A bipartisan coalition of Florida state senators asked U.S. Transportation Department Secretary Ray LaHood to give them more time to come up with a way to take advantage of the $2.4 billion in federal funds Gov. Rick Scott rejected yesterday.
Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, convinced 25 of her Republican and Democratic colleagues, including Sens. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Wellington, and Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach, sign her letter to LaHood.
They say the Florida Rail Enterprise or the Florida Statewide Passenger Rail Commission, both created by the legislature in 2009, are possible entities to draw down the money to go around Scott, who heads the state’s transportation agency that originally sought the funds under Gov. Charlie Crist. The commission is comprised of nine members – three each appointed by the governor, the House Speaker and the Senate President.
State Sen. Paula Dockery is out of the GOP primary for governor, her campaign announced this morning.
Dockery was a long-shot against Attorney General Bill McCollum, now in a primary battle against Naples multimillionaire Rick Scott.
Dockery said she’s quitting the race because of money.
“It is with mixed feelings that I end my campaign to be your next governor. People who know me know I’m a tenacious fighter unafraid of long odds, especially when the stakes are so high. But I’m also a realist and understand the costs of effectively competing statewide. At this point in the election cycle, I see no financial path to victory. And so today, with both resignation that the resources are not there and appreciation for the journey we shared, I am ending my campaign to be governor of the great state of Florida,” the Lakeland Republican said in a statement.
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.
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.”
The Republican Governors Association hammered Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the state’s presumptive Democratic candidate for governor and former banker.
The ad is the RGA’s first TV campaign for the 2010 election season and shows that the Florida governor’s race will be one of the premier gubernatorial battles in the country.
Attorney General Bill McCollum is facing off against long-shot state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, in a GOP primary.
The ad charges that Sink did away with thousands of jobs while president of Florida’s NationsBank operations while earning $8 million in salary and bonuses, capitalizing on the current animosity toward bankers who took billions of dollars in federal bail-out money, spent much of it on executive bonuses and did little to ease the nation’s credit crunch.
The RGA also launched a new website – alexsinksflorida.com – featuring the video, which ends “Alex Sink. Not one of us. One of them.”
Sink was head of NationsBank in Florida when the financial institution acquired Barnett Bank, in 1998, for $62 billion. The merger resulted in the loss of 6,000 jobs, many of them in Florida, according to the ad.
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.
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.
It sounded vaguely familiar when Republican gubernatorial candidate Paula Dockery announced today that she won the endorsement of fellow state Sen. Nancy Detert. Turns out that Detert has endorsed in the governor’s race, just another candidate.
In July, about four months before Dockery entered the race, Republican Bill McCollum announced that Detert, a Venice Republican and head of the Senate K-12 Committee, was part of his extensive “Statewide Campaign Leadership Team”.
A McCollum spokeswoman said Detert told the campaign about her intention to join Dockery’s effort in November, when she accompanied Dockery to the state elections office to file official campaign papers.
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.”
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.
“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. (more…)
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. (more…)
Tea Partiers have asked Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs to convene a grand jury to investigate state transportation officials’ use of code words in e-mails.
Tea Party Chairman Fred O’Neal filed a request with Meggs yesterday asking for a grand jury to look into “deliberate evasion of Florida’s Public Records law” as well as “as an arrogant disregard” of the state constitution’s Sunshine Law guaranteeing access to public records and meetings.
Tea Party activists dubbed the messages “Wafflegate” after The Palm Beach Post reported that Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos and her deputy Kevin Thibault exchanged three messages last month with the subject lines “pancake,” “pancakes” and “french toast.”
Doug Guetzloe, chairman of “Ax the Tax,” said he plans to file complaints with the ethics commission and Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office and another to Meggs.
“This is a direct violation of public trust,” Guetzloe said. (more…)
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.
Federal agents investigating the corruption case against Broward County political kingmaker Alan Mendelsohn questioned Senate President Jeff Atwater this morning, Atwater’s spokeswoman confirmed.
Federal Bureau of Investigations agent Brian Szczepanski and four others met with Atwater this morning for about 45 minutes, Atwater’s spokeswoman Jaryn Emhof said.
They asked questions about the “committee process and structure,” Emhof said.
“We cannot comment as to the specifics of the questions, as this is an ongoing investigation,” Emhof said.
The agents from the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service have been poking around the Senate all week and have visited with at least five GOP senators, including Atwater.
Atwater’s spokeswoman Jaryn Emhof did not say what the agents asked the North Palm Beach banker about but others interviewed said that they were asked questions about former Sen. Mandy Dawson, Mendelsohn and other senators whom Mendelsohn had held fundraisers for at his Broward County home.
Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, spoke with four federal agents briefly on Monday. Sen. Paula Dockery said she spoke with two agents yesterday for at least an hour. Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said he was questioned on Monday as well.
The agents asked questions about how committee chairmanships are assigned, Dockery and Jones said.
Former Senate President Ken Pruitt picked Dawson to chair a health care committee, an unusual move because she is a Democrat. She also became ill during the 2008 session and was frequently absent but Pruitt allowed her to remain on as chairman of the committee in the GOP-dominated Senate.
The investigators include a lawyer who works in the public integrity section of the Department of Justice in Washington.
They asked questions about how committee chairmanships are assigned and about Dawson’s relationship with Mendelsohn, who was indicted in October.
Mendelsohn was the chief fundraiser for the powerful Florida Medical Association and played a major role in channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to political parties and candidates.
The federal indictment includes the claim that Mendelsohn used three political action committees to funnel $87,000 to a former public official.
The indictment doesn’t name the official. It says the money was passed through an intermediary — also unnamed in the charging document — and disguised as payments for consulting services. The indictment details 10 of the purported payments, totaling $72,000 between May 2004 and December 2005.
The largest alleged payment was $25,000 on June 21, 2004 from “PAC #1.”
As of yesterday, Dockery said she hadn’t counted votes for two weeks, when she was sure she had enough votes to defeat the bill for a third straight time. But rarely do legislative leaders call a session without having enough support. Which brings us to a question…
Could a special session bill that few people can easily explain help launch a gubernatorial campaign? That’s what state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, is hoping.
Dockery
The veteran lawmaker, who announced her underdog campaign last month, is in the spotlight this week in Tallahassee, as she attempts to topple her Republican leadership for a third straight time on railroad issues.
Dockery has consistently derailed plans from Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, and Gov. Charlie Crist for a Central Florida commuter line known as SunRail.
Now she’s attempting to use the issue to capitalize on the anti-tax “Tea Party” movement that has helped buoy Republican Marco Rubio’s insurgent U.S. Senate campaign against Crist. Dockery is hoping to unhinge the campaign of Attorney General Bill McCollum, the favorite to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
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. (more…)
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