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from www.stltoday.com – Hoping to curb what has become a growing distraction to his political ambitions, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder today talked more about his strip-club visits and how he came to be photographed with a stripper he knew.

The woman, Tammy Chapman, this month told the Post-Dispatch and other media outlets that Kinder was a frequent customer and sometimes made her uncomfortable in a Sauget strip club in the mid-1990s. The Riverfront Times earlier this month published a photograph of Chapman with the lieutenant governor.

In his first interview on the topic, Kinder, a Republican from Cape Girardeau who is widely expected to run for governor next year, said he first visited Diamond Cabaret in Sauget after a baseball game in St. Louis when he was a state senator in the mid-1990s. After that, he said, he returned about 10 times. He said he saw Chapman, a former Penthouse Magazine model who worked there as a dancer.

Kinder said he stopped visiting the club after he concluded that it contradicted his religious beliefs.

“I came to realize that this is not consistent with my upbringing. I’m a Christian,” he said. “I was raised in a good family, and I thought, you know, continuing to go there is leading me down the wrong path.”

Kinder said he saw Chapman again earlier this year when he stopped at the bar she was working at to use the bathroom. He said he ordered a glass of wine and recognized her when she asked him to pose for a photograph.

He said the photograph “took a split second.” He said he did not ask Chapman to email it to him, and that he does not know how it came to be published in the Riverfront Times.

Earlier this month, the Riverfront Times published the photo of Kinder with Chapman, a 39-year-old bartender who was previously a stripper at Diamond Cabaret in Sauget.

Chapman has told several media outlets, including the Post-Dispatch, that Kinder focused on her to the point of making her uncomfortable.

In a statement last week, Kinder proclaimed: “This woman’s bizarre story is not true.” However, he allowed that he may have visited strip clubs as a younger man.

“Like most people, I am not proud of every place I have been,” Kinder said.

The lieutenant governor’s latest comments come ahead of Thursday’s Ham Breakfast at the State Fair in Sedalia, which is traditionally attended by public officials — and reporters — from around the state.

Chapman, who appeared in Penthouse magazine almost 20 years ago, said Kinder would come to see her regularly in Sauget when he was a State Senator in the mid-1990s.

The recent photo of them together was taken at Verlin’s, a bar in the city’s Grove neighborhood where the female wait staff’s limited attire is advertised as a “pantless party.”

Although he is yet to officially announce his intentions, Kinder, with over $1.6 million in his campaign account, has emerged as the GOP’s putative choice to challenge Gov. Jay Nixon next year.

Several leading Republicans say Kinder still has their support.

“If he chooses to run for governor, I think he’ll have broad support amongst the party all over the state,” state State House speaker Steve Tilley, who is seeking to replace Kinder as lieutenant governor. “Politics can be hateful and mean-spirited. The average Missourian wants to focus on jobs and the economy and our state budget and are turned off by negative politics.”