• Mike Talboy is leaving the Legislature for Burns & McDonnell.

News broke earlier this week that Talboy wouldn't run, but the job Talboy couldn't turn down was revealed today. Burns & McDonnell's press release says: "Talboy will serve as Burns & McDonnell's liaison with local, state and federal officials in the support of the firm's related business units."

• Former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver spoke about Mitt Romney's jobs record on Thursday.

The plant recently became the star of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign. His first television ad attacking Romney was a two-minute spot featuring several former GST workings discussing how they lost their jobs, health care and much of their pensions after the company declared bankruptcy in 2001. (Romney left Bain in 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.) Bain made an estimated $12 million on its investment in GST before the company failed. (If you want the gritty details, see this brilliant Reuters piece from January.)

Thursday, the Democratic National Committee arranged for about two dozen former mill workers and their supporters to gather outside the closed plant and tell their stories of careers ended by Bain. The press conference wasn't a line-for-line remake of the Obama commercial, but it played like a live version of the ad.

• Rush has been enshrined.

The controversial bronze bust of Rush Limbaugh was unveiled at the Missouri Capitol's Hall of Famous Missourians. The bust was sculpted by Kansas City artist E. Spencer Schubert. The Star reports that the unveiling ceremony was announced only 20 minutes before it began, and it was not open to the public.

House Speaker Steve Tilly's (R-Perryville) decision to honor Limbaugh became controversial this spring after Limbaugh called a Georgetown law student a "slut" after she testified to Congress about health insurance companies being compelled to cover contraception. Schubert had previously defended taking the commission in a statement that read in part: "I knew this would be an interesting project, due to the fact that there are strong opinions on either side about Rush. If it were left to sculptors to choose who was honored with portraits, the entire history of portraiture would look dramatically different."

Schubert also made busts of Negro Leagues star Buck O'Neil and former slave Dred Scott for the hall that were unveiled this year.

The Missouri House passed a bill in March that would make it a crime to fire employees for simply owning guns. The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi paid a visit to Jeff City to talk about the bill with its sponsor, Rep. Wanda Brown (R-Lincoln).

Brown told Mandvi that she wanted to stop discrimination against gun owners. But she couldn't come up with a single example of a Missourian getting canned or discriminated against because they have a fondness for firearms. Mandvi did discover, however, that Brown has a past of being against anti-discrimination measures that would protect gay Missourians. Typical Daily Show awkwardness ensues.

• Sam Brownback's approval numbers look bad. Or good. Who the hell knows?

In a span of one week - one freaking week - Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has seen his approval numbers swing from 34 percent (with 44 percent disapproval) to 51 percent approval (with 44 percent disapproval) in two polls. Keep in mind that Brownback isn't even up for re-election this year.

The poll with the lower approval was conducted by SurveyUSA and sampled 501 registered voters. That's a lower approval rate than Obama has in the state. The Kansas City Star reported today that another poll pegged Brownback at 51 percent approval. The Star reports that Brownback's allies suspect that the first poll "under-sampled Republicans and Tea Party backers."

Of course, Kansas Democrats say the numbers show a trend in the erosion of Brownback's support.

"Right after he was elected, he was unassailable. And after he started cutting the Arts Council and introducing some of his plans that would cut the budgets and began moving through his agenda, his popularity began to fade," Kansas Democratic Party Chair Joan Wagnon told The Pitch this afternoon. "And it's not so much that people don't like the governor; they just don't like what he's doing."

Hooray, election season!

Earlier this week, KSHB Channel 41 ran a story saying Mayor Sly James reacted angrily to questions from reporters about the mayor's family being connected to a couple of incidents of violence (the mayor's brother is accused of pistol-whipping his cousin and then shooting up the cousin's car). As you can see in the video above, reporter Chris Hernandez says James "did not like being asked about the incident."

In the online edition of the story, Hernandez describes James' interaction with reporters as "terse." But in the video, James looks and sounds as calm as a guy listening to Enya while watching a sunset at the beach. He doesn't raise his voice. His eyes aren't filled with rage. He's as mild-mannered and milquetoast as ever. It could be that the room was filled with tension, and James' anger was more palpable than it was audible. But it got us thinking. If this is what he looks like when he's upset, what does he look like in other moods? A photo explanation is after the jump.

• Only 272 Park Hill voters were on Team Edward this week.

Apparently there's also a a link between a preponderance of racially charged campaigning and rejection from voters. Stephens, who has no children in the Park Hill district, came in dead last in his April 3 election, according to the Star. Stephens pulled in just five percent of the vote. The district says he received 272 votes.

The results surely came as good news to Fred J. Sanchez, one of two winners in the race. He had said during the election that he thought it was important for voters to reject Stephens' ideas.

"I've experienced and lived the '60s, and I've raised my daughters not to use their surname and their sex to get ahead in life," Sanchez told Pitch contributor Matt Pearce. "I thought that was all behind me, but it's apparently not. ... I feel that what's even more important than I win or lose is whether or not the patrons and the voters say up or down to Mr. Stephens."

As we've covered in the past, the GOP really wants to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill this fall. Conservative super PAC American Crossroads has already put up a billboard reminding voters of Planegate, and made ads about the senator's votes that sound like news reports. Other times, nonpartisan groups have dinged McCaskill for less-than-hot-button issues, like being too soft on air pollution.

For the most part, McCaskill and state Democrats have kept a low and positive profile. But over the weekend, Missouri Democrats released what could, maybe, be called their first attack ad. Really, it's nothing more than debate footage from Friday that shows all three Republicans running for McCaskill's seat — former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, businessman John Brunner and 2nd District Rep. Todd Akin — acknowledging that they don't know what the minimum wage is. They all did, however, say they wouldn't support increasing it. The only one to come away looking competent (if ignorant) is Brunner, who says that although he doesn't know the minimum wage, he paid his employees more than the minimum wage when he ran his family's hygiene-products company. Running for office is hard, man.

• PoliticMo
• Romney is coming to town.

Romney is holding a rally in the quad at 5 p.m. Missouri's dance card has been full recently. Fellow candidates Rick Santorum and Ron Paul swung through the state this past Saturday. Santorum won the Missouri presidential primary held February 7 with 55.2 percent of the vote, finishing well ahead of Romney and Paul. The only other candidate still in the race, Newt Gingrich, wasn't on the primary ballot. He's been campaigning hard in Mississippi and Alabama, ahead of today's scheduled primaries in those states.

• Gage Skidmore
• Newt wants the rock.

Original post: Ahead of Kansas' caucuses on Saturday, GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has announced plans to spend Friday stumping in KCK, Topeka and Wichita. And his campaign announced this afternoon one additional stop: a short part of Friday evening watching the Big 12 Tournament at Rookie's Sports Grille in Overland Park (14893 Metcalf). His wife, Callista, is also slated to appear at the space that used to be Coach's.

KMBC Channel 9's Micheal Mahoney reports that a few of TVs will be tuned to teams Gingrich is likely more acquainted with in the SEC and ACC tournaments. Since neither of his alma maters (Emory University and Tulane) are in these three conferences, presumably Gingrich will pander to the locals and root for KU.

Fellow GOP candidate Rick Santorum is also planning campaign events in Kansas this week. But, as the Star pointed out earlier today, Santorum is a little geographically challenged. His event Wednesday is scheduled at 12:30 p.m. at Harvest Graphics in Lenexa. But his campaign website initially said the event was in KCK. It's since been fixed.