Charlie Crist, Florida’s RINO Governor, may have gotten his wish.
The Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times
reported Monday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and
the IRS are conducting investigations of credit card use by the
Republican Party of Florida.
Quoting “sources familiar with the inquiry,” the two
newspapers claim the targets of the investigation are cashiered
RPOF officials Jim Greer and Delmar Johnson and senatorial
candidate Marco Rubio of Miami. At issue is whether these men
used their party credit cards for personal items instead of party
business and failed to report income.
This is a difficult report to confirm. Like the Tar Baby,
the federals don’t say nothin.’ “It’s office policy
that we cannot confirm or deny the existence of any
investigation,” said Kelly Dougherty, a spokesman for the U.S.
Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee. “We can’t confirm or deny,”
echoed Dan Boone of IRS. I didn’t waste a toll call to the FBI.
If the little hand was on the three and the big hand was on the
12, those guys wouldn’t confirm it was three o’clock.
But even without official confirmation, there’s little
reason to doubt an investigation is underway. Republican Crist
(Republican for how much longer we don’t know) asked for a
federal investigation of RPOF earlier this month after Democratic
officials, including Florida CFO and Democratic candidate for
governor Alex Sink, asked him to.
Pressure for an investigation came after media stories of
lavish credit card spending by Greer and Johnson, and other RPOF
officials. The reasoning went that while this matter needs
attention, it could not be looked into by the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement because this agency answers to the Florida
cabinet, a nest of political candidates this year. Crist agreed
that it was, however, entirely appropriate that the Republican
Party be investigated by the Tallahassee U.S. Attorney, who
answers to Eric Holder. And the IRS who answers to
you-know-who.
“It’s a mess,” Crist said when inviting the federals to do
a full body cavity search of his own party. “This thing
stinks.”
It does. Some Republican card holders may have, as Ricky
was forever saying Lucy had “some esplainin’ to do.” Not least of
which will almost certainly be Crist’s hand-picked former RPOF
Chairman Jim Greer, fired because he was much better at spending
campaign money than collecting it.
It stinks also because it’s clear that the main target for
Crist’s faux indignation is Rubio, Crist’s conservative opponent
for a U.S. Senate seat whose campaign has been so successful he
has nearly driven Crist out of the Republican Party. Compared to
Crist-man Greer, Rubio’s credit card expenditures were trifling.
Rubio says he paid any personal expenditures on his own American
Express Card. No reason now, beyond Crist’s political ambitions,
to disbelieve this.
Without the kind of conservative record Florida Republicans
are looking for in a Senate candidate this year, Crist has been
left with going negative against Rubio, running ads suggesting
Rubio is a villain who’s been taking money from the RPOF through
his party credit card.
Rubio campaign communications director Alex Burgos said the
campaign has not been contacted by federal agents, but says he is
confident the campaign and Rubio can withstand any scrutiny that
comes their way.
“Marco is very comfortable if there is an inquiry,” Burgos
said. “We would see it as a good chance to set the record
straight once and for all and get this nonsense behind
us.”
Of course very little in politics is ever settled “once and
for all,” and America has a venerable tradition of
administrations using the IRS to go after their political
opponents. What a gift this would be to President Obama, who now
has a justification for investigating, all the way to Election
Day, a popular senatorial candidate who says his only reason for
wanting to go to Washington is to throw a spanner into the spokes
of the Obama agenda.
It’s not just Rubio whose efforts can be stymied by this
investigation. The Florida Republican Party, in what has been
shaping up as a very Republican year in Florida, could be damaged
more by an investigation of wrong-doing, regardless of how much
wrong-doing did or didn’t take place, than by anything Democratic
Party candidates can say about issues.
The RPOF won’t say any more than the feds. While declining
to say if there is an investigation underway, RPOF spokesman
Katie Betta quoted RPOF Chairman John Thrasher as saying, “There
is nothing more important than restoring the integrity of our
party, the faith of our membership, and the public’s trust, and
we will take whatever steps are necessary to fully cooperate in
order to ensure a speedy and through investigation.”
That’s clear enough. We won’t say whether there is an
investigation or not, but we will cooperate fully with it.
Thrasher is right that the issue is trust. You don’t win
elections at any time, but especially in 2010, without it.
However much damage this ultimately does to the Florida
Republican Party, much of the damage will have been
self-inflicted. The party exercised very little oversight over
party credit card use. The rules for their use were very
loosey-goosey. Now the party is looking at a potentially serious
image problem that could have been avoided.
Crist may be getting his wish with an investigation, but he
may not be all that happy with how things turn out. If there does
turn out to be election violations or other infractions, Crist
was certainly in a better position to exercise control over party
operations when things went off the rails than Rubio. He was
certainly closer to Greer, who may turn out to be the center of
any investigation. Crist certainly hopes this business damages
Rubio, the chief obstacle to Crist’s senatorial ambitions. But
when all the rocks have been turned over, Crist may have more
esplainin’ to do than Rubio.
