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Last week, while speaking to a group of bankers, Mulvaney, the former congressman and current head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told the bankers that if they wanted Congress to do their bidding, they were going to have to open their wallets.

“If you were a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you,� , of his time as a Republican congressman. “If you were a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.�

It’s hardly a revelation that folks on Wall Street make big campaign donations with an expectation that they’ll get a return on their investment. But it’s not that often that an insider explains so clearly and without shame that elected officials — some of them anyway — are in on the game.

In 2006, Hamra, a Springfield developer and restaurant franchisee, reminded Missouri politicians how he expected the game to be played. That year, after the Missouri Housing Development Commission awarded two of his rivals significantly more lucrative tax credits for low-income housing projects than he received, Hamra protested in a letter to Gov. Matt Blunt.

Reminding the Republican governor that he raised more than $400,000 for his campaign, Hamra demanded that the governor “correct this blatant inequity.� Hamra threatened to switch his allegiance to then Attorney General Jay Nixon, if Blunt didn’t have the MHDC do his bidding.

Blunt, to his credit, would have none of it.

He shared Hamra’s letter with a blue-ribbon panel he appointed to investigate whether the tax credit system — in which developers sell the state tax credits for a discount to finance projects — was a good deal for the state. The panel said it was not. So did successive audits by state auditors of both parties, and a panel appointed by the next governor, Nixon, a Democrat.

Last year, Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, became the third straight Missouri governor to try to reform the system that a few wealthy developers have controlled for years with well-placed campaign donations to lawmakers. He succeeded where others failed by appointing the biggest tax-credit-critic of all, former state Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, to the MHDC, whereby to award no state tax credits for the coming year, in an attempt to force the Legislature to deal with the issue it has punted for years.

This brings us to Albert Watkins.

The flamboyant and ever-so-quotable Clayton lawyer represents the ex-husband of the woman with whom the governor had an affair. The governor allegedly took a photo of the half-naked woman without her consent. It was the revelation of audio recordings the ex-husband made of his ex-wife talking about the affair that kicked off Greitens’ legal problems, which now include two felony charges and possible impeachment. Last week, Watkins admitted that an anonymous courier delivered to his office around the time the story broke.

Greitens and his team pounced, calling the entire controversy a “political hit job.�

There is some truth to that statement. It doesn’t exonerate the governor’s horribly bad predatory behavior, or erase the evidence of his alleged crimes. It likely won’t stop his removal for impeachable acts.

But make no mistake: The governor has many enemies — most of his own making — and they are celebrating his demise. Some of them, the evidence suggests, are just reading from Sam Hamra’s playbook.

In those 2006 tax-credit hearings, another Springfield developer explained the feelings behind Hamra’s letter.

“People who don’t get projects, or don’t get as many as they would like, are generally unhappy,� Mark Gardner said.

Flash forward to August 2017. Greitens appoints Crowell to the MHDC, a signal that change is coming.

Later that month, three companies tied to low-income housing tax credits, including Gardner’s, donate thousands of dollars on the same day to four obscure political action committees: Missouri Growth, Missouri Senior, Missouri AG and Missouri C. One month later, prolific political donor Rex Sinquefield gave $18,750 to each of the committees. A month after that, lobbyist Steve Tilley, who controls the Missouri Growth PAC, and represents companies in the tax-credit industry, gave $4,000 to each of the four committees. In March of 2018, Tilley increased his investment, adding $10,000 to each.

The committees all have a connection to Tilley, whom Greitens targeted as his foil during his shallow campaign that promised to “blow up� the culture of corruption in Jefferson City. Each of the committees has been paying Tilley’s sister for accounting work, and lobbyist and political consultant David Barklage, who, in effect, was evicted from his Jefferson City office by the governor when one of Greitens’ donors bought the building and turned it into the headquarters of the governor’s dark-money committee, A New Missouri. Tilley and Barklage have both been paid by Lt. Gov. Mike Parson as consultants, and Tilley has been a major Parson donor. Parson would become governor if Greitens were to resign or be impeached.

The donations to those four committees since August totals more than $150,000.

That money, according to Missouri Ethics Commission records, to the extent they tell the tale, didn’t end up in Watkins pocket. But it’s clearly a sign of various political forces with an ax to grind against the governor using the dark money game perfected by Greitens against him.

Maybe it’s poetic justice. Either way, there is a moral to the story.

The money matters. It always does.

Ask Mick Mulvaney.