TALLAHASSEE — Former Republican Party of Florida Chairwoman Carole Jean Jordan said the GOP issued American Express cards to top officials while she was at the helm from January 2003 to January 2007, but “we were very careful. We set up a lot of business procedures….Nobody had carte blanche.”
The party made about $3.1 million in American Express payments during the four years Jordan was chairwoman. During the three years her successor Jim Greer was in charge, the party’s AmEx bills topped $3.8 million. Greer stepped down last month in part because of controversy over his lavish spending.
Jordan, now the tax collector of Indian River County, is in town for a Republican women’s conference. Asked her opinion of the American Express spending under Greer, she paused briefly, then said: “It’s over. We need to move on. I’m very excited to see Speaker/Sen./Chairman (John) Thrasher running the party.”
Senate President Jeff Atwater said he is more than willing to hand over his Republican Party of Florida-issued American Express credit card statements but that the party’s new chairman, Sen. John Thrasher, won’t do it.
Reporters asked Atwater, who is running statewide for chief financial officer, about the notorious AmEx spending that’s embroiled former House Speaker and U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio and former House Speaker Ray Sansom.
“I asked Chairman Thrasher if he would release the statements of the RPOF credit card that was assigned to me and he said no,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said. “He said he has his internal process going on…I have asked him and he has said no. That is the party’s card. It is not my card. I do not have the statements.”
When pressed about why Atwater did not request the statements, he insisted he could not.
“I’m not the card. That would be RPOF. It’s RPOF’s card. So if RPOF were to request those statements I assume they could get them. At this point, it is the party’s card. And I have asked the chairman would you release any card statements that were associated with me? I have no qualms about what anyone would see on that and he said no, we’re doing our process.”
Atwater had one of the AmEx cards while he was recruiting Republican Senate candidates and raising money for the party in 2007 and 2008. He says he used the card strictly for party-related business.
The cards, issued to an undisclosed group of top elected Republicans and party officials, have been a continuing source of embarrassment as details have emerged of lavish spending by former Chairman Jim Greer (including that $3,600 meal at Brasserie L’Escalier), indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom (his $173,000 in AmEx charges included a family trip to Europe and an $893 Starbucks tab) and former exec director Delmar Johnson ($133,763 in a single month last summer).
Rubio got his turn in the AmEx spotlight last week when someone, presumably a supporter of opponent Gov. Charlie Crist’s slumping GOP Senate bid, leaked records of Rubio’s $125,000 in charges from 2006 to 2008. No Greer-scale extravagances emerged, but the records showed a $133.75 visit to Churchill’s Barber Shop in Miami that Rubio said he paid himself.
Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, had one of those notorious Republican Party of Florida American Express cards. He says his spending was all legit and he has “no qualms” about his records becoming public. But Atwater, who’s running for chief financial officer this year, says he doesn’t have copies of his own and it’s up to the state GOP to decide whether to release credit card records.
Sen. Mike Haridopolos and Rep. Dean Cannon - on tap to be the next Senate President and House Speaker - aren’t coughing up their state GOP-issued credit card statements, the pair said in a press release today.
“While the media is now calling for the release of many of the Party’s internal financial records, it is our firm belief that the professional auditors should be allowed to do their job without the interference of a media circus surrounding the release of any records,” Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, and Cannon, R-Winter Park, said in the release.
The leaders-to-be issued the release after former House Speaker Marco Rubio’s American Express statements were leaked to the media earlier this week, causing embarrassment for Rubio’s U.S. Senate campaign and glee for his GOP primary opponent Gov. Charlie Crist.
Crist has said that the Republican Party of Florida books should be opened up because of questionable spending by RPOF staff. The party’s spending was among the reasons former state GOP boss Jim Greer was forced out last month.
New RPOF Chairman Sen. John Thrasher, R-Jacksonville, ordered an audit of the party’s books to begin on Monday.
The Democratic National Committee released a second video highlighting U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio’s state GOP party-issued credit card spending when Rubio was Florida House Speaker.
The Dems’ attack ad is curious, however, because it appears to promote Rubio’s opponent Gov. Charlie Crist.
Interspersed with newsclips from MSNBC and FoxNews are interviews with Crist in which he criticizes Rubio’s AmEx spending and comments that if Rubio doesn’t like the flak, “That’s too bad. Welcome to the NFL.”
Rubio racked up nearly $110,000 on his Republican Party of Florida American Express card -including expenditures for items like Internet music, wine and repairs to his family mini-van - that are raising eyebrows on TV news shows nationwide.
The first ad is a take-off on the MasterCard “Priceless” marketing campaign. It also ends with the RPOF’s Tallahassee street address and advises watchers to send their credit card bills there.
Capitalizing on the scandal erupting over the state GOP’s credit card spending, national Democrats released a video take-off of the MasterCard “Priceless” television campaign.
“Getting your personal bills paid for by the Republican Party of Florida like Marco Rubio: Priceless,” the Democratic National Committee video mocks.
The state GOP may get some unwanted mail as a result of the “Priceless” satire.
“Want your bills paid for by the Republican Party of Florida? Just send them in. 420 E. Jefferson Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301,” it concludes.
The DNC ad targets Rubio at a time when the once-long-shot candidate’s popularity is soaring while his GOP primary opponent Gov. Charlie Crist’s is on the wane.
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.
Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson wants Sen. John Thrasher stripped of two important committee assignments if he is annointed chairman of the state GOP as expected.
Lawson asked Senate President Jeff Atwater today to remove Thrasher as chairman of the Ethics and Elections Committee and off the powerful reapportionment committee if he is also chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.
“The conflict is evident: Senator Thrasher’s primary job as RPOF head is to see that Republicans win and maintain office through the elections process – a process in which his committees - one of which he controls – play a critical role,” Lawson, D-Tallahassee, wrote Atwater this morning.
Thrasher, a former House Speaker, returned to the legislature in a nasty special election to replace the late Sen. Jim King of Jacksonville. The trial lawyers’ association political arm targeted Thrasher in a racially-charged mailer that resulted in a shake-up at the Florida Justice Association leadership and forced former executive director Scott Carruthers to resign.
Thrasher’s special election drama was one of the reasons why Atwater appointed him to chair the committee, Atwater said at the time. Campaign reforms are at the top of Thrasher’s agenda this session, the Jacksonville lobbyist said late last year.
Along with members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, I was deeply troubled by the announcement earlier this week that Republican Senator John Thrasher may take over as head of the Republican Party of Florida, while maintaining his seat in the Florida Senate.
“As you know, the task of the committee he chairs is to set public policy on maintaining fair and unbiased elections. The task of the second of which he is a member is to oversee the drawing of legislative districts. To allow Senator Thrasher to remain in dual chairmanship roles and/or as a member of a committee holding sway over fair representation would threaten the integrity of the process as a whole,” Lawson wrote.
In announcing his resignation Tuesday, besieged Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer accused his critics of sowing dischord and said he “cannot be a participant in the shredding and tearing of the fabric of the Republican Party.”
But Palm Beach County Republican State Committeeman Peter Feaman — one of only two state executive board members to cast a vote of no confidence in Greer last month — says Greer had been stressing the GOP fabric since November, when Feaman said the chairman resisted calls to resign from executive board members at a closed-door meeting in Lake County.
Feaman
“We said to him at that time, ‘Do what’s good for the party and step down.’ And he refused until now,” said Feaman. “So my question then is, who is it that’s tearing at the fabric of the Republican Party of Florida?”
“This distractions and attacks on each other within the party is not what we should be doing. These individuals who have turned their guns on fellow Republicans instead of focusing our efforts on defeating Democrats have done nothing to serve our party. But at the end of the day the future of the party must come first.”
Jim Greer speaking at a press conference in October 2008
Thrasher
Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer is preparing to resign, sources told The Palm Beach Post. He will be replaced by Sen. John Thrasher of Jacksonville. The party has confirmed Greer will hold a 1:15 p.m. conference call with reporters.
“Jim has long been a loyal servant to the Republican cause, and I appreciate the many sacrifices the Chairman, his wife Lisa, and their four children have made to ensure our Party’s continued success in the Sunshine State,” Gov. Charlie Crist said in a statement.
“I call on Florida Republicans to unite behind our common values of less government and more personal freedom and sincerely hope that we can move forward together to ensure statewide Republican victories in 2010.”
Greer has been negotiating his exit since a letter from party fundraisers last week saying he had to go. In addition to Thrasher, other names discussed included former House Speaker Alan Bense of Panama City and former Senate President Ken Pruitt of Port St. Lucie.
Negotiators were far apart over the weekend, but found had a breakthrough late last night.
The transition is a hit to Gov. Charlie Crist, whose U.S. Senate campaign has benefited from his close relationship with Greer.
Thrasher, meanwhile, is more closely aligned with the Jeb Bush-wing of the party, which has always had a rivalry with the Crist team and given significant support to Crist’s primary opponent, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio.
News of Thrasher replacing Greer was first reported by the Times/Herald.
Dinerstein, Black at December 2008 GOP meeting. Will they square off next in court?
The son of a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard is renewing his effort to be seated on the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee.
Derek Black, now 20, won a 2008 election to one of 111 executive committee seats. But the party disallowed the election because Black hadn’t signed a party loyalty oath on time.
Now Black is disputing that decision and citing a court ruling on a similar dispute in Miami-Dade.
The state GOP executive committee is huddling in a private meeting with RPOF Chairman Jim Greer appease demands from numerous county chairmen that he back down from what critics say are heavy-handed tactics.
Greer’s folks at Republican Party of Florida headquarters aren’t revealing anything about the meeting in Howey-in-the-Hills in Lake County. It’s the second meeting in as many weeks aimed at reuniting a splintered party made even more divided over the U.S. Senate race between Gov. Charlie Crist and ultra-conservative favorite former House Speaker Marco Rubio.
Greer’s spokeswoman Katie Betta would not provide a list of attendees and said Greer probably won’t agree to an interview afterwards to debrief reporters on what went down.
“As far as the meeting goes, the Chairman has asked that we not release any information on the executive board retreat due to the confidential nature of the meeting,” Betta responded to a request for information in an e-mail. Greer “does not want to discuss the meeting,” she added.
Palm beach County GOP Chairman Sid Dinerstein can’t attend the GOP powwow because he has a Palm Tran meeting today. He said he thinks some board members will try to oust Greer, but the measure won’t succeed. Dinerstein has criticized Greer’s favoritism for Crist in the past but has said he does not favor booting Greer.
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.
With Broward County lawyer and political mega-moneyman Scott Rothstein facing accusations of misappropriating large sums of money from investor trust accounts, the beneficiaries of his past largesse are facing pressure to give the money back.
The Florida Democratic Party, which got a $200,000 check from Rothstein’s law firm in September, says it is “monitoring” the accusations against Rothstein and will return the money if it turns out to be tainted. The Republican Party of Florida, which has received about $500,000 from Rothstein and his law firm since 2002, also says it is “monitoring” the case.
And Gov. Charlie Crist, whose 2010 U.S. Senate campaign got $4,800 apiece from Rothstein and his wife? You guessed it: “monitoring” the allegations.
Greer: fears socialist indoctrination in Obama speech
The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page says federal educrats appear to be “aggrandizing” President Obama with the curriculum they’ve suggested to accompany Obama’s Tuesday address to the nation’s school children. But even the right-tilted WSJ editorial board says Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer was “overwrought” in his criticism of the speech.
Barry Carson’s brief trip to the men’s room spared Gov. Charlie Crist the embarrassment of being censured by Palm Beach County’s Republican Party last week.
Carson, a Republican Executive Committee member from Jupiter, was out of the room and missed the vote when the rest of the committee split 65-65 on a resolution Wednesday night to rebuke Crist for his various departures from GOP orthodoxy.
The tie vote means the resolution failed.
Carson said he would have voted for censure.
But after hours of debate and an earlier vote on whether to table the censure resolution, Carson went to the men’s room. When he got back, his name had been passed in the roll call of Republican committee members.
Carson said he told party leaders he was back and wanted to vote before the roll call was complete, but was ignored by county GOP Chairman Sid Dinerstein and others who opposed censure.
Dinerstein
“Sid didn’t want the resolution and because of my prostate problem he found a way to get it (defeated),” Carson told the Politics column.
Dinerstein said he didn’t know of Carson’s wish to vote until it was too late.
“This guy didn’t say a word until our vote was finished and recorded,” Dinerstein said. “To me it was a little like sending in your absentee ballot late.”
****
Big Brother: Not us, says state GOP
The Republican Party of Florida, which is chaired by close Crist ally Jim Greer, took an interest in the censure vote. Carla Rivera, a field rep from the state GOP, attended the meeting and videotaped the county GOP’s deliberations.
“We do that a lot of times when we go to events,” state GOP spokeswoman Katie Gordon said. “It’s not sort of Big Brother overseeing what the local parties are doing. We’re all on the same team.”
****
State Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, is bolstering her Palm Beach County support as she runs for the Palm Beach-Broward state Senate district now held by CFO-seeking state Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach.
Bogdanoff
Bogdanoff is already backed by House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach. And the hosts for a Bogdanoff fund-raiser later this month include some big Boca Raton names: Mayor Susan Whelchel, Boca Councilwoman Susan Haynie, GOP activist Jack Furnari and former county Republican Chairman Tom Sliney.
Bogdanoff faces two Palm Beach County rivals — state Rep. Carl Domino of Jupiter and businessman Nick Loeb of Delray Beach — in a Republican primary in which about 64 percent of Republican voters live in Palm Beach County.
***
Goodman
Retired educator Vincent Goodman, a Republican who was one of Crist’s four finalists for the Palm Beach County commission appointment that eventually went to Democrat Priscilla Taylor, has opened a campaign to run for the seat in 2010. Democrats have a 4-to-1 registration edge over Republicans in Taylor’s minority-dominated District 7.
RPOF Chairman Jim Greer stood by his assertion that President Barack Obama’s health care reforms could lead to “forced, taxpayer-funded abortions.”
Greer held a roundtable with reporters at GOP headquarters this morning, covering a range of issues including the hijinks at town hall meetings throughout the country, including one in Tampa that erupted in physical violence.
Opponents of Obama’s health care package claim that the changes would create “death panels” that would pull the plug on Grandma to save government spending.
“I don’t like the term death panels,” Greer said.
But, he added, “I do believe that trying to pass legislation such as this will provide opportunity for certain types of medical procedures that in some cases Americans would not be aware of or in most cases Americans would not want taxpayer funds to help facilitate.”
The chairman was apparently referring to abortions. Greer yesterday circulated a memo questioning the health care bill and whether it would “work to systematically ‘increase birth intervals between pregnancies,’ opening the very real probability of forced, tax-payer funded abortions.”
He stood by his characterization of the bill this morning.
“If the procedure is financed by taxpayer funds, then in fact the word forced or mandated would be appropriate,” Greer said.
The portion of the bill Greer refers to deals with home visitation services.
The full text follows:
“The term ‘nurse home visitation services’ means home visits by trained nurses to families with a first-time pregnant woman, or a child (under 2 years of age), who is eligible for medical assistance under this title, but only, to the extent determined by the Secretary based upon evidence, that such services are effective in one or more of the following:
(1) Improving maternal or child health and pregnancy outcomes or increasing birth intervals between pregnancies.”
Greer decried the outbursts at town hall meetings but blamed Democrats for spinning the events and not being able to answer questions about the health care bill.
Gov. Charlie Crist and top GOP officials didn’t know of U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez’s decision to resign early until the senator issued a press release on Friday, Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer told reporters this morning.
“There is no one who actually knew the event was actually going to take place until immediately prior to or immediately surrounding that statement,” Greer said.
Although rumors that Martinez would step down early circulated for more than six months prior to his resignation, Greer said Martinez repeatedly assured him he was not quitting. Sort of.
“He would say, ‘No I’m not resigning. Tomorrow,” Greer said.
And despite speculation that Martinez quit early to make it easier for Crist to succeed him, Greer said the senator quit to spend more time with his family and not to help the governor.
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Sentenced to die for crimes judged heinous and cruel, inmates await execution in a 9 feet by 6 feet cell.
