Many Missouri lawmakers have acknowledged (I did a story last fall about this) that they use private e-mail accounts for state correspondence, and don’t necessarily make those documents available under open-records requests.

Another Democrat running for lieutenant governor, Mike Carter of St. Charles, also has jumped in the fray — and on behalf of Kinder. Sort of, anyway.

(Carter said he didn’t want to appear as defending Kinder.)

“This looks like a ploy on Page’s part,” said Carter, bringing up the state Supreme Court decision in the late 1980s that basically blocked then-Lt. Gov. Mel Carnahan, a Democrat, from taking any executive actions unwanted by then-Gov. John Ashcroft, a Republican, when the latter was out of town and the former was in charge. Sort of.