An anonymous Web site aimed at embarrassing Republican Gov. Charlie Crist’s political rival appears to have backfired after one of Crist’s top political advisers admitted that he helped develop the site.

This latest twist in a suddenly sizzling primary race is at least the second time Rich Heffley, a powerful Republican political operative, has assisted a shadowy political group on behalf of Crist.

“This was me going off half-cocked and I’ll never do it again,” said Heffley, an influential Tallahassee lobbyist who has billed Florida Republicans nearly $6 million for campaign work in the past decade.

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Heffley

Heffley, who served on the Florida Elections Commission from 1999-2003 after an appointment from then-Gov. Jeb Bush, created a company during Crist’s 2006 gubernatorial primary, Issues Advocacy, that has worked for only one political client in the state: a somewhat secretive campaign committee known as Conservative Values Coalition.

Rest of the story here.

The conservative blog RedState.com is reporting that Republican strategist Rich Heffley, a lobbyist and longtime advisor to Gov. Charlie Crist, may have ties to a web site created Tuesday to embarrass Crist’s U.S. Senate GOP opponent, former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

The blog notes that one of its readers found source code in the site that showed an image came from computer files of “rheffley.”

Heffley has not returned a phone call. The day-old web site has since been taken down. UPDATE: The TruthAboutRubio site is back up and cleaned of any mention of “rheffley.”