Out-of-State Butt-Munch Behind Electoral Vote Proposition

And yes, I do mean that literally--the guy behind the give-some-extra-electoral-votes-to-the-Republicans initiative really is a butt-munch:

Until this week, Missouri attorney Charles "Chep" Hurth III was best known for a headline-grabbing incident a decade ago in which he bit a young female law student on the butt in a bar.

Now Hurth, the city attorney for New Haven, Mo. (population 1,800), is the agent for a deep-pocketed group that donated $175,000 to fund a Republican-backed effort that would reshape the landscape of presidential politics in California....

Hurth is the registered agent for Take Initiative America, a tax-exempt group formed Sept. 10, 2007, according to the organization's incorporation documents. A day later, the group made its hefty donation to fund petition-gathering that would get the so-called Presidential Election Reform Act on the June ballot.

The donation was the only reported contribution to the ballot-measure campaign, according to financial documents released earlier this week.

The Presidential Election Reform Act is the one that would award California's electoral votes according to the majority in each congressional district. In 2004, it would have given Bush an additional 22 electoral votes--"more than the number awarded in Illinois (21), Pennsylvania (21) or Ohio (20)", as the Chron helpfully points out.

The obvious suspicion here is that Hurth is acting on behalf of one of the Republican candidates. The Chron article doesn't come up with anything conclusive on that score, but it does seem like the most logical inference, and Hurth did contribute $2,000 to Giuliani.

But of course you've only read this far because you want to know more about the butt munch. Very well then, here you go:

Hurth, then [in 1990] a third-year law student at St. Louis University, was taken to court by a young woman who said he grabbed her in a bar and bit her on the buttocks so hard she required medical attention - then laughed and high-fived his friends.

Hurth testified that he had told her she should take it as a compliment.

What a world-class charmer.

Update: On re-reading, this seems more flippant than I intended about the biting incident--which is, in fact, a serious sexual assault, and for which he really should have done prison time. That he could have gone on to become city attorney (even for a tiny town like New Haven, MO) just illustrates why Missouri is among the states in which I'm glad I don't live.