Day: June 2, 2010

RPOF’s Jim Greer Arrested, Indicted Wednesday

Buck Banks
Piggy Bank: Greer in happier times
Piggy Bank: Greer in happier times

It’s a tale of greed, hubris, dumb shrewdness and more greed and hubris for good measure. For months we watched the slow downfall of Jim “Big Jim” Greer, former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida (hereafter referred to as the Piggy Bank). Greer hit bottom Wednesday when Florida state agents and Osceola County deputies came to his “posh Oviedo mansion,” as the Orlando Sentinel described it, and arrested him as he was shaving.

A statewide grand jury indicted Greer, 47, of Oviedo, a bedroom community of Orlando, on four counts of grand theft and one count each of money laundering and running an organized scheme to defraud. All are felonies. He was being held today at the Seminole County Jail on $105,000 bail and if convicted could get up to 75 years in prison.

Greer was forced to resign his chairmanship in February under pressure from the party establishment with whom he was at odds over his endorsing then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Mel Martinez. Party right-wingers are backing in the Senate race former speaker of the state house Marco Rubio, whose horizontal ideological slide to the right has mirrored Greer’s vertical ethical freefall.

Greer had been handpicked by Crist to head the state GOP organization three years earlier:

Asked about Greer’s arrest at an unrelated press conference this morning, Crist said: “I think it’s obviously disappointing and surprising. I have faith in our judicial system.” He added that he didn’t feel “complicit” in anything Greer may have done.

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Breaking News: Ex Florida GOP Chair Arrested on Fraud Charges

Trish

Seminole County Jail Inmate Jim Greer
Seminole County Jail Inmate Jim Greer
Jim Greer, ex head of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) and huge Gov. Charlie Crist supporter (and vice versa) was arrested today on six counts of fraud for funneling money from GOP donors for his personal use.

The indictment is likely to shake up the Florida Senate race. Gov Crist, running without party affiliation, is a personal friend of Greer’s, instrumental in his chairmanship, and continued to support him after calls began for his resignation. Former House Speaker Marco Rubio, along with other Florida Republican politicians, has been paying back money he received from the party under Greer.

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Ill Sen: GOP’s Mark Kirk, Reeling from False Military Service Claims, Outed As Gay after Pro-DADT Vote

Jon Ponder

Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who is also a Naval Reserves Commander
Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who is also a Naval Reserves Commander
Another U.S. Senate “trophy seats” targeted by Republicans — this one is the Illinois seat once held by Pres. Obama — appears to be a less-certain pick up now that the Republican frontrunner in the race, Rep. Mark Kirk, has been outed as gay.

The other two trophies are the Nevada seat currently held by Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Delaware seat formerly held by Vice Pres. Biden. While Biden’s seat will likely flip to liberal GOP Rep. Mike Castle (one of the first Republican pols to be shouted down by tea baggers at town hall meetings last summer), Reid’s 12 Republican opponents, including “chicken woman” Sue Lowden, seem to be imploding one by one.

Kirk has held a single digit lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias in early polling. But even before he was outed yesterday by Mike Rogers, editor of BlogActive in Washington, D.C., the Kirk campaign was reeling from the revelation that Kirk, who is an officer in the Naval reserves, has claimed on more than one occasion to have received a commendation that in fact he’d never been awarded.

Update: Today Kirk’s campaign has acknowledged another misstatement about his service. A bio erroneously stated that Kirk served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In fact, Kirk was serving in the United States at the time, so he actually served during, not in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

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Verbatim

Buck Banks

I want to see my president not in a suit in Washington, DC. I want to see him down on the Gulf Coast, not just for a day of photo shoots, but on the job, leading the effort. When he’s not there, I want Joe Biden there, I don’t want him in Africa going to a soccer game. Let’s show some leadership.

— U.S. Sen. George LeMieux (R-FL), Charlie Crist’s handpicked Senate placeholder … at least that was the original plan.

CA Sen: Fiorina Leads Tom Campbell 38% – 23%, Campbell Campaign Goes Dark Six Days Before Vote, Tea Bagger Trails Fiorina By 22 Points

Jon Ponder

Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiorina
Support for Tea Party’s DeVore Nearly Doubled to 16% After Sarah Palin Endorsed Fiorina

With the California primary election in less than a week, the race to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer has taken a harrowing turn for Republicans. It appears that failed former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina now has an insurmountable lead over former Rep. Tom Campbell. The Campbell campaign reportedly ceased television advertising as of June 1.

In the 2000 U.S. Senate race, Campbell lost to incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein by 19 points, but Democrats considered him to be much more electable against Boxer this year than Fiorina, a self-financed political novice who was fired from Hewlett-Packard after a scandal that included allegations she wiretapped members of the HP board of directors.

Interestingly, in the month or so since right-wing celebrity Sarah Palin dissed the tea bagger candidate Chuck DeVore by giving her kiss-of-death endorsement to Fiorina, his polling has almost doubled, from 9 percent in early April to 16 percent now.

It’s hard to prove that Palin’s endorsement of Fiorina — whose gaffes as a McCain-Palin surrogate often dominated headlines in the 2008 campaign — has helped DeVore. It’s just as likely he’s gotten a bump among extreme right-wing voters from a web ad in which he compared himself to Jack Bauer, the lead character in the Fox terror-porn series “24.”
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