Thor Hearne, the GOP election lawyer in St. Louis who became a TPM fave in the mid-oughts with his euphemistically named American Center for Voting Rights — which was actually a nationwide Republican voter-suppression effort — went to ground after the U.S. attorneys scandal blew up and the spotlight focused on Republicans’ bogus voter fraud charges.

But now he’s popped up back up again, practicing law in Washington, D.C., though his heart is still in Missouri. Back home, the state attorney general is a Democrat and has refused to join in the bailout of GOP lawyers going on in many states, otherwise known as suing to get health care reform overturned on constitutional grounds. So Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican with gubernatorial ambitions, has taken it upon himself, since like most lieutenant governors he doesn’t have much else going on, to start raising private money to hire a lawyer to represent the state so Missouri Republican lawyers won’t be left out of the legal fee bonanza.

And who does Kinder turn to to handle the case? Thor Hearne, of course.

David Kurtz

David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.