Lots More To Florida Governor Race Than Meets The Eye

As campaign mudslinging reaches new heights, Florida's two Republican gubernatorial candidates have something else at stake. Should one of them win the November election, they would have tremendous influence over the Republican Party of Florida.

For proof, one must only look at the first thing newly elected Governor Charlie Crist did in 2006: he muscled in a new chairman for day-to-day operations of RPOF. Jim Greer was a little known party insider. His meteoric rise to power and his subsequent fall are well known.

But the story is far from over. While Greer has been indicted for siphoning off some of the money he raised for RPOF, he will soon have the chance to face his accusers.

And as radio commentator Paul Harvey would say, "And now for the rest of the story..." This is the last thing that RPOF want's to hear blaring from radio (or any other media).

Bill McCollum has held many elected offices. He is considered a long time Florida politico that knows where all the skeletons are buried and he's proven his ability to keep his mouth shut.

Perhaps that's why he and legislative leaders Mike Haridopolos & Dean Cannon led the efforts to try and buy off Greer. Why exactly Greer went from party boss to pariah will no doubt be told in court.

But in the meantime RPOF must be very careful to guard the party secrets. That's why longtime insider and lobbyist John Thrasher was rushed into taking Greer's place as chairman. So far, so good.

And with McCollum looking like an easy win, everything seemed fine.

But Rick Scott is looking like the uninvited guest at a private party. Should he win, it will be awfully hard to hide anything from the most powerful elected Republican in the state.

And that friends, is not going to be easily tolerated by insiders that want a nice dark place to conduct business. Big business. Like raking in millions from special interests looking to buy favors from elected officials.

Money is very important to RPOF. Florida election laws place strict limits on the amounts individuals and corporations can give to candidates. Those same rules allow UNLIMITED amounts of special interest money into races as long as it is funneled through a political party.

This has the perverse result of making the party even stronger. And it also shields politicians from being directly linked to any pay-to-play conflict of interests.

The problem with Rick Scott is that he's an outsider that hasn't been tested. Will he keep his mouth shut, or will he go digging in the graveyard? These are questions that will be answered shortly (or not at all IF he does not win)!

Not surprisingly, all the RPOF brass have come out strongly for McCollum. They know that this house of cards is best kept in tack by protecting it from outsiders.

Chairman Jim Greer Continues Strong-Arming Florida Republican Party

This evening Brevard County Republican Executive Committee Chairman Jason Steele was interviewed about Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer's attempts to shut down the 2010 Republican Party Primary process. Greer has been trying to shut out former House Speaker Marco Rubio from opposing Gov. Charlie Crist for in the US Senate race (link to broadcast below).

I wanted to add my comments as well, because this ominous trend of Republican brass attempting to intimidate candidates in primary elections holds tremendous challenges for us as Party grassroots activists. Greer contends that some primaries are just to expensive and distracting. Instead he wants to go ahead and pick for us the candidates that we should vote for.

The problem with this is that now, especially when the Party is trying to figure out if it wants a more moderate (some call it Democrat Lite) Republicanism or a more conservative brand, the decision is not going to be made by the Party members themselves. This is precisely what Primaries are supposed to solve. But Boss Greer has other intentions.

In this interview I was struck by the lack of any coherent or logical argument by Greer to support his position. His constant 'uh's' and superficial replies either show him to be unable to argue his position or else he just considers that his opinion is the only one that matters.

Unfortunately the interviewer did not ask the hard questions of exactly what voice do the Party members have in this system. We must challenge Greer and the rest of the Party bigwigs that they are not to strip us of our rights to have fair and open primaries.

I commend Chairman Steele for beginning a drive to get county chairman to pass resolutions against these tactics. But even more I think that we as Florida Republicans have just as much right and duty to make sure our voices are heard as well.

Here is the phone number for the RPOF in Tallahassee (850)222-7920. And here is their email form http://www.rpof.org/contact.php (caution: you must go to this link and then use their form to email). I'd like to ask everyone to tell Chairman Greer to keep out of the Florida Primary.

Chairman Greer also makes a 'misstatement' of fact in the interview. One was that no resources of the RPOF have been used to favor Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio. Actually the RPOF has utilized it's massive email lists to repeatedly trumpet Crist as the best choice for the US Senate. Not one email has gone out reminding members of Rubio's candidacy.

Please listen to the interview below and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.wmfe.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9501&news_iv_ctrl=1441

P.S. I'm writing this immediately following the interview. As yet the podcast is not yet loaded onto the site.

Nick Egoroff
Orlando Liberty Organizer