JEFFERSON CITY — from www.stltoday.com – Rod Jetton shouted his way onto the Missouri political scene.

In January 2004, Gov. Bob Holden was lecturing the Republican-led House of Representatives over shortcomings the Democrat saw in the GOP legislative agenda. Jetton didn’t take kindly to his tone.

He rose from his back-row seat and bellowed: “Release the money, governor!” — a reference to a dispute over education funds.

It was a brash move, cocky even.

But it worked.

Jetton became the next speaker of the House, one of the most powerful jobs in state government. He was a key figure in passing a host of Republican legislation in 2005, including controversial cuts in Medicaid and caps on medical malpractice lawsuits. And he raised thousands of dollars for himself and other Republicans.

Now, five years later, Jetton is far from the pinnacle of power.

His political career vanished overnight after Jetton was accused of assaulting a Sikeston woman last year. And an FBI investigation into his actions as speaker has caused even some of his staunchest supporters to run for the hills.

That federal inquiry has lawmakers and lobbyists in the Capitol talking daily about the thin line between political deal-making and breaking the law.

It’s the simple reality of politics: Every day there are deals to be made, bills to be passed and killed and money to be funneled to lawmakers with one intent: to help influence the process.

Jetton, once the feisty king of the deal-makers, is now on the outside looking in.

He’s broke. He doesn’t have a job. His marriage crumbled. He’s living with his daughter. He faces one criminal charge and has the specter of a federal grand jury investigation hanging over his head.

“I got an application in to drive a garbage truck, and I got turned down to sell appliances,” Jetton, 42, said in an interview. “I’ve got no reputation. I have no money. I’ve got nothing.”

In some ways, Jetton’s tale is a classic fall from grace. The Marble Hill real estate agent and former county commissioner rose from modest roots in Southeast Missouri to a political position that left him with unbelievable power at a young age.

Jetton, the son of a Baptist preacher, was elected to the House in 2000 and just five years later, at age 37, he assumed the mantle of leadership as House speaker.

Almost immediately, he began enjoying the trappings of power.

His campaign accounts overflowed. He received free food, trips and entertainment from lobbyists.

Jetton converted a fireproof vault in the Capitol into a hideaway office, an unmarked retreat known only to the speaker and his closest allies. The room was festooned with Jetton’s political memorabilia.

The speaker of the Missouri House holds a life-or-death grip on the fate of most legislation. From Day 1, he or she starts making the sort of deals that earn friends — or enemies.

Early in his tenure, Jetton bounced his budget chairman, Brad Lager, in a dispute over priorities. He later removed another committee chairman, Rep. Scott Lipke, R-Jackson.

And Jetton earned another prominent enemy in Republican consultant Jeff Roe. In 2002, when Republicans swept their way to control of the Missouri House for the first time in decades, Roe and Jetton were fighting in the trenches side-by-side.

But after Jetton became speaker, he turned down Roe’s request to be a member of his leadership team. The decision would plant the seeds of a conflict that grew when Jetton opened a competing consulting office.

“Me and Jeff had our differences, and then it just mushroomed,” Jetton said.

Many of Jetton’s most vocal critics turned out to be clients of Roe’s. Among the loudest was Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee’s Summit.

Bartle testified before a federal grand jury in Kansas City last week about Jetton’s role in killing Bartle’s 2005 bill to add taxes and regulation to the adult entertainment industry, particularly strip clubs.

Bartle said that he believes a $35,000 donation the industry made to a political committee with ties to a top Jetton adviser was connected to the former speaker’s decision to send the bill to a House committee that stripped some of its provisions.

“It looks really, really bad,” Bartle said.

Jetton, who says he hasn’t spoken to the FBI, maintains he did nothing wrong. “Never have I told anyone if you’ll give me money I’ll do this or that,” he said. “Clearly you know it’s illegal, so why go there?”

The speaker of the House can raise huge amounts of money, in part because he or she has power to kill bills or make them a priority.

All politicians take money from those who share their views on issues. Sometimes the donations come before a vote, as in the porn bill case. Other times, they come after.

That was the case last year, after Jetton had left the Legislature, when the GOP-led House passed a proposed constitutional amendment to change the way the state selects many of its judges. A few days later, a supporter of that proposal, David Humphreys of Joplin, gave $100,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee.

Was there a connection between the money and the vote? Missouri Republicans said no.

Other times, the money isn’t tied to a specific date. Current House Speaker Ron Richard, R-Joplin, has received thousands of dollars in donations from the medical insurance industry, for instance.

Last year, Richard refused to let a bill mandating autism insurance come to the floor.

As was the case with the 2005 porn bill, the votes were probably there to pass it, but the speaker didn’t let the vote take place.

Did the insurance industry donations make a difference? Again, Richard said no.

But that sort of correlation gets speakers of the House in trouble. Former Missouri House Speaker Bob Griffin, D-Cameron, pleaded guilty in 1997 to charges that he accepted bribes from a political consultant to help her get contracts to work on bills before the Legislature. And last year, House speakers in Massachusetts, Florida and Pennsylvania were indicted on state or federal charges.

The problem isn’t so much the laws, said Peggy Kerns, director for the Center for Ethics in Government. It’s personal value systems.

“We talk about ethics as your value system, not laws,” Kerns told Missouri senators during a seminar earlier this session.

During his political career, Jetton was quick to point to his Christian upbringing in discussing personal decisions and legislative debate.

“Every day, you’ve got to get up and try your best to stay away from temptation and pray that the Good Lord will watch over you and not let the devil destroy your life,” Jetton told a Baptist publication shortly after becoming speaker.

For Jetton, though, the trappings of the office of speaker — the free meals, the hunting trips, the lobbyist gifts — soon became part of his lifestyle.

And the money associated with political consulting turned a job in community service into one of profit.

About as close as Jetton will come to admitting that he did anything wrong as speaker is to say that he was “prideful and cocky.”

Observers agree there is a fine line between unethical behavior and breaking the law. That’s the question that faces the federal prosecutor in Kansas City.

“There are many gray areas in the law,” said Kerns, of the ethics center.

It is within those gray areas that speakers of the House do much of their work.

Jetton, for instance, said he had no problem killing a Bartle bill just because the two had personal animosity toward each other.

“It would be hard to say that friendships and personality conflicts don’t impact the legislative process,” Jetton said. “When somebody’s calling you names and corrupt … you’re less prone to help them.”

In the aftermath of the FBI investigation and last year’s convictions of three St. Louis Democrats in an unrelated inquiry, lawmakers are deciding whether to clear up some of those gray areas.

For some, Jetton has become the poster child of what is wrong with the system.

Shortly after becoming speaker, Jetton started a political consulting company. His first client was his good buddy Jason Crowell, a Republican senator from Cape Girardeau. He later signed up two other Republican senators, Luann Ridgeway of Smithville and Rob Mayer of Dexter. All three senators’ campaigns paid Jetton consulting fees while he was speaker and could hold sway over their bills.

Democrats criticized the arrangement but were ignored. Jetton called the criticism “asinine.”

In the campaign year of 2008, Republicans Sarah Steelman, then a candidate for governor, and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder also criticized Jetton for his consulting, but the Legislature did nothing.

This year, various bills that would outlaw the practice have gained momentum.

Jetton said he realizes he should have been more in tune with the criticism and that the arrangement looked bad.

But like the ex-Marine he is, Jetton tries to hold his ground.

“I was the only person who went out of my way to talk to the ethics commission to disclose what I did and made no bones about it,” he said.

When term limits forced Jetton to leave the Legislature in 2009, he became a consultant full-time. His firm signed on more House clients and took on other political work, such as fighting the nuclear plant pushed by Ameren last session, even as rumors about the FBI probe swirled.

But a news story about an alleged assault during a sexual encounter led him to close his business in a day.

Jetton has pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault in the incident, which involves an encounter with an acquaintance described as “rough sex.” He won’t talk about his case, which hasn’t yet been set for trial.

His employees and clients have moved on, and Jetton left the capital city to try to put the pieces of his life back together in Cape Girardeau.

Asked how he felt about being the center of this year’s ethics debate, he responded, “It’s nothing to be proud of.”

But in political terms, he gets it.

“It’s pretty simple to throw it all on old Jetton,” said the former speaker. “There’s nobody who’s going to step up and defend me. I can’t do anything for anybody anymore.”