JS4Pat
07-27-2010, 06:33 PM
Great article by RLC member Erik Setzer on the corruption within the Republican Party of Florida...
Is This What You Call Leadership?
Article by Erik Setzer
I want to preface this by noting right off the bat that I write this article as an individual, and not at the behest of any organization or campaign. So if you want to hurl firebombs, be sure to direct them to me personally. (Similarly, I’ll take accolades if you’re giving them.)
I’ve heard a lot lately about the wonderful leadership of John Thrasher both in the State Senate and as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF). All of this praise is heaped upon his works over the last year or so. I thought it would be good to examine Mr. Thrasher’s record during that time and see what kind of leadership he’s displayed. Lucky for him, that means skipping the earlier years of his career where he managed to rack up multiple ethics violations and even was paid taxpayer dollars to lobby against a taxpayer protection amendment.
We’ll start in early 2009. Thrasher decided to hedge his bets with the potential re-election of Alex Sink as Florida’s chief financial officer by donating $500 to her campaign. Thrasher’s people try to contend that it shouldn’t count as he was given the money back, but only because Sink later decided to run for another office (governor) and opted to return money given to her for the CFO campaign. The fact still remains that Thrasher was aiding the re-election campaign of a Democrat who would have been running against a Republican. While Thrasher wasn’t bound by a party loyalty oath at the time, the RPOF established that no such thing was needed to file a grievance against someone and impose sanctions upon them, as proved with Will Pitts for such egregious crimes as “wearing a Ron Paul button to a Ron Paul rally after the primary.” Hmm. I’m not sure how a Republican gets preemptively thrown out of the party for supporting a Republican, yet a lobbyist like Thrasher can hand money to a Democrat to oppose a Republican and gets a pass. I guess he greased a few other palms along the way.
During the 2009 special election to replace the late Jim King for State Senate District 8, John Thrasher pulled off some amazing tricks. Aside from leading people to question who he represented as a campaign finance report came out listing 90% of contributions coming from outside of his district and 11% from outside of the state of Florida (leading me to wonder how he could suggest he’s representing the wishes of the people of District 8 rather than whoever around the state is funneling him that money), a number of nasty things happened in the campaign. There were allegations of Thrasher having opposing candidates, their families and their campaign workers followed with the idea of trying to dig up dirt to use against them. One of Dan Quiggle’s phone calls was recorded and phoned out late at night to make it appear the Quiggle campaign was inconsiderate enough to dial in the late evening. A heavily negative campaign saw Thrasher pull out victory in the end with 39% of the vote.
Read the Rest of the Article Here (http://www.rlcnef.org/is-this-what-you-call-leadership/)
Is This What You Call Leadership?
Article by Erik Setzer
I want to preface this by noting right off the bat that I write this article as an individual, and not at the behest of any organization or campaign. So if you want to hurl firebombs, be sure to direct them to me personally. (Similarly, I’ll take accolades if you’re giving them.)
I’ve heard a lot lately about the wonderful leadership of John Thrasher both in the State Senate and as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF). All of this praise is heaped upon his works over the last year or so. I thought it would be good to examine Mr. Thrasher’s record during that time and see what kind of leadership he’s displayed. Lucky for him, that means skipping the earlier years of his career where he managed to rack up multiple ethics violations and even was paid taxpayer dollars to lobby against a taxpayer protection amendment.
We’ll start in early 2009. Thrasher decided to hedge his bets with the potential re-election of Alex Sink as Florida’s chief financial officer by donating $500 to her campaign. Thrasher’s people try to contend that it shouldn’t count as he was given the money back, but only because Sink later decided to run for another office (governor) and opted to return money given to her for the CFO campaign. The fact still remains that Thrasher was aiding the re-election campaign of a Democrat who would have been running against a Republican. While Thrasher wasn’t bound by a party loyalty oath at the time, the RPOF established that no such thing was needed to file a grievance against someone and impose sanctions upon them, as proved with Will Pitts for such egregious crimes as “wearing a Ron Paul button to a Ron Paul rally after the primary.” Hmm. I’m not sure how a Republican gets preemptively thrown out of the party for supporting a Republican, yet a lobbyist like Thrasher can hand money to a Democrat to oppose a Republican and gets a pass. I guess he greased a few other palms along the way.
During the 2009 special election to replace the late Jim King for State Senate District 8, John Thrasher pulled off some amazing tricks. Aside from leading people to question who he represented as a campaign finance report came out listing 90% of contributions coming from outside of his district and 11% from outside of the state of Florida (leading me to wonder how he could suggest he’s representing the wishes of the people of District 8 rather than whoever around the state is funneling him that money), a number of nasty things happened in the campaign. There were allegations of Thrasher having opposing candidates, their families and their campaign workers followed with the idea of trying to dig up dirt to use against them. One of Dan Quiggle’s phone calls was recorded and phoned out late at night to make it appear the Quiggle campaign was inconsiderate enough to dial in the late evening. A heavily negative campaign saw Thrasher pull out victory in the end with 39% of the vote.
Read the Rest of the Article Here (http://www.rlcnef.org/is-this-what-you-call-leadership/)