Evan McMorris-Santoro March 21, 2011, 11:15 AM

First they turned Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) private flights into a full-blown ethics complaint, and now, not surprisingly, the Missouri Republican Party is turning them into an election issue.

With a full-page ad running in today’s Springfield, MO News-Leader, the state party is making clear that they plan to make a major issue out of the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars McCaskill spent on a plane she owns with her husband and other investors. McCaskill is a favorite 2012 pickup opportunity among the GOP, and it seems clear they’re relishing the scandal.

McCaskill has said she did nothing wrong, and claimed the flights she took on the twin-engine plane were often the cheapest options available for official travel. Senate rules allow members to be reimbursed for travel they take in their official capacity as Senators. Most of the trips McCaskill took were short hops across Missouri to small airports, which often do not have commercial service available.

And though McCaskill has said there were nothing improper about the flights — save for one 2007 flight she billed the government for and later admitted was for political purposes only — the Senator has also cut a check for $88,000 to the Treasury, refunding any taxpayer funds spent on travel in the plane.

Predictably, that’s not enough for her political opponents. They want McCaskill to release tax records from the LLCs which controlled the plane.

“You told us that you wanted to be held accountable. Now you’re asking us to “trust you” that you didn’t abuse your position for personal profit,” Missouri GOP chair David Cole writes in the full-page newspaper ad. “But Senator, this isn’t the Tell-Me State—it’s the Show-Me State.”

Read the full ad here.

This post has been updated.

2012 elections, Claire McCaskill, MO-SEN