Gov. Charlie Crist says he’s in the dark about state GOP leaders’ demands that he pay them back for travel expenses unassociated with party business.

“It’s the typical political season stuff that we’re going to see. I think it’s sad and just indicates how partisanship gets in the way,” Crist told reporters this morning after a memorial service for missing children at the Capitol.

Republican Party of Florida Chairman John Thrasher threatened Friday to sue Crist and Jim Greer, Crist’s hand-picked party chairman, to get reimbursed for hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs. The expenses in question were charged to Greer and former party executive director Delmar Johnson. Crist did not have one of the party American Express cards in question.

Greer resigned in January and was charged in June with fraud, theft and money laundering for his alleged misuse of party money. Greer has pleaded not guilty. Greer maintains he is innocent.

Thrasher and other GOP leaders huddled for hours over an internal audit Friday at their annual meeting in Orlando but refused to release the audit to the public. Thrasher, a former House Speaker who is also a state
senator from St. Augustine, said he may take Crist, Greer and Johnson to court to get the money back.

“I don’t even know what they’re talking about. As you know, they haven’t been transparent. They haven’t
released any of the report. So it’s hard to even know what they’re talking about,” Crist said.

Crist, who abandoned the GOP this spring to run as an independent in the U.S. Senate race against Republican Marco Rubio and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat, said Thrasher has not asked him for reimbursement of the alleged charges.

“We don’t even know what they are. Neither do you. They won’t show us the report,” Crist said.

The Republican Party of Florida’s statement that it is considering legal action to recover “inappropriate expenses” by Gov. Charlie Crist, former Chairman Jim Greer and former executive director Delmar Johnson was blasted by spokesmen for all three today.

The party says it is considering litigation based on an audit that it wouldn’t release. Click here to read the whole story.

Crist campaign spokesman Danny Kanner accused the GOP of “political games” to undermine Crist, who left the GOP in April to pursue a no-party Senate bid.

Greer attorney Damon Chase accused the party of “blatant political grandstanding….They’re going after the three guys they don’t like.”

Johnson’s attorney, Bob Leventhal, said: “It’s quite disingenuous of them to make comments and not release the report…Mr. Johnson would love for them to release the audit.”

LAKE BUENA VISTA — Republican Party of Florida leaders today said they might pursue legal action to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in “inappropriate expenses” by Gov. Charlie Crist, his hand-picked former GOP chairman and a former top party aide between 2007 and 2009.

State GOP Chairman John Thrasher made the announcement after he and the party’s executive board spent three hours reviewing an audit of party finances while Jim Greer was chairman.

Crist’s campaign spokesman accused the GOP of playing “the same old political games” against Crist, who left the party in April to pursue an independent Senate bid.

The expenses, largely travel-related, were put on the American Express cards of Greer and former GOP executive director Delmar Johnson, but many of them benefited Crist, Thrasher said.

Read the RPOF statement after the jump…

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UPDATE: Scott’s campaign sent out details for three “unity events” on Monday, but didn’t include details about who would be there. There is a “meeting with statesmen” in Tampa. Could those be some of the “Tallahassee insider” who were “crying in their cocktails” on Tuesday?

Here’s the schedule: 9:30 a.m., meeting with statesmen, University Club of Tampa; 2 p.m., Tampa unity event, Tampa Jet Center (tentative); 6 p.m., Orlando unity event, Marks Street Senior Center.

Sounds like the details are still being hammered out, but watch for Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott to announce a multi-day tour of the state early next week with the incoming GOP Senate and House bosses, Mike Haridopolos and Dean Cannon.

(You might remember Cannon and Haridopolos from this statewide fly-around a couple weeks ago. At this point, the tour will be missing Bill McCollum, sort of an important component for the whole unity thing…)

Scott initiated a conference call with the two former McCollum men on Thursday after he had a sit-down with Republican Party of Florida Chairman John Thrasher and a phone conversation with Republican Governor’s Association Chairman Haley Barbour, who diverted his Mississippi-to-Orlando flight on Tuesday after results showed Scott pulling off the upset.

We also hear a number of lobbyists and other high-ranking Republicans showed up at Scott’s Fort Lauderdale headquarters on Wednesday and Thursday hoping to play the broker in Scott’s group-hug with the GOP establishment.

Scott didn’t go for it, instead relying on his background as a mergers-and-acquisitions attorney and venture capitalist to negotiate his own path through the next two months.

That’s how Florida Republican Party Chairman John Thrasher described Rick Scott’s gubernatorial campaign on Sunday in letter to “fellow Republicans.”

But heck, that’s just water under the bridge now that Scott is the party’s nominee. Right?

“We’re going to ask for his help raising money for grass-roots support and we’re going to find out where we can help him,” Thrasher said. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Thrasher was on his way today to Fort Lauderdale, home of Scott’s campaign headquarters. He and Scott will sit down for some meetings Thursday.

“We’re going to start putting our political plan together,” said Thrasher. “The election is behind us and we’re ready to move on. I’m optimistic about where we are.”

The Republican Governor’s Association and the Republican Party of Florida are asking Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott to pull a TV ad that accuses primary rival Bill McCollum of helping former state party chairman Jim Greer “hide financial irregularities.”

There is no evidence linking McCollum to the corruption charges that landed Greer in jail earlier this summer. But McCollum did play a role in the secret negotiations to force Greer’s resignation and publicly said afterward that the party should not disclose the internal financial records in question.

McCollum now says he will support releasing the forensic audit of the party.

Here are the statements from state Sen. John Thrasher, the state party chairman, and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the RGA chairman.

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Former Gov. Jeb Bush returned to the Republican dinner circuit Friday night, keynoting a Pasco County GOP dinner and making his first joint campaign appearance with Senate hopeful Marco Rubio.

Bush clearly had star power among the 600 or more partisans who attended. One audience member drew applause when he shouted that Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, should make his own run for the White House.

“Elvis was in the house tonight, wasn’t he?” Republican Party of Florida Chairman John Thrasher said afterward.

Here’s a story about the event.

And some expanded Bush excerpts are after the jump….

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Charlie Crist was surrounded by a crowd of cheering admirers in his St. Petersburg hometown when he announced he is dropping out of the GOP U.S. Senate primary.

On the fourth floor rotunda of the Capitol, not so much.

The rotunda’s typically a raucous swirl of frenzied last-minute activity on the penultimate day of the 2010 session,

But gone was the cacophony of just moments before as Crist’s tanned visage appeared on two large-screen televisions.

Dozens of lobbyists sat, stood with their arms folded or leaned against marble pillars watching the national broadcast of the governor’s decision.

The response? Utter silence, with one exception – when Crist said “I was never one who sought elective office to demagogue or point fingers.”
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State Republican Party Chairman John Thrasher didn’t mince words about Gov. Charlie Crist’s decision to run with no party affiliation to avoid a GOP primary in the U.S. Senate race against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

“He’s been gone a long time, in my opinion, and this just kind of makes it official,” Thrasher, a state senator from St. Augustine told reporters shortly after Crist’s announcement.

Thrasher won’t ask for his GOP registration card back, though.

“All I’m going to do is take his picture down at Republican Party headquarters. And probably put it on E-bay and see what we do,” Thrasher said.

When asked how much he thought it would bring, Thrasher said: “Questionable.”

The Republican Party of Florida essentially kicked former Chairman Jim Greer out of the party today, stripping him of everything but his voter registration card.

Greer’s successor, Sen. John Thrasher, removed Greer from all offices Greer held at a secret meeting in Tallahassee today.

The RPOF executive board unanimously supported Thrasher’s decision, Thrasher said in a statement.

Greer’s ouster from the party comes amid a federal investigation into the past chairman and other former high-ranking GOP officials and their credit card spending.
Greer filed suit today against the party last week, accusing the GOP of reneging on almost $124,000 he says the party owes him in severance pay.

“Based on the information that has come to light during the recent Party audit, I have determined that Mr. Greer has engaged in activities that have injured the name and status of the Republican Party of Florida, and has grossly interfered with the activities of the Republican Party,” Thrasher said in the statement.

Greer sued the GOP for allegedly reneging on almost $124,000 he says the party owes him in severance pay. He also accused the party in the lawsuit of offering him $200,000 in hush money, which RPOF officials deny.

Thrasher ordered an audit of the spending under Greer, and Gov. Charlie Crist, who hand-picked Greer to head the party after his 2006 election, asked federal investigators to launch an inquiry into possible misspending.

Sen. John Thrasher, chairman of the maligned Republican Party of Florida, has a lot to contend with.

Things are heating up in the legislature with less than 10 days to go before the session’s end.

Federal investigators are snooping around former high-ranking GOP officials, including his predecessor at the Party Jim Greer, and their credit card spending.

And Gov. Charlie Crist is considering abandoning the party that helped him to victory in the state Senate, two Cabinet seats and the governor’s mansion.

Crist’s consideration of dropping out of the GOP primary against former House Speaker Marco Rubio and running as an independent in the fall has Crist’s former allies (and those who weren’t big fans of the governor to begin with) coming out in droves to distance themselves from the former sure-bet for U.S. Senate.

Thrasher offered some advice to Crist’s critics, including House Speaker Larry Cretul: Chill.
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After repeatedly insisting that he’s not going to jump the Republican Party ship, Gov. Charlie Crist had a simple response to what he would say to Floridians if he does now that he’s considering running for U.S. Senate as an independent.

“Things change,” Crist said.

Those things might include GOP leaders demanding that Crist drop out of the race altogether if he decides to run as a no-party candidate.

Yesterday, the executive director of the National Republican Senate Committee said he believes there’s “zero chance” Crist will remain in the GOP primary against former House Speaker Marco Rubio, once an underdog in the race but who now holds a double-digit lead over Crist in the polls.

“It is our view that if Gov. Crist believes he cannot win a primary then the proper course of action is he drop out of the race and wait for another day,” NRSC executive director Rob Jesmer wrote in a memo.

Crist dismissed the suggestion in his typical populist style.

“I think I’ll take the advice of people in Florida instead of the advice of people in Washington. They’re telling us a lot,” he said.

Numerous GOP leaders in and outside of Florida are distancing themselves from Crist since he vetoed two bills important to Republicans in the legislature: a bill measure that would have allowed “leadership funds” and a teacher merit-pay bill pushed by Sen. John Thrasher, who is also the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.

He said he’s “getting a lot of calls and a lot of text messages” offering him advice on what to do.

Crist acknowledged the almost surreal shift in the race in which he was once the hands-down leader and GOP officials virtually pretended that Rubio was not even in the race.

“These are unusual times. Arent’ they?” he said.

Thrasher, who said Crist reneged after telling him he would sign the controversial teacher bill into law, offered some lukewarm encouragement to Crist.

“In spite of policy differences that we’ve had, we have a big tent and I just hope he stays Republican,” the chairman said.

Republicans who once backed Crist may abandon him if he runs as an independent, which could hurt the Republican nominee. Or, he could take their support with him, something Republicans fear.

“I don’t know that they do. That’s the dilemma he probably has now. Again, you’d have to go follower-by-follower to find that out,” said Thrasher, R-Jacksonville.

More Post On Politics videos from the past couple weeks here.

Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bill McCollum blamed the teachers’ union for Florida’s failure to win out on the first round of federal “Race to the Top” education funds.

The Florida Education Association, that opposed the stimulus funds, is “now responsible for the loss of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars for Sunshine State students, teachers and schools,” McCollum campaign manager Matt Williams said in a press release.

“Today’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Education that Florida was not selected as a first round winner of the Race to the Top competition is a disappointing reminder the unions will continue to put the interests of bureaucracy over the best interests of Florida’s children,” Williams accuses.

Sen. John Thrasher, who also serves as the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, joined in the teacher-bashing chorus although Gov. Charlie Crist said he remained hopeful that the state could ultimately win some of the $4 billion in federal funds.

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.”

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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.

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.

But he won’t release the statements, either.

Despite a trend of anti-establishment activism running through conservative politics, Florida Republicans on Saturday selected a Tallahassee insider to lead the party into a critical election year.

State Sen. John Thrasher, a former lobbyist and state House speaker, defeated two opponents in an extraordinary special election called after former Chairman Jim Greer was forced to resign over accusations of excessive spending of party money and improperly influencing primary races.

The election is expected to have repercussions in the state Senate, where Thrasher is chairman of the Ethics & Elections Committee and one of 40 members hoping to turn around the state’s escalating unemployment and spiraling foreclosure crisis.

Thrasher said he would step down from the elections committee position, an offer Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, indicated he would accept. But Atwater insisted Thrasher could simultaneously focus on another year of state budget problems — his duty as a state lawmaker — and rapidly rebuilding a party that, until recently, had been the envy of Republicans nationwide.

Story here.

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.

Stay tuned for a response from Atwater.

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.