Florida headlines are fairly drooling over revelations that Republican candidate for governor Tom Gallagher is a jerk.
Miami Herald: Gallagher’s Family Values Take Hit With Revelations
Sarasota Herald Tribune: Divorce Records Dogging Hopeful
Bradenton Herald: Gallagher Apologizes for Affair, Marijuana Use
Palm Beach Post: Gallagher Apologizes for Misdeeds
Sun-Sentinel: Gubernatorial Candidate Gallagher Used Marijuana, Cheated on First Wife
Tampa Tribune: Gallagher Admits Fault For Failed Marriage
Any outrage is a bit misplaced. In February, when charges of insider trading while on the taxpayer dole arose, hardly a gasp was heard from Pensacola to the Keys. Lakeland Ledger:
Tax records show Gallagher made at least 70 separate online orders to buy or sell AES Corp. stock in 2003, and 60 of those came within weeks or days of five significant federal announcements about the [government] pipeline between the Bahamas and Broward County.
…Gallagher joined Gov. Jeb Bush and other Cabinet members when they voted in 2004 to support an easement for the AES project as well as a competing company’s pipeline proposal…He didn’t declare his ownership before voting but it was included on his annual public disclosure forms.
The deals were made on his state-issued computer during office hours while Gallagher was carrying out his duties as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer. And they weren’t the first.
Gallagher’s online trading and other investments first were reported by the St. Petersburg Times…The paper noted the tax records also showed Gallagher had invested in insurance companies while he was Florida’s insurance commissioner and in an airline that had a contract with the state.
But infidelity and drug use are…so much more interesting. In this case, anyway.
The divorce documents…show that Gallagher’s ex-wife, Ann Louise, kicked him out of their Miami home in 1979 when she discovered he had been having a yearlong affair with a Tallahassee legislative aide.
At the time, Gallagher was a state representative from Coconut Grove and owned a Tallahassee condominium, leased by his then-girlfriend, Stephanie W. McBee.
After Ann Louise filed for divorce in 1979, an allegedly intoxicated Gallagher returned to their home and tore a screen off the house, the court documents say. The next day, he returned and took the dog. Ann Louise Gallagher asked a judge for a restraining order…
In a copy of a September 1979 deposition of McBee obtained by The Miami Herald, the former girlfriend testified that during 1978 and 1979, she traveled with Gallagher to Atlanta, Texas, California, Miami, Orlando, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Delaware and Nassau in the Bahamas. She stayed at his Miami home for three days when his wife was in Michigan, and he gave her gifts…
McBee said she gave Gallagher gifts as well, including a handmade needlepoint belt that Ann Louise Gallagher later found and burned.
Good for Ann Louise. She sounds like a real person (not to mention that one should always burn needlepoint belts when one finds them), unlike the current Mrs. Gallagher, who embellished in all the right places as her husband (for now) played to the Christian right.
”I know that many of you have been somewhat skeptical about some of the changes that have taken place in my life — that it’s some kind of a campaign strategy,” Gallagher said. “But I’m here to tell you, Christ does change lives, and I’m a different person because of it.”
Gallagher credited his wife, Laura, a telecommunications lawyer and devout Southern Baptist, with turning his life.
Laura Gallagher said she wanted people to know that “Tom and I discussed all of these issues before we were married, including his divorce and even that he tried marijuana.
”It’s difficult to acknowledge past mistakes like this, but it’s something we all have to do and I’m proud of Tom for doing that,” she said.
The candidate said that although he used marijuana, he never used other illegal drugs…
I don’t know. Can you say, “weasel?” I thought you could.
But not morons like John Stemberger, president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council, affiliated with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and leader of the movement to have an anti-gay marriage initiative put on Florida’s ballot.
Gallagher’s Republican opponent, Charlie Crist, is suspected of being gay despite his seven-month, childless marriage in 1979 with no subsequent heterosexual romances, but a sense of style that would never allow him to wear handmade, needlepoint belts. Despite this, Crist has come out in favor of marriage being only between a man and a woman, and against gays adopting children.
Gallagher’s closest supporters from the religious right sent out missives late Monday affirming their support despite his past.
”The crux of our faith is the cross, is repentance, is redemption,” said John Stemberger, a leader in the Florida’s Christian conservative movement. “I’ve been around awhile. I’ve known people who are what I call phony political conversions, but I’ve spent a lot of time with Tom and Laura and I think he’s genuine.”
Oh yeah. Just as genuine a loving-your-fellow-man-Christian as you are, John.
