ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOX) – Four weeks after the exotic dancer story broke, Peter Kinder’s fundraising has dried up like an unwatered lawn in the August sun.  

The Missouri Ethics Commission website shows Kinder’s reported contributions stopped July 27th — eight days before a picture of him in a bar with former stripper Tammy Chapman first hit the news.

By contrast, in the same time frame,  Missouri Governor Jay Nixon — the man Kinder wants to unseat — has raised more than $100,000.

Kinder’s campaign says the lull in fundraising is intentional and was planned well before the scandal hit – to give donors a breather.

“The month of August is usually a period when we try to make sure that donors have a break, when they’re on vacations with their families, or coming back from vacations and getting ready for school,” said Kinder spokesman Jared Craighead. 

Craighead says there’s no resolution yet to the dispute with a Joplin donor, David C. Humphreys,  who is reportedly asking for a refund of at least $125,000 in the wake of the scandal

“Well, it’s a unique situation. We’ve only had one person do that,” Craighead said, “And we’re going to discuss privately what and how we do that with the person and we’re not going to talk about it in public.”

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon

No Kinder fund raisers have been cancelled since the Chapman story broke, Craighead says.  A fundraiser is scheduled for September 7th in Kinder’s hometown of Cape Girardeau.  Former White House Chief of Staff and GOP strategist Carl Rove is scheduled to appear.

The latest quarterly report for the period ending June 30th shows Kinder had more than $1.6 million cash on hand, compared with Nixon who had more than $3 million cash on hand.

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