The Political Whore

Well, at least the GOP is making progress in terms of romance writing…

With a hat tip to Peter Schorsch at his blog, it appears the St. Petersburg Times local politics blog Bay Buzz had a post late Wednesday, about St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Paul Congemi and an incident at a KFC restaurant. The post was subsequently pulled from the blog (and restored after further reporting on Thursday). But thanks to Google Reader (and Google is forever) the original can be shared here.
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Watch kids kick a St. Petersburg Times reporter dressed in a bee costume with a *tbt helmet on:

• The 10 worst predictions for 2008.
• Ray Sansom draws an ethics complaint for his college budget-pimping.
• The tabloid pounding of Caroline Kennedy continues.
• Obama’s distant relatives.
• Defending Bush.
• Central Florida loses its clout in Washington.
• Rick Baker is the Energizer bunny of local politics.
• US Sugar-Everglades deal comes with new rock mine lease.
• Tasering Emus (no, it’s not a hot new Indie band).
• If you think some folks went batshit when cities named streets after MLK, wait until they start in on roads named for Barack Obama.
• It is time for Jon Gruden to go.
• Republicans split on the “Barack the Magic Negro” controversy.

Ray Sansom is the incoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, a gig that pays $42,000 a year, and yesterday it was learned he just got another new job: the Northwest Florida State College hired him as vice president of development and planning. That paycheck? $110,000 annually.

He got that job, in addition to being speaker, cuz (as the Palm Beach Post reported)

Sansom helped push through a bill to give the school its state college desgination this year, according to the Northwest Florida Daily Herald. He attended the school when it was known as Okaloosa-Walton Junior College.

Today we learn that Sansom, a Republican from Destin (near where the GOP legislators are having a posh getaway this week) did even more for his alma mater:

House Speaker Ray Sansom got $200,000 into the current fiscal year budget to help Northwest Florida State College, his new employer, build a “leadership institute.”

In an interview today, Sansom confirmed his involvement in the appropriation, which caused a behind-the-scenes stir with the Rubio administration since it was not discovered until late in the process.

Of course, that had noooooooothing to do with his getting the gig:

But Sansom said his involvement ended there. “None of that has anything to do with me or how I’m paid,” he told The Buzz.

Our alt-brother in South Florida, Bob Norman at The Daily Pulp, reports that Palm Beach Post editors have done a 180 and have reassigned their Tallahassee bureau chief Shirish Date to cover the Legislature instead of the governor’s office, where his wife, Mary Beth, was recently hired as a budget analyst. Post Managing Editor Bill Rose initially told The Buzz that Date’s wife’s hiring wouldn’t pose a conflict. I wrote on the subject last week, pointing out that Date is not alone in the Tallahassee press corps in having a spouse on the state payroll. But the Date link was very direct and very recent and was clearly something the newspaper couldn’t afford to let go on, despite its earlier brush-off of the notion that Date would be conflicted.

Two absolutely intriguing angles to the revelation that Gov. Charlie has hired Beth Date, the wife of Palm Beach Post capital bureau chief S.V. Date, as an analyst in his Office of Policy and Budget, as reported in The Buzz. (Yes, I know, we doubt that the Gov himself actually extended the job offer.)

First, of course, is the possibility that this would represent conflict of interest for the Post and its award-winning journalist and author. Post Managing Editor Bill Rose told The Buzz that Date won’t have a conflict “because ‘he won’t be covering that particular office,’ the budget unit that deals with health and human services.” (Rose hasn’t yet returned my-mail request to amplify that answer.) Partisans and MSM-haters (as well as some journalists, I’m sure) will jump all over that answer as questionable. Obviously, if Date starts a’slammin’ on the Gov, chances are it could make things uncomfortable for all parties involved.

Date is not the only Tallahassee scribe who has a spouse or family member on the government payroll. Most notable is Tallahassee Democrat political editor Bill Cotterell, whose wife is a longtime state worker. He writes to me:

Cindy was hired as a Career Service employee in 1984 by Bill Gunter, then insurance commissioner and treasurer. She was there through Democrat and Republican administrations (Tom Gallagher, Bill Nelson and Tom Gallagher again) now works for Bob Milligan, the former comptroller, whom Alex Sink brought in as insurance consumer advocate.

She’s no longer Career Service, as Jeb Bush’s “Service First” personnel initiatives moved her and 16,400 other employees into the Selected Exempt staff, but her duties didn’t change. She’s mostly a legislative analyst, examining bills and amendments for their impact on policies of her bosses.

I avoid covering all matters involving insurance and any personnel matters involving DFS. Other than that, we just don’t talk about work. She sometimes complains about things in the Democrat and I comment on what I think the Gallagher or Nelson campaigns were doing well or poorly, but we rarely discuss issues.

It will be interesting to see what level (if any) of transparency the Post will apply in letting its readers know about Mrs. Date’s new job. (I couldn’t find it on the Post’s website and asked about it in my e-mail to Rose.) And full disclosure here: My wife, Laura, is chairwoman of the state’s Board of Occupational Therapy, appointed by Jeb Bush. It is a volunteer job, but she does get paid a few hundred dollars a year for enforcing professional licensing requirements for her profession at quarterly meetings. I generally avoid writing about disciplinary hearings for O.T.’s.

More interesting in this whole story is the fact that Crist actually hired the wife of the one man his predecessor hates more than anyone in the entire world. Date clashed with Jeb! on numerous occasions and wrote Jeb: America’s Next Bush: His Florida Years and What They Mean for the Nation. In the foreword, Date proclaimed, “Jeb Bush is going to hate this book.” No doubt he did.

For those Kremlin-watchers who have been wondering just how distant Crist is from his fellow Republican predecessor, this should just about end any speculation.