The Political Whore

Nobody can really be surprised by the tangle of accusations and revelations in the St. Petersburg Times over the weekend by former PoHo contributor and political consultant Peter Schorsch about Jamie Bennett and his mayoral campaign (IF we can believe any/all of Schorsch’s allegations), just surprised that the meltdown caused by having Schorsch in the campaign happened so suddenly.

Whether the allegations are true or not, Bennett’s ability to be elected mayor is mortally wounded. Nothing worse for a politician and campaign worker than a publicly played-out, back-and-forth session of throwing each other under the bus.

Here’s what happened:

On Friday, Schorsch was fired by the Bennett campaign after the Times again caught him delivering tickets for the city’s Tampa Bay Rays luxury suite to a neighbhorhood leader. They came with Bennett political literature and a fund-raising request. (Schorsch said on Twitter Friday that he resigned from the campaign.)

Schorsch and Bennett had previously maintained that Shorsch was volunteering when he was delivering city-owned baseball tickets for Bennett. Schorsch had initially been a Bennett campaign volunteer, as well. The Times had previously excoriated Bennett for allowing Schorsch to wear two hats, but until last week, there was never direct proof of such a baseball/fund-raising tie-in.

When Schorsch and Bennett parted ways, Bennett found out what can happen when you do business with Schorsch. The consultant unloaded to the Times‘ Cristina Silva, saying Bennett is not “Mr. Nice Guy,” and saying:

Among Schorsch’s other allegations:

• Schorsch created a Web site to smear mayoral candidate Deveron Gibbons and sent Gibbons’ spotty driving record to 150 Gibbons contributors. Schorsch said Bennett reimbursed him for the envelopes and encouraged him because he wanted to stall Gibbons’ fundraising efforts.

“I had no idea what he was doing with Deveron,” Bennett said. “I overheard conversations, but I had no clue what they were doing.”

• Schorsch said Bennett called him hours before candidate Ford was scheduled to hold a news conference at City Hall and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we got homeless people or protestors to the event?” Schorsch said he created fliers promising bus passes, $1 and T-shirts to those who showed up. He then said he and Bennett celebrated at BellaBrava on Central Avenue afterward. “He thought it was hilarious. There were high-fives all around,” Schorsch said.

Bennett said none of that happened.

• Schorsch said he then hired actors via craigslist to crash a news conference held by mayoral hopeful Bill Foster. He offered to pay them $10 for 15 minutes of work. Schorsch said Bennett applauded his efforts and reimbursed him in cash.

…• Schorsch said he offered to pay a friend $100 to file ethics complaints against Foster and mayoral candidate Scott Wagman. Bennett said he was not involved.…

• Schorsch said he also hired people via craigslist to bolster crowds at two Bennett campaign events in March.

Bennett, for his part, said Monday that the incident and resulting bad publicity is not a major setback for his mayoral campaign. “Peter is a disgruntled, fired campaign manager,” Bennett said. “And the things that Peter did, Peter did. The things that are out there that he says, he took the leadership role.”

Bennett said he believed he was giving Schorsch, who was convicted of stealing money from campaigns and still owes more than $60,000 in 2005 elections law violations, a second chance when he first brought him on board. He said that will be how he explains his faulty judgment to voters who question how he would hired employees for City Hall should he win the election.

Here is Schorsch’s side of the story, an explanation of the baseball-tickets-as-campaign-enticements routine from his blog, Saint Petersblog 2.0:

The first time I saw the tickets to the city’s suite at Tropicana Field was on or about April 16, immediately after Jamie Bennett called St. Pete Beach Mayor Mike Finnerty to confirm a) that Finnerty was still endorsing Bennett and b) if Finnerty wanted four tickets to the city’s suite at a Rays game.

That was the precedent set by Jamie Bennett in my presence. Tickets equals politics. And from those actions I took my direction on how and why to distribute Bennett’s allotment of tickets.

Never mind the fact that Bennett should have never given me the tickets in the first place. But after he gave them to me, what did he think I was going to do with them?

I had already seen him give tickets to Finnerty and to another high-profile supporter. I had also been instructed to give them to members of the POWW group not soon after Bennett had aligned himself with their referendum.

Within this framework, the tickets were nothing but political. So I took it a step further and designed an outreach program that incorporated the disbursement of the tickets. Bennett and I would deliver the tickets to neighborhood presidents right before their monthly meeting. We would also walk door-to-door in their neighborhood. On several days, we would deliver the tickets at the same time we were distributing door hangers. This happened specifically in the case of when we gave the tickets to the presidents of Riviera Bay and Euclid St. Paul.

This entire program was discussed at a campaign meeting held at Bennett’s home on or about April 25. Bennett was fully aware of the idea of distributing the tickets as part of a political effort.

For him to say that he didn’t know what I was doing is insulting to the voters of St. Petersburg. Had I known there were such strict restrictions on the tickets, we would have never incorporated their disbursement into our political operations.

As late as Friday morning, well after he had been admonished by the media, Bennett was still asking me to handle the disbursement of the remainder of the tickets for the May 15 game. I had to remind him to make his own phone calls to coordinate the disbursement of the tickets.

I am not asking any reader to trust me on this, only to ask yourself, why would I be delivering tickets in the first place, if it wasn’t for political gain. For Bennett to play dumb at this point is just insulting.

Two days before departing the campaign, Schorsch still looooooved him some Jamie. He posted a St. Pete Times profile of his then-boss on his blog with this headline:

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