Republican Liberty Caucus of Northeast Florida: Bringing Liberty Back in the Republican Party of Duval County, Clay County, St. Johns County, Nassau County, Baker County, Putnam County, Flagler County

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.

Less than four months after Thrasher got back into office, he found his next step up the ladder of influence: RPOF Chairman.  The Jim Greer story had gotten too big to keep a lid on and the RPOF executive committee was ready to oust him with a vote at a special session in early January.  Greer surprised everyone by changing his mind from fighting that vote to resigning and letting someone else replace him.  The phones weren’t even hung up on the first calls about his resignation before Thrasher’s name appeared as a successor.  Thrasher was heavily pushed before anyone could get into the race.  There were some creative reasons given for why he was needed at the helm, chief being that as a lobbyist he could get a lot of money for the RPOF (which, as all lobbyists know, would come with strings attached).  But it was let slip at a Duval County Republican Executive Committee (REC) meeting that there was a deal in place involving Thrasher, Mike Haridopolos, and Dean Cannon, which said that Thrasher must be elected as the next chairman of the RPOF.  As such, it was a given that he would win in the end, even if Sharon Day pulled off a few votes.  There were claims made that no such deal existed, it was just a slip of the tongue.  Unfortunately, Greer later revealed the documents, which did indeed have Thrasher’s signature on them twice (including in an area that was to be signed upon his becoming the next RPOF chairman).

However, Thrasher wasn’t even eligible to run for the position of RPOF Chairman.  To do that, you have to be a county state committeeman, state committeewoman, or REC chairman.  To get around this problem, the St. Johns County REC was asked to have their state committeeman step down so that the SJCREC could elect Thrasher into that position to make him eligible for nomination.  In the process, the SJCREC purged their rosters of several members, claiming “valid” reasons, though in the process they removed RLC member Cliff Johnson III, who was not eligible for removal.  This allowed them to claim a unanimous vote for Thrasher.  It’s worth noting that the state committeeman and state committeewoman positions are on the county ballots, publicly elected offices, meaning that the will of the voters was superseded to allow Thrasher to become RPOF Chairman.  This isn’t the first time such a thing happened, either.  In 2006, Jim Greer wasn’t eligible to run for RPOF Chairman when Governor Charlie Crist wanted him placed in that position, so the Seminole County REC had their state committeeman step down and elected Greer into the position.

So what has Thrasher done with his newfound position, which is also very helpful in getting his agenda as a State Senator passed?  Well, he brags that the RPOF has cut $1.5 million from its budget from last year.  Well, honestly, that’s easy enough to do now that you’ve no longer got credit cards being used by party “leaders” like Greer, Haridopolos, Cannon, Marco Rubio, and several others, or money being spent on private flights and such.  It’s hard to even know how much money has been saved and where it’s being saved, as the RPOF is keeping a tight lid on their finances and not wanting the public to see them.

Then there’s the matter of SB-6, which raises several questions for Thrasher in his role as State Senator and RPOF Chairman.  He rallied the Republican legislators of Florida to push through the bill, which of course wound up being vetoed by Crist.  There is notable concern over the fact that some educational testing companies paid serious money to a lobbying firm Thrasher has ties to (having earned $1.5 million from the firm last year and also receiving $7200 for his Senate campaign), not to mention the serious constitutional questions regarding the bill.  Also a serious charge is that Thrasher traded support for one bill to get support for SB-6.  That bill would have opened up a study on funding for public education throughout Florida, which is being pushed by South Florida legislators to grab money from North Florida schools (including the district Thrasher is meant to be representing) and push that money into South Florida schools instead.  That legislation was opposed by Jim King, who Thrasher replaced.  Thrasher claimed, “The reason I supported it was to shut people up who disagree with the [changed] formula.”  Really?  So you simply voted for something just to “shut people up” and not based on whether you felt it was good for the voters you’re meant to be representing?  How exactly is it leadership to cave in and support something just to “shut people up?”

While Thrasher has been bragging up his ability to clean up the mess left behind by Greer, he refuses to clean up the “party purge” that happened last year when Greer and his handpicked grievance committee ousted a number of Republicans.  You would think Thrasher would be sympathetic to a Republican being tossed out for supporting another Republican, since Thrasher could have theoretically been tossed himself for supporting a Democrat against a Republican.  Instead, he had the RPOF counsel find any reason possible to claim that he could do nothing, despite the oft-referenced RPOF Rule 22 stating that the Chairman is the “final authority in all Republican matters as granted under Article VII of the Constitution of the Republican Party of Florida.”  It wasn’t so much that Thrasher couldn’t even open the cases for a review, it was that he didn’t want to, especially as some of those involved had aided his opponents in the District 8 race and spoke against his becoming RPOF Chairman.

Thrasher has also been interesting in how he interprets “not endorsing or supporting candidates in primaries.”  At a St. Johns County barbeque, he stood in front of a crowd that included U.S. Senate primary candidate Bill Kogut and announced that while he can’t endorse either candidate in the primary for governor, he could speak in favor of a man “with no primary,” Marco Rubio.  As one of Rubio’s primary opponents was right there in the room with him, that was a serious slap in the face of those running against Rubio.  When called on it, Thrasher tried to back off and say that he didn’t say he was endorsing Rubio, simply supporting him.  Though, on that note, the specific language that Thrasher used at a later First Coast Republican Club meeting was that he and the RPOF would not be “supporting” any candidate against another in the primaries.  That isn’t what it seemed like to many people when Thrasher released a statement against Rick Scott for Scott’s campaign tying Bill McCollum to Jim Greer (a fair enough point, considering Greer had helped McCollum in the past).  It was also fishy to see Republican legislative leaders like Cannon and Haridopolos using 527 groups to funnel money into ads for McCollum’s campaign, without a single word against it from Thrasher.  Former RPOF Chairman Tom Slade noted this in a letter that was forwarded to the Florida Times-Union.

The most recent display of Thrasher’s brilliant leadership came at the June meeting of the Duval County REC, where he was to speak as chairman of the RPOF.  He took the opportunity to make a stump speech about how great he was doing as a State Senator, implying that he should be re-elected in order to keep doing a good job as RPOF Chairman.  Except the two are very different roles, and you can be RPOF Chairman without being a sitting state legislator.  In fact, the chairman position gives an unfair advantage to a legislator in getting his own sponsored legislation passed and in running a re-election campaign, as the RPOF controls where resources go.

I’m left scratching my head when I hear all of this talk about John Thrasher’s magnificent leadership.  Making back room deals for personal power, using his positions to his own advantage, fighting a shady campaign, taking money from special interests to push certain legislation…  Is this really what passes for leadership in Florida?  Have we become so jaded with the Jim Greers and Charlie Crists and other corrupt politicians in this state?  Has the RPOF’s woes with money and credit cards and party purges led us to believe that anything is better than what we had, even if it’s just another brand of corrupt politician?

I would hope the answers to those questions are all “no.”  And I hope to see voters making that clear when they enter the booth for the August 24^th primaries, and the RPOF executive committee make it clear by electing a new chairman in December who has true leadership and principles.

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