Strange bedfellows in the Florida Senate race

Note: This post is a little bit of Florida politics “inside baseball,” but I think it’s an important story because it illustrates this point: not all candidates who wave a tea party banner actually represent the ideals of the tea party movement. Walking the walk is a lot harder than just talking the talk, and Florida is not the only state where attempts have been made to use the “tea party” name to divide conservative votes. For more information and the original post, check out my website:

Sunshine State Sarah | Connections between Mike McCalister and Doug Guetzloe?

After getting caught in what is, at best, a misrepresentation about testifying before Congress, and facing mounting questions about his record, new information has been discovered that is likely to further damage Colonel Mike McCalister’s credibility in the Florida Republican Senate Primary.

Previously under fire from Florida tea party organizers for his “bold self determination” declaring himself a “national Tea Party star,” McCalister appears to have made the unfortunate decision to ally himself with Doug Guetzloe.

For those of you who are not familiar with Mr. Douglas M. Guetzloe, a sampling of his activities in Florida during the past few years:

For years, Guetzloe has repeatedly been accused of being paid consulting or advertising fees that were more extortion payments to ensure loyalty than payments for actual services. A grand jury said that their “inescapable conclusion” was that Guetzloe was paid “hush money” as part of the “culture of corruption” present at the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority, as one example.

After he was removed from the Orange County Republican Executive Committee, he helped start a third party political party with the misleading name “Florida Tea Party.” Guetzloe and others involved with the “Florida Tea Party” repeatedly engaged in attacks against legitimate Florida tea party activists, threatened lawsuits (and actually filed several), and had troubling ties to former Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson.

In the 2010 elections, Guetzloe and the Florida Tea Party worked to defeat Republican candidates by running FTP candidates in swing districts, in an attempt to split the conservative vote and give the advantage to the Democrats, because they would be listed on the ballot as (TEA).

Many of the FTP candidates were previously registered Democrats, students with no explainable reason for running for office, and family members or roommates of FTP officers. The vast majority of them showed very low contributions and expenditures on their campaign finance reports and rarely appeared to actually campaign for votes. Fortunately their attempts to be “spoilers” failed, but RPOF and the targeted Republican candidates were forced to spend several million dollars to educate voters about the difference between the fake tea party political party and the actual tea party movement.

Guetzloe has a history of violating election laws and failing to pay the fines imposed on him.

A jury awarded a $1.61 million verdict against Guetzloe in a defamation suit earlier this year.

The bottom line is that Doug Guetzloe is no friend to the tea party movement or the Republican Party. As one Central Florida tea party organizer said to me (name withheld upon request), “I would go out of my way to not have my name associated with Guetzloe, in any way.”

Additionally, on the “Phoenix News” section of the Phoenix Network website is a short article about last weekend’s Senate debate that is slanted to be favorable to McCalister.

To be fair, I do not know whether these ads are the result of McCalister purchasing advertising space with Guetzloe or Guetzloe donating the ads as an in-kind contribution. However, either way the McCalister ads would not be on the websites without Guetzloe’s blessing and involvement.

This year, suspicions continue to mount that there may be collaboration between McCalister and George LeMieux. Both the McCalister and LeMieux campaigns have denied the accusations, but the fact is that neither candidate seems to have a negative word for each other, a very odd occurrence in a highly contested primary. Political insiders view McCalister’s campaign as targeted towards the more conservative/tea party Republican voters, and any advantage for McCalister as more likely to draw from Adam Hasner‘s votes than LeMieux’s.

McCalister is following his past history of raising very little money for his campaign. As of the most recent information on the Federal Elections Commission website, he had raised less than $14,000. And by going after Hasner but not LeMieux (who many view as more moderate), McCalister also seems to be echoing the campaign messaging of 2010 Florida Tea Party Congressional candidate Peg Dunmire, who attacked the conservative Republican Daniel Webster, alleging he was corrupt and a big spender, and largely avoided criticizing the Democrat (the very, very liberal Democrat) Alan Grayson.

So what’s the game here? What’s Guetzloe’s role? Who is Guetzloe really supporting – McCalister? LeMieux? Or some other candidate yet to enter the race? Is McCalister running to be a spoiler again? Or is he really so naive as to view Guetzloe as an ally? (If so, that casts serious doubt on his judgment.)

Mike McCalister owes Floridians answers about his ties to Doug Guetzloe and his true intentions in the the 2012 Senate race. 

He also owes the many people who have worked hard to support the tea party movement in Florida an explanation why he would have anything to do with a man who has worked so hard to undermine their efforts.

[Original post available at Sunshine State Sarah]