ST. LOUIS, Missouri — With less than five weeks to go before the Aug. 6 primary election, a new complaint obtained by 5 On Your Side raises questions about Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft's professional resume and campaign materials that advertise his experience as an engineer.
In his primary bid to become Missouri's next governor, Ashcroft tells voters he knows how to "fix things" because he's an engineer. To many viewers who see the claim on its face, they may imagine a highly technical professional who designs bridges, builds skyscrapers, or constructs major highways. Instead, Ashcroft's engineering claim rests on a college-era job working on an assembly line.
Ashcroft graduated from the Missouri University of Science and Technology with a bachelor's degree and a master's in engineering management in 1996 and 1998. During roughly the same period of time, he lists a four-year stint as a "defense industry engineer" at Systems & Electronics Inc.
"Engineer was in my title at the company," Ashcroft said. "I did, you know, stress analysis, and did design engineering work, did reliability... used my engineering knowledge in picking materials that had the right tensile strength, that had the right ductility, that had the right durability for the necessary application."
However, according to the complaint filed with the Missouri Division of Professional Registration on June 27, Ashcroft "is not licensed as an engineer and therefore is violating the law by holding himself out as one, and is also committing fraud and dishonesty against the profession and the public."
A state review of Ashcroft's credentials revealed he was "originally enrolled as an Engineer Intern" in the mid-1990s, but that he "is not now, nor has he ever been, licensed as an Architect, Professional Engineer, Professional Land Surveyor, or Professional Landscape Architect in the State of Missouri."
Missouri state law includes prohibits and penalizes people without an engineering license from "indicating or implying that such person is or holds himself or herself out to be a professional engineer."
We took the complaint to Marsie Geldert-Murphey, the President of the American Society of Civil Engineers, for her independent analysis.
"We take it very seriously," she said. "The state board of regulation has the final say on who can call themselves an engineer or not."
"My dad was a garbage man," Geldert-Murphey said. "He didn't call himself a 'sanitation engineer.' He called himself a garbage man. And so we feel that when people use the engineer title for many different things, it does have an effect on how the public views that title."
Ashcroft acknowledged he doesn't have an engineering license, but he denied embellishing his resume.
"I practiced as an engineer," he said. "I believe when I was hired, they required an engineering degree to hire me for that, but it's that's been like 30 years, and I doubt I have documentation on that. I know that my business cards were like lead engineer... I don't know exactly."
The defense contractor has since changed it's name to Leonardo DRS. Ashcroft agreed to sign a release of his employment records, but a human resources manager said the company no longer had the old employment records in its possession.
An IT manager who worked there for 31 years, Mike Topliff, vouched for Ashcroft's employment status in a general engineering role on a "moving conveyor system" for the Tunner 60K Cargo Loader. The machine helps workers on an assembly line load heavy equipment into C-130 aircraft.
"I happened to work on his computer," Topliff said. "We kind of talked about his dad. He kind of got me interested in politics. He inspired me to run for office."
Topliff is now the mayor in West Plains, Missouri.
Ashcroft suspects the complaint was planted as a political attack to damage his primary bid in the race for governor.
5 On Your Side unable to confirm any link between the professional engineer who filed the complaint and a political rival.
It's unclear when the state board might take up or finish any investigation into this complaint.
"It will be thrown out," Ashcroft predicted.