The flame war between GOP operative Michael Caputo and Sen. Paula Dockery (and her campaign for governor) over a Tea Party schism got hotter last night.

Caputo, who’s involved in a federal lawsuit a bunch of Tea Party activists filed against Orlando political gadfly Doug Guetzloe and his brand of Tea Partiers, and Dockery exchanged a rash of e-mails yesterday peppered with questions about their links to Guetzloe in the spirit of “Will the real Tea Party people please stand up?”

Caputo says he is not being paid by Attorney General Bill McCollum, Dockery’s GOP primary opponent in the governor’s race.

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State senator and GOP governor hopeful Paula Dockery blasted Republican operative Michael Caputo for linking her with Orlando politico Doug Guetzloe, the center of a Tea Party turf battle playing out in federal court.

Guetzloe joined forces with Dockery in fighting the SunRail/CSX deal during the special legislative session and has supported her candidacy against Attorney General Bill McCollum in the Republican primary for governor.

Caputo, a Republican operative who has worked on campaigns in and out of the U.S. and who is closely linked with Roger Stone, and a variety of local Tea Party groups filed a lawsuit against Guetzloe and his cohorts accusing them of hijacking the “real” Tea Party and asking the court to order him to stop using the “Tea Party” moniker.

The flame war began when Caputo sent out an e-mail questioning whether Guetzloe is secretly backing Dockery’s campaign and calling the Lakeland Republican a “liberal.”

Dockery responded with an e-mail asking Caputo with some answers plus her own list of questions.

Guetzloe “is not and has not been paid by my campaign or on behalf of my campaign. I am asking you to refrain from making this claim as you have now been formally told there is no truth to your assertion. Please provide your rationale for making these false claims,” she writes.

The exchange also includes a “Who’s the better Republican?” line with Dockery saying she’s a life-long GOP’er who was first elected in 1996.

Caputo one-ups her there: He says he’s been a Republican since he first got into politics in the 1980s when he worked on President Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign.

Dockery also tries to extricate herself from the Tea Party wars, writing: “I have absolutely nothing to do with the forming of another party and have, in fact, suggested that the formation of a “tea party” will actually harm reform-minded Republican candidates like me.”

Caputo’s snarky response to Dockery also challenges her to distance herself from Guetzloe.

“If you seek Tea Party support for your candidacy, your work with Doug Guetzloe does not endear you to thousands of authentic Florida Tea Party activists who are enflamed by his hijack attempt of their name and cause,” Caputo wrote.

“If what you say is true, it is not enough to stand silently. We ask you to denounce Guetzloe’s Tea Party political party. Please call upon him to disband it immediately and demand he end his personal threats
on true citizen activists in Florida’s Tea Party movement. Our plaintiffs - 34 Tea Party activists and organizations deeply concerned about the damage of Guetzloe’s third party - can help get your message out.”

Read the three messages after the jump.
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Attorney General Bill McCollum continues to defer to GOP party leaders instead of ordering an investigation into possible criminal conduct regarding credit card abuses at the Republican Party of Florida.

McCollum today said he may ask the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to look into the matter but that he would wait until the new chairman of the RPOF - expected to be Sen. John Thrasher - is elected this weekend.

Also today, Florida Democrats shut down McCollum’s anti-corruption hotline, filling up the 800 number’s voice mail in an effort to draw attention to McCollum’s refusal to investigate the credit card charges even after other top Republicans want the books opened.

McCollum said he won’t ask for inquiry until an audit of the RPOF is complete and he gets direction from the new party chairman to move although Gov. Charlie Crist last week said that party officials should open the books now.

“I’m waiting about what the new chairman might discover. I don’t see any evidence at this point of criminal behavior,” McCollum said today after a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.

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Gov. Charlie Crist’s inspector general found Transportation Department Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos did no wrong by using breakfast words as subject lines in e-mails dealing with the controversial SunRail project.

And IG Melinda Miguel also cleared the department of any wrongdoing by not providing e-mails on the SunRail deal to Sen. Paula Dockery until after Crist’s open government office was brought in.

“No evidence was found to suggest that any Department official intentionally withheld documents in violation of the law,” Miguel wrote in her 45-page report. “To the contrary, evidence shows that an unintentional, human error occurred during the initial public records request.”

Kopelousos and her aides insisted that they used the words “Pancakes” and “waffles” in subject lines to draw attention to the messages about the rail deal out of the thousands that the secretary receives daily.

McCollum leads Sink, 41 percent to 31 percent, in a poll that has a 2.4 percent margin of error. McCollum held a 4-point lead in polls last August and October.

The poll also finds 57 percent of Floridians oppose the Democratic health care overhaul legislation moving through Congress and 55 percent favor increased drilling in federal waters off Florida — but not if rigs are as close as five miles from shore.

Poll respondents generally don’t support relaxing immigration laws in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti that is likely to increase the number of refugees leaving the island.

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Florida Tea Partiers accuse Orlando political activist Doug Guetzloe and his cohorts of hijacking the “Tea Party” brand in a lawsuit filed in federal court today.

Florida Tea Party Chairman Fred O’Neal, Guetzloe and Nicholos Egoroff registered the minor political party with the Department of State in August. Since then, the Tea Party and Guetzloe have backed state Sen. Paula Dockery in her GOP primary bid for governor.

But the suit, filed by activists throughout the state unassociated with O’Neal or Guetzloe, accuses the two of being johnny-come-lately’s to the Tea Party movement and now they want their name back.

“We believe the identity of the Florida Tea Party has been hijacked by cynical forces,” South Florida Tea Party chairman Everett Wilkinson said. “We are especially concerned the group is improperly leveraging
the tea party movement to support the gubernatorial campaign of Sen. Paula Dockery.”

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State Sen. Dan Gelber and attorney general candidate nailed down another big-name Democratic endorsement, this time from Buddy McKay, who served as lieutenant governor under the late Gov. Lawton Chiles and briefly served as governor after Chiles’ death.

Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat and former House member, is trying to trade up for the Cabinet post just a year after he won election to the Senate.

He and colleague Dave Aronberg, a Democratic senator from Greenacres, are in a battle-of-the-endorsements.

Post On Politics had erroneously reported that the sheriffs were split on the candidates.

They are not.

Aronberg has the support of 10 Democratic sheriffs, including Palm Beach County’s own law enforcement rock star Ric Bradshaw.

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, former state education commissioner Betty Castor and former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis have all thrown their support behind Gelber.

Republicans have lined up Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp and Holly Benson, a former House member who also served as secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration, in a GOP primary race that’s been virtually silent compared to the Aronberg/Gelber contest.

They’re all vying to replace Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican who is running for governor in a primary against another senator - Paula Dockery.

Gelber’s latest political aspiration has opened up the door for yet another former senator, Gwen Margolis, to return to the chamber.

Margolis, a former Senate President, left office before being termed out to make room for Gelber. If she wins, it would be the Miami Beach-area Democrat’s second return trip to the Senate. After serving in the state House, she switched to the Senate from 1981-1992 before making a losing bid for Congress. Margolis was reelected to the Senate in 2002.

Gov. Charlie Crist ordered an investigation into “Wafflegate” but his concerns about transportation officials’ possible violations of the state’s Sunshine laws aren’t keeping him from signing the bill they were writing about into law tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Crist will hold ceremonial signings in Tampa and Orlando of the sweeping rail bill passed during a special session last week.

Today, Crist acceded to Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink’s request for the inspector general investigation.

But he rejected Sen. Paula Dockery’s suggestion that he delay signing the bill that paves the way for SunRail.

Dockery’s fought for three years the deal in which the state will pay CSX at least $430 million for 61 miles of track in Central Florida for a commuter rail project. The state will share the rails with CSX, which will continue to operate freight on the line for less than $4 million a year.

The Palm Beach Post reported on Sunday that CSX played a major role in the crafting of the bill.

“For three years, the agency has been stonewalling citizens trying to examine this back-room deal. Given the secretive code words used to hide its communications, the agency has violated the public trust. Until the investigation is completed, I would encourage the governor to delay signing – or better yet, veto – the legislation we’ve now learned was authored by CSX,” Dockery, R-Lakeland, said in a statement.

Orlando Ax the Tax chairman Doug Guetzloe also asked Crist to hold off on signing the bill into law. Guetzloe and the state Tea Party Chairman Fred O’Neal have asked Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs to investigate the matter they coined “Wafflegate.” Guetzloe also said he will file an ethics complaint and ask Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office to look into it.
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Gov. Charlie Crist ordered his inspector general to investigate the state’s top transportation officials’ use of code words in e-mails.

Crist made the request after Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink asked Crist for an internal investigation to find out if Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos (whom Crist appointed in 2007) and her deputy Kevin Thibault tried to hide their e-mails from public records review by giving the subject line of “pancake,” “pancakes” and “French Toast.”

The e-mails sent in November contained information about a proposed rail bill later approved by lawmakers during the special session that ended last week.

“Given our state’s proud and comprehensive public records laws, I remain concerned that DOT employees may have deliberately used these code words in an attempt to disguise their actions from the people of Florida. We live in the Sunshine State, and this is not the way the people’s business should ever be done,” Sink, the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor, wrote in a letter to Crist to Crist asking for the investigation.

Minutes after Sink’s office released her letter, Crist’s office sent out his response.

“I agree with the letter that was just received from Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink. Accordingly, I have directed Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel to conduct an inquiry of the Department of Transportation,” Crist said in a statement.

Crist’s order for an investigation came after numerous demands for an inquiry from other sources.
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Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos said that the word “pancake” in the subject line of an e-mail from her deputy Kevin Thibault was just a way for the message to stand out from the hundreds she receives daily.

The code words were not a way to circumvent public records laws, Kopelousos insisted.

“I get hundreds of e-mails in a day and Kevin was trying to get me to look at something,” Kopelousos said. “There was nothing more, nothing less than just that. He wanted to get my attention so I would read the email he was forwarding.”

Kopelousos said her department e-mail searches include not only the subject line but the attachments as well.

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Senate President Jeff Atwater and his GOP lieutenants insist that the rail proposal now being considered in a special session that opened today has nothing to do with a controversial Central Florida commuter line known as “SunRail.”

That’s probably a wise maneuver since Senators twice failed to pass measures that would have allowed the state Department of Transportation to move forward with a deal paying CSX Inc. $641 million for 61 miles of track to start the commuter line and allow CSX to continue to run freight on the line for $1 a year.

Yet the first committee to take up the 49-page bill in a workshop this morning spent nearly the entire three hours discussing the SunRail project that the measure is supposedly not about.

And Tri-Rail got a fair amount of attention, too.

Sen. Paula Dockery, who’s hoping to ride a victory in the death of the SunRail deal earlier this year to the governor’s mansion, led the charge against SunRail with some simple questions about Tri-Rail.

The proposal will give up to a $15 million helping hand to Tri-Rail that, like every other public transit system in the country, loses money every year.

And it will bring thousands of jobs, said Sen. Jeremy Ring, the bill’s sponsor.

“How many jobs were created when Tri-Rail went into existence 20 years ago,” Dockery asked Ring.

Ring said that the 20-year-old commuter line has 330 employees.
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Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Tom Slade is backing Sen. Paula Dockery in her challenge against Attorney General Bill McCollum for governor.

Slade, who served as chairman from 1992-2000, is an unabashed critic of his own party and carries a considerable cachet among GOP insiders.

“McCollum is a nice guy, but I think he would be better in the U.S. Senate, where I think his skills are better suited. But I think Paula would do a better job of being governor. She’s got the kind of tenacity you need, and she’s got the knowledge,” Slade said in a press release.

Slade’s backing of Dockery, considered an underdog early in the race, comes as state GOP leaders gather in a secret session tomorrow to try to reunite their splintered party.

Several county leaders have asked for Chairman Jim Greer’s ouster and criticized what some call his heavy-handed tactics, including efforts to quash primary races and premature endorsements of McCollum and Gov. Charlie Crist. Crist is running against former House Speaker Marco Rubio, a GOP conservative sweetheart, for U. S. Senate.

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer offered a helping hand to Sen. Paula Dockery, who’s complained that her party isn’t doing anything to aide her gubernatorial bid.

Dockery announced yesterday she’s challenging Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum in a bid for governor and defying Greer’s wishes to avoid GOP primaries in high-profile (and expensive) races.

Then Dockery lashed out today after the RPOF sent out an e-mail from McCollum’s campaign touting his endorsements from GOP bigwigs.

RPOF spokeswoman Katie Gordon Betta responded with the following e-mail to Postonpolitcs.com:

“I spoke to the Chairman and he wants to clarify that the RPOF authorizes payment of certain allocable and non -allocable expense for statewide candidates at the request of those candidates. We aren’t ’spending money’ on the McCollum Campaign - we are paying for certain expenses at the request of the campaign - just like we do for the other primary campaigns.

“Senator Dockery has not spoken to the Chairman or the RPOF regarding these resources. The Chairman congratulates the senator on her decision to seek the Republican nomination. The RPOF is willing to extend every courtesy to the Dockery Campaign, but to this point Senator Dockery’s Campaign has made no contact with the RPOF regarding her candidacy,” Betta wrote.

Dockery’s campaign spokeswoman Rosemary Goudreau came back with a less-than-tepid rejoinder.

“The ‘People for Paula’ campaign welcomes the party’s support and looks forward to having a conversation with the chairman,” Goudreau wrote

The day after she officially joined the governor’s race, Sen. Paula Dockery lobbed a shot at the state GOP political machine that seems to be doing its best to ignore one of its own.

The front page of the Republican Party of Florida’s website has no mention of Dockery, a lifelong Republican from Lakeland, but does prominently feature a press release from her GOP opponent Attorney General Bill McCollum touting Jeb Bush’s support for him.

After Dockery announced she was running for governor, the Republican Party of Florida issued a release on behalf of McCollum’s campaign highlighting his GOP endorsements.

That earned this jab at RPOF Chairman Jim Greer from Dockery today.

“Just today, the controversial and embattled head of Florida’s Republican Party told the Orlando Sentinel that the state party would spend no money to help my opponent in the gubernatorial primary.

“Hours later, he used the party’s resources to send out an email of support for my opponent, Attorney General Bill McCollum.

“This is exactly the kind of double-speak that, under Greer’s leadership, has disenfranchised grassroots Republicans from the state party.

“Party bosses shouldn’t tell the people what to do. That didn’t work for the Politburo and it won’t work for the Republican Party of Florida,” Dockery said in a press release entitled “What are they afraid of?”

RPOF spokeswoman Katie Gordon said McCollum’s campaign was using a service that’s also available to Dockery.

“The RPOF has a long-standing policy of distributing campaign press releases to our subscribers thru the RPOF blast e-mail system at the request of any of the statewide candidates. At this point, Sen. Dockery has not requested that RPOF resources be utilized to distribute her press releases to our subscribers,” Gordon said.

Attorney General Bill McCollum brushed off Sen. Paula Dockery’s entree into the race for governor, saying he’s focused on the general election.

Dockery will officially join the race this afternoon when she files her papers in Tallahassee, creating a GOP primary race next year.

That’s good news for Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the presumptive Democratic candidate who as yet doesn’t face a serious challenger.

But it’s bad news for McCollum, who has trailed Sink in raising campaign cash for two quarters in a row.

McCollum this morning shrugged off Dockery’s decision.

It was expected, he said.

“I’m not surprised. I respect Paula and she certainly has a right to run,” McCollum said.

“My focus, however, is on Alex Sink. That is the race that we’re already engaged in,” he went on.

McCollum stuck to his position when asked how concerned he is about a GOP primary.

“My focus is on Alex Sink. My focus is on the Democrat opponent,” he said.

State Sen. Paula Dockery will enter the race for governor tomorrow, ending months of speculation about whether Attorney General Bill McCollum will face a GOP primary opponent.

Dockery confirmed that she will file papers to enter the race tomorrow.

The Lakeland Republican earned an ardent following in the spring when she led a winning crusade against a proposed Central Florida commuter rail line backed by prominent GOP leaders including Gov. Charlie Crist.

Dockery raised a ruckus about a deal in which the state would have paid transportation behemoth CSX Inc. more than $600 million for 61 miles of track for the SunRail project. Lawmakers ultimately refused to pass it even after a last-ditch effort to link it to the floundering Tri-Rail that was $80 million in the red last year.

Florida’s lagging economy that forced the legislature to trim more than $5 billion from the state budget over two years bolstered Dockery’s opposition to the project.

Dockery also criticized a component of the deal that makes the state liable for any accidents on the rail line even if they are caused by CSX, which would still be allowed to run freight cars on the commuter line.

Perhaps not coincidentally, SunRail supporter McCollum, who hails from the Orlando area, today ordered Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos to appear before the Cabinet on Nov. 17 to give an update on the liability issue.

“I strongly support legislation to implement a SunRail agreement,” McCollum wrote.