ORLANDO SENTINEL: Faye Armitage: Mica head-butt a "childish antic"
Armitage: Mica head-butt a "childish antic"
posted by Orlando Sentinel on Sep 4, 2008 3:59:55 PM
Daphne Sashin of the Sentinel staff just filed this post:
Congressional District 7 candidate Faye Armitage has seized on a video showing her opponent, U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, head-butting an ABC cameraman outside a party for disgraced former House leader Tom DeLay in Minneapolis this week.
The incident, as captured on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBhe7d36BHs ) occurred while the cameraman was asking Mica if it was good to see the former House GOP majority leader, who is awaiting trial on state election law violations in Texas. Mica is clearly uncomfortable at being spotted -- and abruptly head-buts the camera.
Armitage called the footage evidence of Mica's "childish antics."
"If John Mica is so afraid to be caught leaving this meeting, what else is he hiding from us?" Armitage said in her e-mail newsletter. She said she would represent the district with dignity.
Mica told Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell (http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_local_namesblog/2008/09/mica-he-almost.html#comments) that the cameraman didn't identify himself. He also said he didn't know DeLay was going to be at the party, adding that he wasn't embarrassed to be seen with the embattled politician because DeLay hasn't been convicted of anything.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
TIME TO OVERTHROW THE CORRUPT REPUBLICAN POLITICAL MACHINE, FROM CITY HALL TO THE WHITE HOUSE
It's time for them to go. See below. From Repubilcan St. Augustine City Commissioner ERROL JONES a/k/a ERRONEOUS JONES, to Republican County Commission Chairman THOMAS G. MANUEL (under indictment for bribery) to Republican State Representative WILLIAM L. PROCTOR to Congressman JOHN MICA, it's time for them to go.
News4Jax.com Governor Suspends St. Johns Commissioner Accused In Bribes -- FBI: Thomas Manuel Took $60K In Bribes
News4Jax.com
Governor Suspends St. Johns Commissioner Accused In Bribes
FBI: Thomas Manuel Took $60K In Bribes
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- One day after St. Johns County Commission Chairman Thomas Manuel was indicted on two counts of bribery, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist suspended him from office.
The suspension comes hours after Manuel requested a leave of absence, claiming the leave was due to health problems and maintaining his innocence.
Manuel is free on $50,000 bond after surrendering Thursday on the federal indictment that charges that he "knowingly and corruptly solicited, demanded, accepted and agreed to accept" $10,000 and $50,000 bribes for his influence in business pending before the St. Johns County Commission.
The bribes allegedly occurred between April 10 and June 5 of this year and were investigated by the FBI's Public Corruption Unit.
St. Johns County Administrator Michael Wanchick's office announced Friday morning that Manuel relinquished his responsibilities with the county, effective immediately, and released this statement:
"I have decided to temporarily step away from my role as County Commissioner and Chairman because it is in the best interest of the people of St. Johns County. However, I maintain my innocence and I have always acted in the best interest of the citizens whom I serve. I look forward to clearing my name and moving forward."
Per established board policy, Vice-Chairwoman Cyndi Stevenson will assume the role of chair of the commission.
Just before 4 p.m., Gov. Charlie Crist issued an executive order suspending Manuel, saying in part:
"Thomas Manuel is prohibited from performing any official act, duty or function of public office; from receiving any pay or allowance; and from being entitled to any of the benefits or privileges of public office during the period of this suspension."
According to the county's Web site, Manuel, 63, lives in Ponte Vedra Beach. He retired after careers in the U.S. Navy, banking and running a travel agency.
Despite repeated attempts Thursday evening and Friday morning, Channel 4 has been able to reach Manuel for a comment on the indictment. In June, when WJXT confirmed that Manuel was under investigation by the FBI, he told reporter Jennifer Bauer that he believed the investigation was politically motivated.
If convicted, Manuel could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $500,000.
Manuel's seat is not one of those up for election this year. Mark Miner, who won the August primary and has no opposition in the general election, issued the following statement:
"Now more than ever it is imperative that the new Board of Commissioners and the County Staff unite and work diligently to re-establish the trust of the citizens of St. Johns County. While the alleged actions of Commission Chairman Tom Manuel are regrettable and inexcusable, my thoughts and prayers are with his family during this very difficult time."
Governor Suspends St. Johns Commissioner Accused In Bribes
FBI: Thomas Manuel Took $60K In Bribes
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- One day after St. Johns County Commission Chairman Thomas Manuel was indicted on two counts of bribery, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist suspended him from office.
The suspension comes hours after Manuel requested a leave of absence, claiming the leave was due to health problems and maintaining his innocence.
Manuel is free on $50,000 bond after surrendering Thursday on the federal indictment that charges that he "knowingly and corruptly solicited, demanded, accepted and agreed to accept" $10,000 and $50,000 bribes for his influence in business pending before the St. Johns County Commission.
The bribes allegedly occurred between April 10 and June 5 of this year and were investigated by the FBI's Public Corruption Unit.
St. Johns County Administrator Michael Wanchick's office announced Friday morning that Manuel relinquished his responsibilities with the county, effective immediately, and released this statement:
"I have decided to temporarily step away from my role as County Commissioner and Chairman because it is in the best interest of the people of St. Johns County. However, I maintain my innocence and I have always acted in the best interest of the citizens whom I serve. I look forward to clearing my name and moving forward."
Per established board policy, Vice-Chairwoman Cyndi Stevenson will assume the role of chair of the commission.
Just before 4 p.m., Gov. Charlie Crist issued an executive order suspending Manuel, saying in part:
"Thomas Manuel is prohibited from performing any official act, duty or function of public office; from receiving any pay or allowance; and from being entitled to any of the benefits or privileges of public office during the period of this suspension."
According to the county's Web site, Manuel, 63, lives in Ponte Vedra Beach. He retired after careers in the U.S. Navy, banking and running a travel agency.
Despite repeated attempts Thursday evening and Friday morning, Channel 4 has been able to reach Manuel for a comment on the indictment. In June, when WJXT confirmed that Manuel was under investigation by the FBI, he told reporter Jennifer Bauer that he believed the investigation was politically motivated.
If convicted, Manuel could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $500,000.
Manuel's seat is not one of those up for election this year. Mark Miner, who won the August primary and has no opposition in the general election, issued the following statement:
"Now more than ever it is imperative that the new Board of Commissioners and the County Staff unite and work diligently to re-establish the trust of the citizens of St. Johns County. While the alleged actions of Commission Chairman Tom Manuel are regrettable and inexcusable, my thoughts and prayers are with his family during this very difficult time."
FOLIO WEEKLY: Mica Caught with Rich Lobbyists in a "Debauched Atmosphere"
JUVENILE FLORIDA REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN JOHN MICA HEAD-BUTTS ABC NEWS CAMERAMAN, ACCOMPANIED BY JUVENILE ENTOURAGE -- HOW MUCH DID THEY DRINK AT BACHANALIAN TOM DELAY LOBBYIST PARTY THAT NIGHT?
"Oooh, you hit me in the head,"- Mica says mockingly. "Don't hit me in the head again."
Mica Caught with Rich Lobbyists in a "Debauched Atmosphere"
by Anne Schindler
"Straight to Video,"
Editor's Note column by Anne Schindler,
Folio Weekly (Jacksonville, Florida),
September 16-22, 2008
Before you read this, I invite you to check out the 56-second video clip in question. It's posted on our blog (folioweekly.com/folioblog) and YouTubeJohn Mica"-). (search for "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBhe7d36BHs
For those of you without an Internet connection, here's a brief description: In the footage, Republican Congressmember John Mica, who represents portions of Northeast Florida, is seen leaving a Minneapolis nightclub after a lavish convention-week party thrown by disgraced former House Leader Tom DeLay. An ABC News cameraman, who was covering Delay's return to the GOP fold, questions Mica about the event.
"Mr. Mica,"- he asks, "with Tom DeLay coming back--was it good to see Tom DeLay?"-
Mica doesn't respond. He quickly turns his back to the camera and asks some thuggish pals to screen him from view. One of them deliberately bumps the cameraman; another approaches with arms folded, shielding Mica. In the background, the lawmaker ducks and dodges, attempting to elude the camera. The ABC reporter persists. "I don't mean to pester you--I'm just curious with a couple questions."- At this point, Mica bends down and head-butts the underside of the video camera.
"Oooh, you hit me in the head,"- Mica says mockingly. "Don't hit me in the head again."-
The cameraman res ponds quickly. "I didn't do that, sir."- "I'll knock that thing out of your hand,"- Mica continues, shoving the lens with his hand.
"Don't touch my camera, sir,"- the reporter says. "Please don't touch my camera. Please don't touch my camera."-
At this point, Mica's thugs begin pushing and manhandling the cameraman, knocking his lens away with force. "Whoa, stop, man--I'm a journalist,"- the reporter stammers. "I'm on public property. Let go of my camera. I'm just a journalist!"-
The footage captures a brief shot of a Mica supporter summoning a police officer and pointing at the camera. "No, I didn't,"- the reporter can be heard saying. "Oh my God. Holy (expletive bleeped)."-
There are a lot of questions raised by this bizarre little video, but first among them has to be: Whatever happened to "No comment?" Though Mica told several news outlets that he felt threatened by the reporter, it's frankly impossible to believe him after watching the video. Mica and his minions are clearly in control. The lawmaker is surrounded by supporters, allies and meatheads unafraid of physical confrontation. The cameraman, meanwhile, is intimidated and bullied, unable to ask a simple question.
Another question might be: Why is Mica lying? The lawmaker has continued to insist that the cameraman hit him in the head. Not only did Mica make the allegation on the original film--albeit in a tone that borders on laughter--but he allowed his posse to accuse the newsman of assault, to a nearby cop. The cameraman wasn't arrested, but Mica has continued to claim he was the victim, not the other way around.
So why was Mica so skittish? Perhaps because of where he'd been. Dubbed "Ultra-Conservative Girls Gone Wild"- by a Minneapolis Star Tribune blog, the party at the slick Aqua Bar featured fat cigars, rich lobbyists and a somewhat debauched atmosphere. (According to the blog, Smash Mouth Steve Harwell invited hotties on stage and poured shots of Jägermeister and tequila into their mouths.) Sleazier by far was the presence of DeLay, who accepted tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and who was forced to resign after being indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges.
An ordinary lawmaker might worry about how that kind of stuff plays at home--partying with an indicted powerbroker, head-butting a reporter. Fortunately for John Mica, he doesn't need to worry about such scrutiny. Orlando Sentinel political columnist Scott Maxwell called the incident funny, and vouched for Mica. "If he says the scene was a misunderstanding and that he didn't hit the camera, I'm prone to believe him."- He added, "I'll be honest: I don't wanna mess with Mica."-
The St. Augustine Record went further, climbing up in Mica's lap with an editorial so fawning and sycophantic, it's embarrassing to read. Titled, "Fine line between responsible and irresponsible journalism,"- the piece actually criticizes ABC as "unprofessional"- and repeats--without refutation--Mica's claim of "gotcha journalism."- All evidence to the contrary, the piece quotes Mica saying, "I love talking to the press."- The editorial added, obsequiously, "We know. He always responds to our calls and interviews."-
Painful as it is to reprint, here's the rest: "Mica believed that the incident was unintentional. But that's not the point. The point is irresponsible journalists give the rest of us a bad name."-
No, what truly gives the rest of us a bad name is the shamelessly uncritical eye of modern media, which has so forsaken the cause of accuracy and honesty that it's been supplanted by "The Daily Show."- The truth about Mica is clear to anyone who cares to open their eyes. But it's one piece of news you'll have to gather for yourself.
JOHN MICA, the soulless, spineless Tibet-junketing, news cameraman head-butting, earmarking, labor-baiting, offshore oil-drilling extremist -- is JOHN MICA a truly offensive, oleaginous politician, or what?
Here he is with his idol, President GEORGE W. BUSH, who publicly declared there are "talkers and doers" and that "JOHN MICA is a doer." He's done enough damage and does not deserve a ninth term.
ORLANDO WEEKLY MICA'S MILLIONS -- Unearned Millions From 1980s Federal Cellular Telephone Lottery Speculation Helped Propel John Mica Into Congress
ORLANDO WEEKLY MICA'S MILLIONS -- Unearned Millions From 1980s Federal Cellular Telephone Lottery Speculation Helped Propel John Mica Into Congress
John Mica: "I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems"
ORLANDO WEEKLY
11/12/1998
News
Mica’s millions
By Edward Ericson Jr.
John Mica is sitting pretty.
Re-elected last week as Florida’s 8th District congressman, Mica had campaign money to burn, no opposition from the Democrats and rides into a fourth term with a reputation -- carefully cultivated -- as a tough-talking political reformer.
He’s a crowd-pleaser on crime, steering federal money toward Central Florida as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area" and voting to try 13-year-olds as adults. And as the first and only representative of a heavily Republican district drawn in 1991, Mica has taken off the gloves to fight powerful interests such as ... average federal workers, with dramatic hearings on what he regards as wasteful labor-union activities performed on government time.
Mica also has been fiercely partisan in his attacks on President Clinton, co-sponsoring an early impeachment resolution and calling the president "the little bugger" from the floor of the House.
A member of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Mica attacked the White House over an obscure miniscandal involving Indian tribes in Wisconsin. One tribe reportedly used its casino-generated money to block a nearby tribe’s efforts to open a competing gambling hall. The Interior Department officials who blocked the new casino were accused of taking their marching orders from the White House, which received big campaign contributions from the wealthy tribe. Then the bureaucrats quit their government posts to take lucrative lobbying contracts with the tribe. Mica was incensed.
"Under the Ethics in Government Act, what was done by [those bureaucrats] is prohibited except for one loophole," Mica fumed during a hearing on the matter last year. "Do you think that that’s right for folks to step right out of government and then into a position of conflict?"
Mica came to Congress on a platform built on such stands, equating his financial security with political independence. "I’ve made a lot of money and I don’t need the salary," he said.
Proud of his status as a self-made entrepreneur, Mica would like to privatize as many services as possible, including public education. He would convert foreign aid into aid for U.S. businesses for "export assistance." Last year he put your money where his mouth is by voting for taxpayer-subsidized loans to nations that import U.S. weapons -- but only after taking $14,200 from political-action committees associated with those weapons merchants, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But while championing welfare for Grumman and Lockheed Martin, Mica’s tightwad side rules his philosophy regarding government aid to poor people.
In a 1994 survey on welfare, Mica chose all the most restrictive options regarding welfare reform, endorsing mandatory work and a requirement that teen moms must live with a parent. Then he added: "Six-month maximum on welfare."
Mica even endured a moment of infamy in the spring of 1996 when he likened welfare recipients to reptiles. "Do not feed the alligators," he said. "We post these warnings because unnatural feeding and artificial care create dependency."
The metaphor was denounced by many Democrats and caused even some Republicans to wince.
Yet few could know that at least $2 million of Mica’s own wealth had come from a government giveaway of a public resource. And nobody at the time noted the irony of Mica’s dependence on that taxpayer-sapping bonanza -- which one federal official likened to "one of the biggest welfare programs in the United States."
The giveaway
The man who said those words was former Federal Communications Commission chairman Mark S. Fowler, who was in charge of the giveaway. The date was March 30, 1985. Fowler was addressing a Senate subcommittee on communications, trying to get Congress to help him turn off the spigot of public money.
It was a frustrating time for Fowler; nothing was done, and the result was a five-year opportunity for a few thousand sharpies in and out of government. Fowler’s welfare program was John Mica’s ticket to easy millions.
It was called the cellular telephone service lottery.
On announced occasions, beginning in 1984, in a windowless room on the eighth floor of the FCC building, three big air-blown tanks full of pingpong balls were activated as groups of 30 to 50 anxious players looked on. Like Meyer Lansky or a Wisconsin tribe, the federal government was in the gambling business. But players of FCC Cellular Bingo, unlike the naive pigeons of Vegas, placed their bets for free or nearly free. And payoffs ranged from a few million dollars to hundreds of millions.
The prize was the right to use the radio spectrum between 800MHz and 920MHz, the frequencies cellular telephones use to communicate with each other and with wire lines. Conservative estimates at the time put the assets’ combined value at $20 billion.
The giveaway was supposed to spur competition. AT&T, whose Bell Labs had developed crucial cellular-switching technology two decades earlier, had just been dismantled by the largest antitrust action the U.S. government had ever undertaken. Regulators didn’t want a huge company to dominate the new service. Comparative hearings -- in which FCC bureaucrats weighed the merits of corporate proposals to provide service -- already had delayed widespread cellular service by 10 years. A call for proposals brought an avalanche of 5,000 -- a possible 20-year backlog -- in just a few days. "This was an inefficient system, and it delayed the delivery of new services to the public," remembers David Aylward, formerly an assistant to then-Colorado Sen. Tim Wirth, who chaired the Senate subcommittee on communications.
By law the FCC could not sell public assets. A lottery was deemed the only fair thing.
To spur competition, the FCC divided the country into 734 regions, the largest 306 being outrageously valuable, city-based "Metropolitan Service Areas" (MSAs) and the remaining 428 deemed "Rural Service Areas" (RSAs), which ranged in value from perhaps $1 million to tens of millions of dollars. Each area or city would get two cellular providers: the local phone company and a newcomer. To discourage speculators, the FCC demanded 500-page applications packed with engineering reports. Applicants also had to submit a letter of credit attesting they had the million dollars it would take to build the system within five years.
But specialized "application mills" popped up immediately to do the paperwork for just a few thousand dollars. They knew that the right to use the radio spectrum, if won in the lottery, could be sold quickly to a big company like Southwestern Bell or Western Wireless that would build the actual towers and staff the billing and marketing departments. A lottery application, once created, could be duplicated for as many gamblers as would pay, making application services a profitable business in itself. Commercials appeared on the Financial News Network, urging folks to "roll the dice." Regulators were appalled. The FCC, Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in to collar the mountebanks. Journalists reported the scandal; editorialists clucked tongues.
As the greed frenzy began, Mica was an administrative assistant to Florida Sen. Paula Hawkins, who sat on the key Senate communications subcommittee. Also working for Hawkins was John Dudinsky; following Hawkins’ defeat in 1986, the two men would find themselves in business together as lobbyists.
More important, Mica and Dudinsky also formed a partnership as MD Cellular. It was MD Cellular that -- two years after Mica left Hawkins’ employ -- would put Mica himself into the communications business.
A driven man
John Mica would be a millionaire today even without his cellular profits. But the millions he made in the lottery appear to have been his best return on investment. Mica takes pride in his attention to such things.
Mica has been a dedicated public servant, a stalwart for conservative causes, a tireless go-getter and a careful cultivator of his own financial garden for more than 30 years of public life.
"He is extremely energetic," says brother Dan, a former Democratic congressman who now heads the National Association of Credit Unions. "He eats breakfast early, works to 8 or 9 p.m., then he’ll go out to get a refrigerator or stove to install in the house, and do the installation before bed."
John Mica also is a deliberative and sharp thinker, his mind toned early by the high-school debating society. "For many, many years he held the record for the most points ever accumulated," says his brother, a fellow debating team member.
As a student at the University of Florida, John Mica raised the money to rebuild his fraternity house and even sketched the design for it himself, his brother says. He worked as a necktie salesman and dishwasher, and networked Republican circles as his brother moved in Democratic ones, although little separated them politically.
Shortly after graduation, John Mica landed a job as executive director of the Palm Beach and Orange County Government Charter Study Commissions, and sold the idea of charter government to the citizens of West Palm Beach. He then turned his charter knowledge into a minor franchise, selling his expertise to Pasco and Manatee counties as well.
In 1975 Mica hooked up with Orlando architect Robert Koch and formed MK Development, which 10 years later would build Koch’s office building and a small strip-mall on Temple Trail, eventually earning Mica more than $50,000 a year in rent payments.
Beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives from Orlando’s District 17 in 1976, Mica’s personal finances improved yearly. In 1977, he and developer Loren H. Roby borrowed about $110,000 to invest in two oceanfront lots on New Smyrna Beach. After the pair built condos on the site, both were on their way to financial security; by June 1980, Mica pegged his net worth at $302,550.
When Hawkins was elected to the U.S. Senate during the Reagan landslide of 1980, Mica followed her to Washington. After she lost her bid for re-election in 1986 to Bob Graham, Mica joined his friend Dudinsky as a lobbyist, working for such clients as American Specialty Chemical, Coopers & Lybrand and 3M Corporation. Mica built his five-bedroom, four-bath home on Via Tuscany in Winter Park just a few months after leaving Hawkins’ employ. The house is now assessed at $350,000.
Money was always important to John Mica, brother Dan says, and he was ambivalent at best about the value of public service in amassing suitable wealth. "For a while he questioned why I spent so many years in public service," says Dan, who served a decade each as a congressional staffer and as a congressman from Palm Beach County. "He said I might do better financially for my family."
Dan says he was surprised in 1991 when John announced he was running for the newly created House seat, until he said he had made his fortune and worried no longer about paying the mortgage. "John wanted to make sure he could be assured for his family," Dan says.
Mica lent himself $100,000 to run against Democrat Daniel Webster. Mica positioned himself as a reformer, and depicted Webster as a tool of trial lawyers and labor unions; Webster called Mica "the epitome of the professional politician." Webster did not make an issue of the cell-phone lottery, from which Mica divulged at least a million-dollar profit in financial disclosures filed four months before the election.
Mica won with 53 percent of the vote and went on to distinguish himself as a bold entrepreneur, a self-made millionaire who created jobs and opportunity. It was this image Mica put forth when first queried about his cellular deals.
"I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems from the ground up, now all part of a national system we take for granted," Mica replied early this year in a letter after Orlando Weekly began inquiring about his finances.
Yet a closer look reveals not a "pioneer" but a man whose luck made him rich with no work required.
‘Little appointee’
Mica refuses to say exactly how much he invested or earned in cellular, although the financial disclosure forms he filed as a congressman indicate a gross profit of at least $2 million. Because those forms list only income ranges, and because two of the three companies that eventually bought Mica’s phone interests refused to divulge the prices they paid, it’s impossible to be more precise.
But precision has not been a hallmark of Mica’s cellular business. In interviews and letters over many months, he gives varied and confusing explanations of his role, at first depicting himself as a wheeler-dealer and, more recently, as a "little appointee." From interviews and available public records, it appears the latter role is most accurate.
In fact, so informal was MD Cellular -- Mica’s first phone venture with Dudinsky and Carl Medei of Maitland -- that as far as the state of Florida is concerned, it was not even a legal business entity, having failed to register as required with the state.
The oversight was understandable. MD was less a business than a betting pool, Mica’s claims to the contrary.
"We were lucky. We were lucky. We were lucky," says Medei. "The FCC does a drawing, and if they pick you, you get money. And if they don’t, you lose."
Medei remembers little else about MD Cellular. He can’t say when it was begun -- "All that’s so long ago, I don’t think I even have the paperwork anymore" -- or what work Mica did on its behalf. He would not divulge the amount of his own investment or profit, although he says his was much smaller than that of his partners.
Mica says his duties as "managing general partner" included setting up the partnership, providing facilities and expensing the partnership. But he also says that another company, Genesis Management, did all the actual work.
And the $90,000 fee he reported in 1991 as the start of his cellular income?
That was an accountant’s creation, for tax purposes, Mica says. In fact, Mica now says MD was not a partnership at all. "Similar to thousands of other investor applicants, we retained a packager to prepare legal, engineering and financial applications to file with the FCC," Mica wrote in another letter. "Rather than form a formal partnership or corporation, as investors we signed Service Contract Agreements (forms used by nearly all cellular packagers) provided by Genesis, the Virginia-based cellular packager."
Chance encounters
Genesis Management founder Wladimir Naleszkiewicz was a Polish émigré who taught economics at Notre Dame before stints with the FCC and the White House office of telecommunications policy under presidents Ford and Carter. He had spent the early 1980s trying to assemble financing for a visionary direct satellite broadcasting system -- much like the one Bill Gates is invested in today. But Genesis, founded in 1986, was a much more modest enterprise, filling out complex FCC forms and grouping investors for the cellular lotteries in a subtle -- and sometimes blatant -- attempt to beat the system. The goal was to enter the lottery process under as many names as possible.
FCC rules and federal law forbade the submission of duplicate applications, threatening a $10,000 fine and up to five years in prison for anyone caught doing so. But the FCC didn’t enforce the rule. And Naleszkiewicz was the engineer for several lottery syndicators, according to Mica, cranking out engineering specs for all comers. That gave packagers like Naleszkiewicz tremendous power, controlling which small investors were grouped with others and in some cases directing the whole profitable enterprise.
Some application mills would sign up anyone with a pulse, charge them next to nothing to enter, but require that if the applicant won, he or she would hire the packager -- at high cost, with perhaps a bit of equity -- as a consultant to set up the system. The other tactic was to charge unsophisticated investors high fees based on inflated claims about the chances of winning and the value of the asset to be won.
By mid-1986 FCC Chairman Fowler threatened to report "charlatan-type applications" to the Justice Department. But in the end the market ruled, and the speculators won. "We have seen that too many applicants have too little intention of actually providing telecommunications services and merely apply in order to sell out later to the highest bidder," Fowler complained in a speech to telecom industry officials. "Try as we might, we have no way to distinguish between authentic service providers and these racehorse Charlies."
Enter John Mica.
"We had done some research on packagers," says Mica. "Wladimir had the best reputation."
As the first of five RSA lotteries closed, Mica saw that instead of the expected thousands of applicants, only 800 to 1,200 people applied for each license. This created favorable odds for any savvy investor who could enter all of the remaining 340 drawings. Even if the number of applicants doubled -- which it nearly did -- the odds of winning still were better than seven to one.
By mid-1988, Mica had entered several hundred lotteries. By 1990 he had won three times.
MD Cellular was part of two groups that won RSAs. Those service areas were based in Front Royal, Va.; Aberdeen, S.D.; and Monroe, La.
Within weeks the partnership sold the Virginia RSA, which covered a six-county territory 100 miles from the Washington beltway -- prime territory -- to Southwestern Bell. "I didn’t want to sell Virginia," Mica says. "If we’d gotten stock for this, we’d be so rich I wouldn’t even be here. I’d be out on my yacht somewhere."
Mica did get some stock in the next RSA sold, a seven-county area in the northeast corner of Louisiana.
The partnership to which MD Cellular belonged was in turn controlled by a larger partnership, Tri-Coastal Cellular; in 1991 Tri-Coastal’s 18 partners formed a shell corporation, Monroe Cellular, to operate a cellular-phone company there. "We built the system in Louisiana," says Jim Arch of Maitland, one of the partners.
By "built," Arch doesn’t mean he actually flew down there with a tool belt around his waist and worked the cranes that erected the towers. He hired the people who hired the people who did that. Or rather, like Mica, he invested with people who hired people who hired people who did the work. But Mica’s role was such that, today, he can’t even remember the name of the company, or its owner, that the partnership hired.
Eventually New Jersey-based Centennial Cellular came calling, and in 1994 they paid $11.5 million for the property, according to Centennial Comptroller Tom Bucks. Mica’s share of that sale would have been $862,500; he took half of that in Centennial stock, which he eventually sold.
The final RSA -- comprising five counties in South Dakota -- was sold in 1995, also for an undisclosed sum, to Western Wireless. Mica reported a gain of between $100,000 and $1 million on that sale, but has said that his 12 percent stake in the Aberdeen property was his least profitable.
Mica entered the 1990s more than $1 million ahead in the cellular game. Real losses were almost unthinkable. Instead, the risks were associated with business partners shuffled into the deck by Genesis Management.
The riskiest would prove to be the packager himself, Wlad Naleszkiewicz.
In January 1989, Naleszkiewicz told 40 clients he had submitted to the FCC their cellular lottery application fees -- $200 each for 1,438 applications -- but he didn’t. "The last ones, he never filed," says Arch. "He put the applications in the garbage."
Naleszkiewicz pled guilty in federal court to two counts of mail fraud in connection with this failing. He told the court he kept the $287,600 to save himself embarrassment and "avoid financial difficulties." He and his wife, Nancy, were fined double damages, and Wladimir faced 10 years in prison, though he served just four months’ home detention. Genesis’ was the first and only criminal indictment to arise from cellular licensing application fraud.
Genesis filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in August 1993, claiming assets of $5,088 and liabilities of $1.4 million. Wladimir Naleszkiewicz died in February 1996. His wife could not be reached for comment.
Mica rests much of his credibility as a true cellular player -- and not a passive speculator -- on his choice of Genesis. "The firm had a reputation as the best engineering and packaging company for cellular applications," he wrote. "We researched the firm and found that all of the critical engineering studies required by the FCC for previously awarded MSA Cellular licenses and prepared by Genesis were approved."
But Genesis did not exist until 1986, well after the MSA process had gotten under way. And what was Naleszkiewicz doing immediately before then? He was vice president and director of economics for American National -- an application mill the FTC had shut down for fraud in 1985.
Mica says he knew nothing about that.
Tallying the costs
Today Mica is out of the phone business.
He’s coy about his income from the deals, noting that he put money into the systems he owned for years before deriving any profit. He says the cost of applications was high as well. "Application fees and packaging fees for engineering and legal work were costly," he wrote. "As I recall, just the FCC application for each block exceeded $80,000, not including packager fees for legal, engineering and financial application work."
But what did it really cost to get into the sweepstakes?
According to FCC records, the early lotteries were free. Later a $200 per application fee was instituted. Syndicators like Naleszkiewicz charged between $3 and $5,000 per application, depending on the worth of the properties being raffled off and what kind of deals they made with clients.
Mica’s real costs may never be known. But the aftermath of the Genesis fraud provides a glimpse at the figures.
In a letter dated May 15, 1997, Mica wrote to James Hanson, chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, regarding a payment Mica left off his 1996 financial disclosure statement. "In 1996 I received $7,502.23 as a court-ordered restitution (Naleszkiewicz Order of Restitution) from a case in which I and other investors were defrauded," Mica wrote. "Staff of the committee advised that this need not be considered ... for reporting purposes."
The restitution was for double the amount Naleszkiewicz collected from each applicant. That puts Mica’s cost for that final lottery, in which 83 RSAs were raffled, at $3,751.12. Multiplied by four application blocks, that represents an initial investment of less than $15,000 to make his first cellular million (or two).
Such speculation annoys John Mica, who doesn’t like to talk about his money.
Although he once pegged his net worth at $6 million and equated his financial independence with political independence, Mica is reticent about the details. "Someone might read that [I’m rich] and try to push down my door," he says.
So don’t ask him what he’s worth now. He’ll say only that it’s less than a few years ago. And don’t ask him to say just how much he invested, and earned, in the cellular-phone business.
He says he just doesn’t know.
John Mica: "I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems"
ORLANDO WEEKLY
11/12/1998
News
Mica’s millions
By Edward Ericson Jr.
John Mica is sitting pretty.
Re-elected last week as Florida’s 8th District congressman, Mica had campaign money to burn, no opposition from the Democrats and rides into a fourth term with a reputation -- carefully cultivated -- as a tough-talking political reformer.
He’s a crowd-pleaser on crime, steering federal money toward Central Florida as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area" and voting to try 13-year-olds as adults. And as the first and only representative of a heavily Republican district drawn in 1991, Mica has taken off the gloves to fight powerful interests such as ... average federal workers, with dramatic hearings on what he regards as wasteful labor-union activities performed on government time.
Mica also has been fiercely partisan in his attacks on President Clinton, co-sponsoring an early impeachment resolution and calling the president "the little bugger" from the floor of the House.
A member of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Mica attacked the White House over an obscure miniscandal involving Indian tribes in Wisconsin. One tribe reportedly used its casino-generated money to block a nearby tribe’s efforts to open a competing gambling hall. The Interior Department officials who blocked the new casino were accused of taking their marching orders from the White House, which received big campaign contributions from the wealthy tribe. Then the bureaucrats quit their government posts to take lucrative lobbying contracts with the tribe. Mica was incensed.
"Under the Ethics in Government Act, what was done by [those bureaucrats] is prohibited except for one loophole," Mica fumed during a hearing on the matter last year. "Do you think that that’s right for folks to step right out of government and then into a position of conflict?"
Mica came to Congress on a platform built on such stands, equating his financial security with political independence. "I’ve made a lot of money and I don’t need the salary," he said.
Proud of his status as a self-made entrepreneur, Mica would like to privatize as many services as possible, including public education. He would convert foreign aid into aid for U.S. businesses for "export assistance." Last year he put your money where his mouth is by voting for taxpayer-subsidized loans to nations that import U.S. weapons -- but only after taking $14,200 from political-action committees associated with those weapons merchants, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But while championing welfare for Grumman and Lockheed Martin, Mica’s tightwad side rules his philosophy regarding government aid to poor people.
In a 1994 survey on welfare, Mica chose all the most restrictive options regarding welfare reform, endorsing mandatory work and a requirement that teen moms must live with a parent. Then he added: "Six-month maximum on welfare."
Mica even endured a moment of infamy in the spring of 1996 when he likened welfare recipients to reptiles. "Do not feed the alligators," he said. "We post these warnings because unnatural feeding and artificial care create dependency."
The metaphor was denounced by many Democrats and caused even some Republicans to wince.
Yet few could know that at least $2 million of Mica’s own wealth had come from a government giveaway of a public resource. And nobody at the time noted the irony of Mica’s dependence on that taxpayer-sapping bonanza -- which one federal official likened to "one of the biggest welfare programs in the United States."
The giveaway
The man who said those words was former Federal Communications Commission chairman Mark S. Fowler, who was in charge of the giveaway. The date was March 30, 1985. Fowler was addressing a Senate subcommittee on communications, trying to get Congress to help him turn off the spigot of public money.
It was a frustrating time for Fowler; nothing was done, and the result was a five-year opportunity for a few thousand sharpies in and out of government. Fowler’s welfare program was John Mica’s ticket to easy millions.
It was called the cellular telephone service lottery.
On announced occasions, beginning in 1984, in a windowless room on the eighth floor of the FCC building, three big air-blown tanks full of pingpong balls were activated as groups of 30 to 50 anxious players looked on. Like Meyer Lansky or a Wisconsin tribe, the federal government was in the gambling business. But players of FCC Cellular Bingo, unlike the naive pigeons of Vegas, placed their bets for free or nearly free. And payoffs ranged from a few million dollars to hundreds of millions.
The prize was the right to use the radio spectrum between 800MHz and 920MHz, the frequencies cellular telephones use to communicate with each other and with wire lines. Conservative estimates at the time put the assets’ combined value at $20 billion.
The giveaway was supposed to spur competition. AT&T, whose Bell Labs had developed crucial cellular-switching technology two decades earlier, had just been dismantled by the largest antitrust action the U.S. government had ever undertaken. Regulators didn’t want a huge company to dominate the new service. Comparative hearings -- in which FCC bureaucrats weighed the merits of corporate proposals to provide service -- already had delayed widespread cellular service by 10 years. A call for proposals brought an avalanche of 5,000 -- a possible 20-year backlog -- in just a few days. "This was an inefficient system, and it delayed the delivery of new services to the public," remembers David Aylward, formerly an assistant to then-Colorado Sen. Tim Wirth, who chaired the Senate subcommittee on communications.
By law the FCC could not sell public assets. A lottery was deemed the only fair thing.
To spur competition, the FCC divided the country into 734 regions, the largest 306 being outrageously valuable, city-based "Metropolitan Service Areas" (MSAs) and the remaining 428 deemed "Rural Service Areas" (RSAs), which ranged in value from perhaps $1 million to tens of millions of dollars. Each area or city would get two cellular providers: the local phone company and a newcomer. To discourage speculators, the FCC demanded 500-page applications packed with engineering reports. Applicants also had to submit a letter of credit attesting they had the million dollars it would take to build the system within five years.
But specialized "application mills" popped up immediately to do the paperwork for just a few thousand dollars. They knew that the right to use the radio spectrum, if won in the lottery, could be sold quickly to a big company like Southwestern Bell or Western Wireless that would build the actual towers and staff the billing and marketing departments. A lottery application, once created, could be duplicated for as many gamblers as would pay, making application services a profitable business in itself. Commercials appeared on the Financial News Network, urging folks to "roll the dice." Regulators were appalled. The FCC, Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in to collar the mountebanks. Journalists reported the scandal; editorialists clucked tongues.
As the greed frenzy began, Mica was an administrative assistant to Florida Sen. Paula Hawkins, who sat on the key Senate communications subcommittee. Also working for Hawkins was John Dudinsky; following Hawkins’ defeat in 1986, the two men would find themselves in business together as lobbyists.
More important, Mica and Dudinsky also formed a partnership as MD Cellular. It was MD Cellular that -- two years after Mica left Hawkins’ employ -- would put Mica himself into the communications business.
A driven man
John Mica would be a millionaire today even without his cellular profits. But the millions he made in the lottery appear to have been his best return on investment. Mica takes pride in his attention to such things.
Mica has been a dedicated public servant, a stalwart for conservative causes, a tireless go-getter and a careful cultivator of his own financial garden for more than 30 years of public life.
"He is extremely energetic," says brother Dan, a former Democratic congressman who now heads the National Association of Credit Unions. "He eats breakfast early, works to 8 or 9 p.m., then he’ll go out to get a refrigerator or stove to install in the house, and do the installation before bed."
John Mica also is a deliberative and sharp thinker, his mind toned early by the high-school debating society. "For many, many years he held the record for the most points ever accumulated," says his brother, a fellow debating team member.
As a student at the University of Florida, John Mica raised the money to rebuild his fraternity house and even sketched the design for it himself, his brother says. He worked as a necktie salesman and dishwasher, and networked Republican circles as his brother moved in Democratic ones, although little separated them politically.
Shortly after graduation, John Mica landed a job as executive director of the Palm Beach and Orange County Government Charter Study Commissions, and sold the idea of charter government to the citizens of West Palm Beach. He then turned his charter knowledge into a minor franchise, selling his expertise to Pasco and Manatee counties as well.
In 1975 Mica hooked up with Orlando architect Robert Koch and formed MK Development, which 10 years later would build Koch’s office building and a small strip-mall on Temple Trail, eventually earning Mica more than $50,000 a year in rent payments.
Beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives from Orlando’s District 17 in 1976, Mica’s personal finances improved yearly. In 1977, he and developer Loren H. Roby borrowed about $110,000 to invest in two oceanfront lots on New Smyrna Beach. After the pair built condos on the site, both were on their way to financial security; by June 1980, Mica pegged his net worth at $302,550.
When Hawkins was elected to the U.S. Senate during the Reagan landslide of 1980, Mica followed her to Washington. After she lost her bid for re-election in 1986 to Bob Graham, Mica joined his friend Dudinsky as a lobbyist, working for such clients as American Specialty Chemical, Coopers & Lybrand and 3M Corporation. Mica built his five-bedroom, four-bath home on Via Tuscany in Winter Park just a few months after leaving Hawkins’ employ. The house is now assessed at $350,000.
Money was always important to John Mica, brother Dan says, and he was ambivalent at best about the value of public service in amassing suitable wealth. "For a while he questioned why I spent so many years in public service," says Dan, who served a decade each as a congressional staffer and as a congressman from Palm Beach County. "He said I might do better financially for my family."
Dan says he was surprised in 1991 when John announced he was running for the newly created House seat, until he said he had made his fortune and worried no longer about paying the mortgage. "John wanted to make sure he could be assured for his family," Dan says.
Mica lent himself $100,000 to run against Democrat Daniel Webster. Mica positioned himself as a reformer, and depicted Webster as a tool of trial lawyers and labor unions; Webster called Mica "the epitome of the professional politician." Webster did not make an issue of the cell-phone lottery, from which Mica divulged at least a million-dollar profit in financial disclosures filed four months before the election.
Mica won with 53 percent of the vote and went on to distinguish himself as a bold entrepreneur, a self-made millionaire who created jobs and opportunity. It was this image Mica put forth when first queried about his cellular deals.
"I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems from the ground up, now all part of a national system we take for granted," Mica replied early this year in a letter after Orlando Weekly began inquiring about his finances.
Yet a closer look reveals not a "pioneer" but a man whose luck made him rich with no work required.
‘Little appointee’
Mica refuses to say exactly how much he invested or earned in cellular, although the financial disclosure forms he filed as a congressman indicate a gross profit of at least $2 million. Because those forms list only income ranges, and because two of the three companies that eventually bought Mica’s phone interests refused to divulge the prices they paid, it’s impossible to be more precise.
But precision has not been a hallmark of Mica’s cellular business. In interviews and letters over many months, he gives varied and confusing explanations of his role, at first depicting himself as a wheeler-dealer and, more recently, as a "little appointee." From interviews and available public records, it appears the latter role is most accurate.
In fact, so informal was MD Cellular -- Mica’s first phone venture with Dudinsky and Carl Medei of Maitland -- that as far as the state of Florida is concerned, it was not even a legal business entity, having failed to register as required with the state.
The oversight was understandable. MD was less a business than a betting pool, Mica’s claims to the contrary.
"We were lucky. We were lucky. We were lucky," says Medei. "The FCC does a drawing, and if they pick you, you get money. And if they don’t, you lose."
Medei remembers little else about MD Cellular. He can’t say when it was begun -- "All that’s so long ago, I don’t think I even have the paperwork anymore" -- or what work Mica did on its behalf. He would not divulge the amount of his own investment or profit, although he says his was much smaller than that of his partners.
Mica says his duties as "managing general partner" included setting up the partnership, providing facilities and expensing the partnership. But he also says that another company, Genesis Management, did all the actual work.
And the $90,000 fee he reported in 1991 as the start of his cellular income?
That was an accountant’s creation, for tax purposes, Mica says. In fact, Mica now says MD was not a partnership at all. "Similar to thousands of other investor applicants, we retained a packager to prepare legal, engineering and financial applications to file with the FCC," Mica wrote in another letter. "Rather than form a formal partnership or corporation, as investors we signed Service Contract Agreements (forms used by nearly all cellular packagers) provided by Genesis, the Virginia-based cellular packager."
Chance encounters
Genesis Management founder Wladimir Naleszkiewicz was a Polish émigré who taught economics at Notre Dame before stints with the FCC and the White House office of telecommunications policy under presidents Ford and Carter. He had spent the early 1980s trying to assemble financing for a visionary direct satellite broadcasting system -- much like the one Bill Gates is invested in today. But Genesis, founded in 1986, was a much more modest enterprise, filling out complex FCC forms and grouping investors for the cellular lotteries in a subtle -- and sometimes blatant -- attempt to beat the system. The goal was to enter the lottery process under as many names as possible.
FCC rules and federal law forbade the submission of duplicate applications, threatening a $10,000 fine and up to five years in prison for anyone caught doing so. But the FCC didn’t enforce the rule. And Naleszkiewicz was the engineer for several lottery syndicators, according to Mica, cranking out engineering specs for all comers. That gave packagers like Naleszkiewicz tremendous power, controlling which small investors were grouped with others and in some cases directing the whole profitable enterprise.
Some application mills would sign up anyone with a pulse, charge them next to nothing to enter, but require that if the applicant won, he or she would hire the packager -- at high cost, with perhaps a bit of equity -- as a consultant to set up the system. The other tactic was to charge unsophisticated investors high fees based on inflated claims about the chances of winning and the value of the asset to be won.
By mid-1986 FCC Chairman Fowler threatened to report "charlatan-type applications" to the Justice Department. But in the end the market ruled, and the speculators won. "We have seen that too many applicants have too little intention of actually providing telecommunications services and merely apply in order to sell out later to the highest bidder," Fowler complained in a speech to telecom industry officials. "Try as we might, we have no way to distinguish between authentic service providers and these racehorse Charlies."
Enter John Mica.
"We had done some research on packagers," says Mica. "Wladimir had the best reputation."
As the first of five RSA lotteries closed, Mica saw that instead of the expected thousands of applicants, only 800 to 1,200 people applied for each license. This created favorable odds for any savvy investor who could enter all of the remaining 340 drawings. Even if the number of applicants doubled -- which it nearly did -- the odds of winning still were better than seven to one.
By mid-1988, Mica had entered several hundred lotteries. By 1990 he had won three times.
MD Cellular was part of two groups that won RSAs. Those service areas were based in Front Royal, Va.; Aberdeen, S.D.; and Monroe, La.
Within weeks the partnership sold the Virginia RSA, which covered a six-county territory 100 miles from the Washington beltway -- prime territory -- to Southwestern Bell. "I didn’t want to sell Virginia," Mica says. "If we’d gotten stock for this, we’d be so rich I wouldn’t even be here. I’d be out on my yacht somewhere."
Mica did get some stock in the next RSA sold, a seven-county area in the northeast corner of Louisiana.
The partnership to which MD Cellular belonged was in turn controlled by a larger partnership, Tri-Coastal Cellular; in 1991 Tri-Coastal’s 18 partners formed a shell corporation, Monroe Cellular, to operate a cellular-phone company there. "We built the system in Louisiana," says Jim Arch of Maitland, one of the partners.
By "built," Arch doesn’t mean he actually flew down there with a tool belt around his waist and worked the cranes that erected the towers. He hired the people who hired the people who did that. Or rather, like Mica, he invested with people who hired people who hired people who did the work. But Mica’s role was such that, today, he can’t even remember the name of the company, or its owner, that the partnership hired.
Eventually New Jersey-based Centennial Cellular came calling, and in 1994 they paid $11.5 million for the property, according to Centennial Comptroller Tom Bucks. Mica’s share of that sale would have been $862,500; he took half of that in Centennial stock, which he eventually sold.
The final RSA -- comprising five counties in South Dakota -- was sold in 1995, also for an undisclosed sum, to Western Wireless. Mica reported a gain of between $100,000 and $1 million on that sale, but has said that his 12 percent stake in the Aberdeen property was his least profitable.
Mica entered the 1990s more than $1 million ahead in the cellular game. Real losses were almost unthinkable. Instead, the risks were associated with business partners shuffled into the deck by Genesis Management.
The riskiest would prove to be the packager himself, Wlad Naleszkiewicz.
In January 1989, Naleszkiewicz told 40 clients he had submitted to the FCC their cellular lottery application fees -- $200 each for 1,438 applications -- but he didn’t. "The last ones, he never filed," says Arch. "He put the applications in the garbage."
Naleszkiewicz pled guilty in federal court to two counts of mail fraud in connection with this failing. He told the court he kept the $287,600 to save himself embarrassment and "avoid financial difficulties." He and his wife, Nancy, were fined double damages, and Wladimir faced 10 years in prison, though he served just four months’ home detention. Genesis’ was the first and only criminal indictment to arise from cellular licensing application fraud.
Genesis filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in August 1993, claiming assets of $5,088 and liabilities of $1.4 million. Wladimir Naleszkiewicz died in February 1996. His wife could not be reached for comment.
Mica rests much of his credibility as a true cellular player -- and not a passive speculator -- on his choice of Genesis. "The firm had a reputation as the best engineering and packaging company for cellular applications," he wrote. "We researched the firm and found that all of the critical engineering studies required by the FCC for previously awarded MSA Cellular licenses and prepared by Genesis were approved."
But Genesis did not exist until 1986, well after the MSA process had gotten under way. And what was Naleszkiewicz doing immediately before then? He was vice president and director of economics for American National -- an application mill the FTC had shut down for fraud in 1985.
Mica says he knew nothing about that.
Tallying the costs
Today Mica is out of the phone business.
He’s coy about his income from the deals, noting that he put money into the systems he owned for years before deriving any profit. He says the cost of applications was high as well. "Application fees and packaging fees for engineering and legal work were costly," he wrote. "As I recall, just the FCC application for each block exceeded $80,000, not including packager fees for legal, engineering and financial application work."
But what did it really cost to get into the sweepstakes?
According to FCC records, the early lotteries were free. Later a $200 per application fee was instituted. Syndicators like Naleszkiewicz charged between $3 and $5,000 per application, depending on the worth of the properties being raffled off and what kind of deals they made with clients.
Mica’s real costs may never be known. But the aftermath of the Genesis fraud provides a glimpse at the figures.
In a letter dated May 15, 1997, Mica wrote to James Hanson, chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, regarding a payment Mica left off his 1996 financial disclosure statement. "In 1996 I received $7,502.23 as a court-ordered restitution (Naleszkiewicz Order of Restitution) from a case in which I and other investors were defrauded," Mica wrote. "Staff of the committee advised that this need not be considered ... for reporting purposes."
The restitution was for double the amount Naleszkiewicz collected from each applicant. That puts Mica’s cost for that final lottery, in which 83 RSAs were raffled, at $3,751.12. Multiplied by four application blocks, that represents an initial investment of less than $15,000 to make his first cellular million (or two).
Such speculation annoys John Mica, who doesn’t like to talk about his money.
Although he once pegged his net worth at $6 million and equated his financial independence with political independence, Mica is reticent about the details. "Someone might read that [I’m rich] and try to push down my door," he says.
So don’t ask him what he’s worth now. He’ll say only that it’s less than a few years ago. And don’t ask him to say just how much he invested, and earned, in the cellular-phone business.
He says he just doesn’t know.
REPUBLICAN POLITICAL BOSS WILLIAM B. HARRISS HAS A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO
WILLIAM. B. HARRISS Photo credit: J.D. Pleasant
Our County Commission Chairman is under indictment for bribery. Our Governor just suspended him from office.
Our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS, above, has never had a performance appraisal in 10.5 years. Irresponsible HARRISS is a tinpot Napoleon, guilty for misconduct involving mushrooming scandals involving illegal dumping of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, illegal dumping of treated sewage effluent in our salt water marsh, letting the seawall fall apart without replacement or repair for years, Sunshine violations, Open Records violations, First Amendment violations and lack of police training, resulting in Marshall Burns being tackled into quadriplegia by police.
Our new City Commission must give WILLIAM B. HARRISS a public performance apprisal, just as our School Superintendent, Mosquito Control managers and other government managers get. NO person is above the law. Not even WILLIAM B. HARRISS.
See the Rogue's Gallery entry below, describing the dramatis personae in the St. Augustine Tweed Ring cartoon, above.
ORLANDO SENTINEL: Orange County Democrats Organize (No, that's not an oxymoron)
Orange County Democrats organize (no, that's not an oxymoron)
posted by Aaron Deslatte on Oct 18, 2008 11:50:42 AM
Welcome to the weekend before early voting in Florida.
If you have a pulse, are registered to vote, and live in Central Florida, prepare for some type of contact from the political campaigns.
Check that: pulse not required.
Orange County Democrats say it has been at least six years since they put together a countywide coordinated voter-contact program to mobilize their voters.
That looked to be changing Saturday. Orange County Democratic leaders and hundreds of volunteers packed Hamburger Mary’s in Church Street Station Saturday morning to pick up enough campaign literature and blanket 100,000 Democratic doorways.
“Having a fantastic presidential ticket has helped,” said Orange County Democratic chairman Bill Robinson. “We’ve seen a level of involvement and interest that is just unprecedented.”
Steve Conti, a 35-year-old Orange County middle school teacher, was headed out to deliver door hangers listing Democratic candidates from Barack Obama down to the soil and water commission.
The experience was totally new to him.
“You gotta jump in the water,” the American history teacher said. “This is an opportunity to see what it’s all about.”
New York state Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, the older brother of celebrity Rosie O’Donnell, warmed up the crowd over coffee and danishes.
“The last eight years have been a disaster for America, a disaster for New York City, a disaster for anybody who cares about how all of us have to live,” he told the cheering crowd.
“You folks are Ground Zero of where that battle is. Where I live, we have no Republicans. We tag them so we know where they are at all times.”
For many of the canvassers, the idea of approaching strangers’ front doors was daunting.
Celeste Williams, 52, an Ocoee lawyer, said she’s never given political activism a second-thought until the 2000 presidential election.
“We need qualified people running the country,” she said. “After the 2000 election, I was heartbroken. I felt my vote didn’t matter at all. I decideded to get involved this time.”
The county precinct activities chair is Michelle Stile, an Obama staffer who worked for the campaign in Iowa. Local pols on hand included state House candidates Lonnie Thompson (District 38), Todd Christian (HD 40) Congressional District 7 candidate Faye Armitage, and Orlando Sen. Gary Siplin.
posted by Aaron Deslatte on Oct 18, 2008 11:50:42 AM
Welcome to the weekend before early voting in Florida.
If you have a pulse, are registered to vote, and live in Central Florida, prepare for some type of contact from the political campaigns.
Check that: pulse not required.
Orange County Democrats say it has been at least six years since they put together a countywide coordinated voter-contact program to mobilize their voters.
That looked to be changing Saturday. Orange County Democratic leaders and hundreds of volunteers packed Hamburger Mary’s in Church Street Station Saturday morning to pick up enough campaign literature and blanket 100,000 Democratic doorways.
“Having a fantastic presidential ticket has helped,” said Orange County Democratic chairman Bill Robinson. “We’ve seen a level of involvement and interest that is just unprecedented.”
Steve Conti, a 35-year-old Orange County middle school teacher, was headed out to deliver door hangers listing Democratic candidates from Barack Obama down to the soil and water commission.
The experience was totally new to him.
“You gotta jump in the water,” the American history teacher said. “This is an opportunity to see what it’s all about.”
New York state Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, the older brother of celebrity Rosie O’Donnell, warmed up the crowd over coffee and danishes.
“The last eight years have been a disaster for America, a disaster for New York City, a disaster for anybody who cares about how all of us have to live,” he told the cheering crowd.
“You folks are Ground Zero of where that battle is. Where I live, we have no Republicans. We tag them so we know where they are at all times.”
For many of the canvassers, the idea of approaching strangers’ front doors was daunting.
Celeste Williams, 52, an Ocoee lawyer, said she’s never given political activism a second-thought until the 2000 presidential election.
“We need qualified people running the country,” she said. “After the 2000 election, I was heartbroken. I felt my vote didn’t matter at all. I decideded to get involved this time.”
The county precinct activities chair is Michelle Stile, an Obama staffer who worked for the campaign in Iowa. Local pols on hand included state House candidates Lonnie Thompson (District 38), Todd Christian (HD 40) Congressional District 7 candidate Faye Armitage, and Orlando Sen. Gary Siplin.
Political scribblers rated for superficiality -- there's an epidemic, it seems, of superficial journalism that doesn't even ask the five W's
Daytona Beach News-Journal reporter Mark Lane's supercilious column, below, engages in the typical journalistic malpractice of treating elections as a horse race, devoid of ideas.
He says of the Mica-Armitage race:
District 7, Rep. John Mica versus Faye Armitage. Interestingness for closeness to home and, well, nothing much else. A familiar face in his district since he first ran in 1992, Mica didn't even have an opponent in 2004 and won with 63 percent of the vote in 2006. He has a feisty and articulate but little-known Democratic opponent.
What a superficial excuse for a political journalist.
Here's the problem with journalism schools: they graduate both public relations and journalism majors from the same department. THis leads to contaminating journaliss with the sick values of the American public relations machine.
All state-supported journalism schools should be required to kick the PR departments out and send it to the business schools where they belong.
Here's another problem with journalism schools -- they don't teach much of anything.
The N.Y. TImes and other newspapers don't look for journalism grads so much as they look for graduates who know something.
The slickness has become a sickness. Ever since USA Today, every newspaper (even the Times) has been dumbed down, some more than others.
When you see a paper with really pretty layout, aping USA Today, ask yourself -- are they trying to reach my eyes or my mind.
Back to Mark Lane: he is self-indulgent with his emotions, unadorned by any interest in public policy or issues, and makes stupid remarks about Faye Armitage being "feisty" and "articulate."
That's a sexist, misogynist remark. People rarely call a man "feisty." People rarely call a white man "articulate."
I hereby challenge Mark Lane to a debate on journalistic values declining under the soulless pressure of the almighty dollar. I guess we'd have to set the debate in Daytona, since the News-Journal no longer circulates in St. Johns County, the victim of the dumbing-down of journalism, which means that fewer and fewer people actually buy a newspaper.
If publishers would learn that their business is selling news -- not pretty layouts -- and return to the days of substance, they could reverse their declining revenues and become profitable again.
If we had more courageous editors like former Washington Post Editor Benjamin Crowninsheid Bradlee, we might have avoided several wars and the meltdown of our economy. Remember the editor played by Humphrey Bogart in "Deadline USA" -- he was fearless, even as his own newspaper was closing down. Today's editors are too often Chamber of Commerce cronies like those described by Tom Wicker in "On Press" (1977), showering favorable puff pieces on the powerful, treating the largest employer and advertisers to free rides, free of investigative coverage.
"I hate shallowness." Those were the immortal words of FBI Assistant Director Mark Felt (a/k/a the confidential source "Deep Throat"), played by Hal Holbrook in the movie, "All the President's Men," speaking to Washington Post reporter BOb Woodward.
The least shallow, most thorough newspaper is the New York Times. It represents the standard of care for journalists. The Washington Post would be close if it weren't so smarmily a part of the power elite in Washington, D.C. -- it's frequently a press release for the State Department and other federal agencies (just like Tom Wicker said about tobacco and other Company Town newspapers 31 years ago).
Shallowness is what permeates Mark Lane's Daytona News-Journal column (below) and all too often contaminates the newspapers in America today.
Ed Slavin
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
P.O. Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-471-7023
904-471-9918 (fax)
Daytona Beach News-Journal columnist Mark Lane -- House races rated for interest
October 17, 2008
House races rated for interest
By MARK LANE
Daytona Beach News Journal
FOOTNOTE
The photo Web site Flickr.com developed a cool concept they call "interestingness." Its programmers worked up an algorithm that takes into account the number of times a photo is viewed, the number of comments, how often it's picked as a favorite photo, a little of this and a little of that.
I'm tempted to try this with political races. A race would gain interestingness points if it's close, if any of the candidates are widely known outside the district, and the number and scariness of television commercials. Also the odds that a partisan seat might switch parties -- let's call that "flipability" -- and the number and quality of scandals. Points would be granted for being nearby because we're interested in what's close to home.
So as a public service, here are some races on my radar ranked from most to least interesting:
1 -- District 24, Rep. Tom Feeney versus Suzanne Kosmas. Interestingness points for flipability, closeness of the race and localness. Scandal points for Feeney's connections to superlobbyist Jack Abramoff who in September was sentenced to four years in prison. In a short-lived television ad, Feeney called his Scottish golf trip with Abramoff a "rookie mistake." Of course, this rookie had been speaker of the Florida House and candidate for lieutenant governor.
Political handicappers have rated this race as a tossup and even as leaning Democratic.
Fun fact: If Kosmas wins, she would be the first U.S. representative to live in Volusia County since 1992.
2 -- District 16, Rep. Tim Mahoney versus Tom Rooney. Sex scandals! Sex scandals! Sex scandals! Oh yeah, and Tim Mahoney might become one of only two Democratic incumbents in the nation to lose his seat this year.
Remember, Mahoney was only elected two years ago because the district's previous representative, Mark Foley, was embroiled in a scandal over lurid instant messages sent to House pages. This week, ABC News reported that Mahoney, who is married, had an affair with a staffer. Things ended awkwardly, unfortunate words were exchanged (and recorded), and the staffer was fired. Later, suits were discussed and money was paid to the staffer, and, ABC reports, the FBI is investigating.
And yes, now there are media reports of a second affair.
To paraphrase Paul Simon, there must 50 ways to leave a staffer. In a district with this history, this would not be one of them.
3 -- District 8, Rep. Ric Keller versus Alan Grayson. Interestingness points for flipability, and being nearby. It had been drawn as a solid Republican district anchored in Orange County but got messed up when Democrats and independents moved into the neighborhood. Campaign tip sheets rate it a tossup.
Fun fact: The sponsor of the so-called Cheeseburger Bill, which bans obesity-related suits against fast-food restaurants, Keller didn't vote for the measure in 2005 because he was hospitalized for cardiac arrhythmia.
15 -- District 7, Rep. John Mica versus Faye Armitage. Interestingness for closeness to home and, well, nothing much else. A familiar face in his district since he first ran in 1992, Mica didn't even have an opponent in 2004 and won with 63 percent of the vote in 2006. He has a feisty and articulate but little-known Democratic opponent.
24 -- District 3, Corrine Brown versus nobody. She's already been re-elected because nobody ran against her.
mark.lane@news-jrnl.com
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© 2008 News-Journal Corporation. ® www.news-journalonline.com.
CBS NEWS: THE FIGHT FOR FLORIDA
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The Fight For Florida
Oct. 17, 2008
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(CBS) This story was written by Anthony Salvanto and Mark Gersh.
Previous stories in the States To Watch In '08 series: Minnesota | Colorado | Wisconsin | Ohio | North Carolina
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When we think about swing states, Florida always comes to mind. Yet Florida’s 2000 contest seared such an imprint in the nation’s memory that it’s easy to overlook what happened in 2004: Florida wasn’t close.
George W. Bush carried Florida by five percentage points - a fairly comfortable win by recent Presidential election standards. Bush received one million more votes in 2004 than he did four years prior.
So what has put Florida, which looked like it might have been headed into the comfortably-red column in 2008, back on the “states to watch” list this year? Three questions:
Florida’s booming suburban and exurban counties propelled Bush to his resounding victory in 2004. Now, with unsteady house values, high gas prices and retirees who depend on investment income, will they turn out in force for a Republican again?
Can John McCain do as well with the Hispanic vote as George Bush (who won most of it) did - especially when Florida’s Hispanic population is diversifying beyond the Cuban community?
What kind of disadvantage does Barack Obama face in one of the few swing states where he didn’t campaign in a primary?
The County-by-County Battle
Florida turnout increased by more than 1,500,000 votes between 2000 and 2004 - mostly to the Republicans’ advantage.
The Bush campaign made especially sharp gains in the expanding exurban counties and in rural areas. The relationship between increased turnout and Bush success was undeniable: in the 21 larger counties (60,000 or more votes each) that Bush won in 2004, total turnout skyrocketed by 600,000 votes from what it had been in 2000.
The Jacksonville area, in the Republican north, is a great example. Duval county (Jacksonville) went about the same 58% for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Turnout there increased by 90,000 in 2004, translating to a larger Bush vote tally.
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Ways To Win
Calculate your own path to the presidency with our Electoral Vote prediction map.
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Also keep an eye on inland Clay County, whose exurbs that grew as residents moved further afield from Jacksonville. In 2004 its 80,000-plus voters delivered a staggering 75% vote share for Bush… Can McCain get that kind of backing?
The same is true for the reliably-Republican counties throughout the Panhandle that are sometimes thought more of as a part of the “Deep South,” including Leon County (Tallahassee) and Escambia County (Pensacola, a retirement area for many southerners.) For a Republican candidate, Northern Florida is the base. It’s the place to watch for big vote margins, not vote swings, and McCain will need the kind of convincing wins up here that Bush got.
In the middle of the state lies the oft-discussed the Tampa-Orlando “I-4” corridor, usually the swing part of this swing state. There are a lot of closely-contested counties here.
Starting at the top of the corridor, watch Orange (Orlando) and Seminole.
Orange County has absorbed much of the growth from booming Orlando, fueled by tourism (this is home to Disney World), high-tech business, an influx of people young and older, and new residents from other parts of the U.S. and from across Latin America (more on the Hispanic vote later.) The net result is a split county, about as evenly divided as any in Florida. That probably makes it a bellwether: Obama would try to combine support from African American voters (about one-fifth of the population) and upper-income professionals in the same kind of coalition that he seeks in other growing urban areas.
Seminole County leans more Republican. It has a quarter million voters and is one of the state’s fastest-growing exurban areas, having added about 75,000 people this decade and 50,000 voters in ten years. But it is less diverse than Orange. Like other fast-growing counties around the state - and the country, for that matter - Bush won Seminole by a comfortable margin in 2004. It could indicate McCain’s fortunes as well as any county.
Down the corridor, watch Hillsborough, which contains Tampa. This is marginally Republican, growing, and thus far trending Republican. Bush won it in 2000; thanks to turnout gains he won it by a wider margin and more voters in 2004. Hillsboro was up 96,000 in turnout over 2000.
If McCain is doing well with higher-income Republicans and suburbanites, he could match Bush’s margins, and that would help him carry the state. (Obama, for his part, will be tested in how well he can hold on to white working class voters here.) Also watch Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), which is a little less wealthy and has been almost dead even in partisan registration as well as recent voting.
Further south, the Democrats try to answer the North’s big Republican gains with their own. In watching the “Gold Coast” counties, keep a close eye on the margins, even if they look lopsided. After 2000, the voting inclinations of Broward and Palm Beach counties may be some of the best-known in the nation -- but it’s about how many votes the Democrats take out of here, not whether or not they win.
Palm Beach’s voters went 60% for Kerry in 2004, and he got 64% of the vote in Broward; but neither was enough. Kerry benefited from a turnout surge in Broward (plus 121,000 votes from 2000) and Palm Beach (plus 84,000) - but that still wasn’t enough.
Percentage-wise, Gore did better; he got 63% in Palm and 68% in Broward in 2000, perhaps aided by having Joe Lieberman on the ticket.
Lieberman is, of course, on McCain’s side now, a fact that shouldn’t be overlooked in this region. Palm and Broward Counties are so large (nearly two million votes together) and so critical to Democratic vote margins statewide that without something considerably over 60% here, it is difficult for a Democrat to carry the state, based on recent history. Bush won one-fifth of the statewide Jewish vote (concentrated in this area) in 2004. If McCain draws similar numbers, Obama’s odds of winning the state drop off.
Margins are more narrowly Democratic in Miami; if McCain holds 47% of Miami-Dade (as Bush did), he’ll keep the Democratic vote edge there to a manageable level.
Demographics
There are at least three big demographic battles that will play out in Florida.
First, there is the Hispanic vote. Florida’s Hispanic population continues to grow rapidly; the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey estimated that Florida's Hispanic or Latino population has reached 20%. 2004’s exit polls showed 15% of the 2004 vote was cast by Hispanics, and while turnout and eligibility are wild cards, there is clearly potential for a sizable increase in the 2008 Hispanic vote.
But it is within the Hispanic vote that a critical story will unfold. As the Hispanic vote increases, the relative share of it that is Cuban declines. Florida’s Cuban community has long-standing allegiances to the GOP.
Florida’s Hispanic population is approximately 18% Puerto Rican and 14% Mexican. But the most salient change among Florida’s Hispanics is the increase from Latin and South American countries such as Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Argentina, and most markedly Panama. Together, these ethnic groups now comprise around one-third of Florida’s Hispanic population. If the Hispanic vote increases but the relative share of the Cuban vote drops to around one-third of it (as it could), that could mean trouble for Republicans; the other groups are not as loyally Republican.
In 2004 George W. Bush carried 56% of the Hispanic vote. If, because of either demographic or preference changes, John McCain musters only an even 50-50 split of Hispanics, that will deal a sharp blow to the Republicans’ chances of holding Florida.
Second, of course, is the senior vote. Like all states, Florida is diverse in age, but its 19% of the electorate over age 65 in 2004 was among the nation’s highest. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, older voters were not Barack Obama’s strongest group. And in 2004 John Kerry lost them in Florida (by three points) en route to losing the state by five points. Obama will need to carry older voters or mitigate his losses, if he’s to be competitive. However, if he can boost turnout among younger voters, which is certainly possible, Obama may not need to win among seniors.
Third is the African American vote. It was 12% in 2004. John McCain cannot expect to do as well as the 13% George W. Bush got among this group; that in itself probably makes Florida in 2008 a little closer than it was in 2004. The test for the Obama campaign will be whether (and by how much) it can get African American turnout up.
Registration
There are over 10 million registered voters in this vast state - and about 500,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, though that hasn’t really seemed to matter. In 2004 and 2000 there were more Democrats, too.
But that gap of 500,000 today is around 150,000 voters larger than the edge the Democrats held in 2004. New registration has leaned Democratic, though in a state this large it hasn’t dramatically altered the electorate as it has in, for example, New Hampshire, Iowa, or North Carolina. Republicans have been stagnant: there are almost exactly as many registered Republicans now as there were in 2004, despite a hotly-contested GOP primary this year.
Still, McCain may have a couple of advantages beyond those recent trends. Florida has a Republican Governor -- unlike a host of other swing states - and Charlie Crist already helped win the state once for John McCain in the primaries. That could mean an active and strong GOP turnout machine.
And speaking of the primaries, the Democrats didn’t campaign here this winter. McCain did. Around the country, a lot of the swing or “toss-up” states right now are places where the ground is still warm from the Clinton-Obama primary battles (see, for instance, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire) not to mention more voter familiarity with the candidates.
Florida may not have been suspenseful in 2004, but there are plenty of storylines to watch here now.
Anthony Salvanto is CBS News Manager of Surveys. Mark Gersh is Washington Director, National Committee for an Effective Congress, and a CBS News Consultant
By Anthony Salvanto and Mark Gersh.
©MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The Fight For Florida
Oct. 17, 2008
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(CBS) This story was written by Anthony Salvanto and Mark Gersh.
Previous stories in the States To Watch In '08 series: Minnesota | Colorado | Wisconsin | Ohio | North Carolina
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When we think about swing states, Florida always comes to mind. Yet Florida’s 2000 contest seared such an imprint in the nation’s memory that it’s easy to overlook what happened in 2004: Florida wasn’t close.
George W. Bush carried Florida by five percentage points - a fairly comfortable win by recent Presidential election standards. Bush received one million more votes in 2004 than he did four years prior.
So what has put Florida, which looked like it might have been headed into the comfortably-red column in 2008, back on the “states to watch” list this year? Three questions:
Florida’s booming suburban and exurban counties propelled Bush to his resounding victory in 2004. Now, with unsteady house values, high gas prices and retirees who depend on investment income, will they turn out in force for a Republican again?
Can John McCain do as well with the Hispanic vote as George Bush (who won most of it) did - especially when Florida’s Hispanic population is diversifying beyond the Cuban community?
What kind of disadvantage does Barack Obama face in one of the few swing states where he didn’t campaign in a primary?
The County-by-County Battle
Florida turnout increased by more than 1,500,000 votes between 2000 and 2004 - mostly to the Republicans’ advantage.
The Bush campaign made especially sharp gains in the expanding exurban counties and in rural areas. The relationship between increased turnout and Bush success was undeniable: in the 21 larger counties (60,000 or more votes each) that Bush won in 2004, total turnout skyrocketed by 600,000 votes from what it had been in 2000.
The Jacksonville area, in the Republican north, is a great example. Duval county (Jacksonville) went about the same 58% for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Turnout there increased by 90,000 in 2004, translating to a larger Bush vote tally.
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Ways To Win
Calculate your own path to the presidency with our Electoral Vote prediction map.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also keep an eye on inland Clay County, whose exurbs that grew as residents moved further afield from Jacksonville. In 2004 its 80,000-plus voters delivered a staggering 75% vote share for Bush… Can McCain get that kind of backing?
The same is true for the reliably-Republican counties throughout the Panhandle that are sometimes thought more of as a part of the “Deep South,” including Leon County (Tallahassee) and Escambia County (Pensacola, a retirement area for many southerners.) For a Republican candidate, Northern Florida is the base. It’s the place to watch for big vote margins, not vote swings, and McCain will need the kind of convincing wins up here that Bush got.
In the middle of the state lies the oft-discussed the Tampa-Orlando “I-4” corridor, usually the swing part of this swing state. There are a lot of closely-contested counties here.
Starting at the top of the corridor, watch Orange (Orlando) and Seminole.
Orange County has absorbed much of the growth from booming Orlando, fueled by tourism (this is home to Disney World), high-tech business, an influx of people young and older, and new residents from other parts of the U.S. and from across Latin America (more on the Hispanic vote later.) The net result is a split county, about as evenly divided as any in Florida. That probably makes it a bellwether: Obama would try to combine support from African American voters (about one-fifth of the population) and upper-income professionals in the same kind of coalition that he seeks in other growing urban areas.
Seminole County leans more Republican. It has a quarter million voters and is one of the state’s fastest-growing exurban areas, having added about 75,000 people this decade and 50,000 voters in ten years. But it is less diverse than Orange. Like other fast-growing counties around the state - and the country, for that matter - Bush won Seminole by a comfortable margin in 2004. It could indicate McCain’s fortunes as well as any county.
Down the corridor, watch Hillsborough, which contains Tampa. This is marginally Republican, growing, and thus far trending Republican. Bush won it in 2000; thanks to turnout gains he won it by a wider margin and more voters in 2004. Hillsboro was up 96,000 in turnout over 2000.
If McCain is doing well with higher-income Republicans and suburbanites, he could match Bush’s margins, and that would help him carry the state. (Obama, for his part, will be tested in how well he can hold on to white working class voters here.) Also watch Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), which is a little less wealthy and has been almost dead even in partisan registration as well as recent voting.
Further south, the Democrats try to answer the North’s big Republican gains with their own. In watching the “Gold Coast” counties, keep a close eye on the margins, even if they look lopsided. After 2000, the voting inclinations of Broward and Palm Beach counties may be some of the best-known in the nation -- but it’s about how many votes the Democrats take out of here, not whether or not they win.
Palm Beach’s voters went 60% for Kerry in 2004, and he got 64% of the vote in Broward; but neither was enough. Kerry benefited from a turnout surge in Broward (plus 121,000 votes from 2000) and Palm Beach (plus 84,000) - but that still wasn’t enough.
Percentage-wise, Gore did better; he got 63% in Palm and 68% in Broward in 2000, perhaps aided by having Joe Lieberman on the ticket.
Lieberman is, of course, on McCain’s side now, a fact that shouldn’t be overlooked in this region. Palm and Broward Counties are so large (nearly two million votes together) and so critical to Democratic vote margins statewide that without something considerably over 60% here, it is difficult for a Democrat to carry the state, based on recent history. Bush won one-fifth of the statewide Jewish vote (concentrated in this area) in 2004. If McCain draws similar numbers, Obama’s odds of winning the state drop off.
Margins are more narrowly Democratic in Miami; if McCain holds 47% of Miami-Dade (as Bush did), he’ll keep the Democratic vote edge there to a manageable level.
Demographics
There are at least three big demographic battles that will play out in Florida.
First, there is the Hispanic vote. Florida’s Hispanic population continues to grow rapidly; the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey estimated that Florida's Hispanic or Latino population has reached 20%. 2004’s exit polls showed 15% of the 2004 vote was cast by Hispanics, and while turnout and eligibility are wild cards, there is clearly potential for a sizable increase in the 2008 Hispanic vote.
But it is within the Hispanic vote that a critical story will unfold. As the Hispanic vote increases, the relative share of it that is Cuban declines. Florida’s Cuban community has long-standing allegiances to the GOP.
Florida’s Hispanic population is approximately 18% Puerto Rican and 14% Mexican. But the most salient change among Florida’s Hispanics is the increase from Latin and South American countries such as Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Argentina, and most markedly Panama. Together, these ethnic groups now comprise around one-third of Florida’s Hispanic population. If the Hispanic vote increases but the relative share of the Cuban vote drops to around one-third of it (as it could), that could mean trouble for Republicans; the other groups are not as loyally Republican.
In 2004 George W. Bush carried 56% of the Hispanic vote. If, because of either demographic or preference changes, John McCain musters only an even 50-50 split of Hispanics, that will deal a sharp blow to the Republicans’ chances of holding Florida.
Second, of course, is the senior vote. Like all states, Florida is diverse in age, but its 19% of the electorate over age 65 in 2004 was among the nation’s highest. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, older voters were not Barack Obama’s strongest group. And in 2004 John Kerry lost them in Florida (by three points) en route to losing the state by five points. Obama will need to carry older voters or mitigate his losses, if he’s to be competitive. However, if he can boost turnout among younger voters, which is certainly possible, Obama may not need to win among seniors.
Third is the African American vote. It was 12% in 2004. John McCain cannot expect to do as well as the 13% George W. Bush got among this group; that in itself probably makes Florida in 2008 a little closer than it was in 2004. The test for the Obama campaign will be whether (and by how much) it can get African American turnout up.
Registration
There are over 10 million registered voters in this vast state - and about 500,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, though that hasn’t really seemed to matter. In 2004 and 2000 there were more Democrats, too.
But that gap of 500,000 today is around 150,000 voters larger than the edge the Democrats held in 2004. New registration has leaned Democratic, though in a state this large it hasn’t dramatically altered the electorate as it has in, for example, New Hampshire, Iowa, or North Carolina. Republicans have been stagnant: there are almost exactly as many registered Republicans now as there were in 2004, despite a hotly-contested GOP primary this year.
Still, McCain may have a couple of advantages beyond those recent trends. Florida has a Republican Governor -- unlike a host of other swing states - and Charlie Crist already helped win the state once for John McCain in the primaries. That could mean an active and strong GOP turnout machine.
And speaking of the primaries, the Democrats didn’t campaign here this winter. McCain did. Around the country, a lot of the swing or “toss-up” states right now are places where the ground is still warm from the Clinton-Obama primary battles (see, for instance, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire) not to mention more voter familiarity with the candidates.
Florida may not have been suspenseful in 2004, but there are plenty of storylines to watch here now.
Anthony Salvanto is CBS News Manager of Surveys. Mark Gersh is Washington Director, National Committee for an Effective Congress, and a CBS News Consultant
By Anthony Salvanto and Mark Gersh.
©MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CHICKEN HAWK 16-YEAR CONGRESSMAN JOHN L. MICA IS TOO CHICKEN FOR DEBATES WITH DEMOCRAT FAYE ARMITAGE
JUVENILE FLORIDA REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN JOHN MICA HEAD-BUTTS ABC NEWS CAMERAMAN, ACCOMPANIED BY JUVENILE ENTOURAGE -- HOW MUCH DID THEY DRINK AT BACHANALIAN TOM DELAY LOBBYIST PARTY THAT NIGHT? HOW OLD ARE THE MEMBERS OF JOHN MICA'S ENTOURAGE? ARE THEY OF LEGAL DRINKING AGE?
In the immoral words of William F. Buckley, Jr. about someone who refused to debate him on his TV show, "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"
Chicken Hawk Congressman JOHN MICA is full of baloney.
Chicken Hawk JOHN MICA's never gone to war but opines constantly on U.S. wars, while voting against veterans.
Chicken Hawk JOHN MICA is all hat and no cattle. He has no ideas and he's a nuisance. Head-butting an ABC news cameraman, insulting voters and currying favors with lobbyists, he's not done anything of substance for the people of our District.
Chicken MICA's much too chicken to debate Faye Armitage, an economist and soccer mom and grandmom who will represent the people, not the powerful.
For much more on MICA, see below.
Faye Armitage, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Congress 7th District, issued a renewed challenge to Republican incumbent John Mica to debate her.
Faye Armitage, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Congress 7th District, issued a renewed challenge to Republican incumbent John Mica to debate her. She sent a certified letter to Mica's campaign Friday:
Mr. John Mica:
When I became the Democratic nominee for the 7th Florida Congressional District, in the true spirit of Democracy, I issued you a challenge to seven debates; your silence is deafening.
I believe the people here in the 7th District deserve the opportunity to judge for themselves who will be their choice to represent them in Congress. Your lack of consideration on this point makes it appear that you take your role as representative of the people of Florida’s 7th District for granted. Again, for the benefit of the people of the 7th District, I challenge you to three televised debates between October 20 and 31 on all three of the local affiliate stations. By agreeing to these debates you will allow the people of the 7th District what most would consider the minimum expectations of their representatives, the opportunity that is basic to our Democratic system of government: to make an informed decision for whom they will cast their vote.
It would appear that you have hidden yourself from view instead of making yourself available to the people you represent who are concerned with the many issues that effect their lives, such as why, during the most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression, you voted ‘no’ for the financial bailout that was put forth by your own parties’ administration? It could appear that you did so for political reasons, i.e. in order to blame the Democrats for the financial crisis, but one might also conclude that you voted ‘no’ for reasons of ideology, i.e. that you believe in no government regulation of markets, which is what has led to this financial mess in the first place. The fact is no one knows why you voted the way you did on this or many other issues because you have yet to stand before your constituents and defend your record. I am beginning to believe that you are afraid to stand before the people of Florida’s 7th District because you are afraid that your record is indefensible. I fully understand that this is how you feel given the dire circumstances which, under your leadership, the country now finds itself.
Your party has had control of both the legislative and executive branch of government for the better part of eight years, diminished only by the mid-term elections that saw so many Republicans get tossed out of Washington. Now you must own every bit of responsibility for the part you played in putting the country in such dire straits. You have been in Congress for sixteen years and the evidence is now in on your leadership: no good. Your ‘Republican Revolution’ ideology has resulted in the utter devastation of the people of this district’s jobs, incomes, and retirement savings. People are hurting and deserve the chance to hear from you. I challenge you to debate me. I stand for change. I will listen to the people, not just wealthy people but people of all walks of life. I come from the middle class and will champion the working people struggling in today’s economy, the retirees who have seen their savings disappear, and the business owners who just want the chance to achieve the kind of prosperity that has been the cornerstone of American life. I come from these people and I understand that they want to hear from those who represent them. So, I implore you to have the courage to stand up for yourself and defend your record.
Sincerely,
Faye Armitage
Democratic Nominee for U.S. Congress
Florida 7th District
Mr. John Mica:
When I became the Democratic nominee for the 7th Florida Congressional District, in the true spirit of Democracy, I issued you a challenge to seven debates; your silence is deafening.
I believe the people here in the 7th District deserve the opportunity to judge for themselves who will be their choice to represent them in Congress. Your lack of consideration on this point makes it appear that you take your role as representative of the people of Florida’s 7th District for granted. Again, for the benefit of the people of the 7th District, I challenge you to three televised debates between October 20 and 31 on all three of the local affiliate stations. By agreeing to these debates you will allow the people of the 7th District what most would consider the minimum expectations of their representatives, the opportunity that is basic to our Democratic system of government: to make an informed decision for whom they will cast their vote.
It would appear that you have hidden yourself from view instead of making yourself available to the people you represent who are concerned with the many issues that effect their lives, such as why, during the most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression, you voted ‘no’ for the financial bailout that was put forth by your own parties’ administration? It could appear that you did so for political reasons, i.e. in order to blame the Democrats for the financial crisis, but one might also conclude that you voted ‘no’ for reasons of ideology, i.e. that you believe in no government regulation of markets, which is what has led to this financial mess in the first place. The fact is no one knows why you voted the way you did on this or many other issues because you have yet to stand before your constituents and defend your record. I am beginning to believe that you are afraid to stand before the people of Florida’s 7th District because you are afraid that your record is indefensible. I fully understand that this is how you feel given the dire circumstances which, under your leadership, the country now finds itself.
Your party has had control of both the legislative and executive branch of government for the better part of eight years, diminished only by the mid-term elections that saw so many Republicans get tossed out of Washington. Now you must own every bit of responsibility for the part you played in putting the country in such dire straits. You have been in Congress for sixteen years and the evidence is now in on your leadership: no good. Your ‘Republican Revolution’ ideology has resulted in the utter devastation of the people of this district’s jobs, incomes, and retirement savings. People are hurting and deserve the chance to hear from you. I challenge you to debate me. I stand for change. I will listen to the people, not just wealthy people but people of all walks of life. I come from the middle class and will champion the working people struggling in today’s economy, the retirees who have seen their savings disappear, and the business owners who just want the chance to achieve the kind of prosperity that has been the cornerstone of American life. I come from these people and I understand that they want to hear from those who represent them. So, I implore you to have the courage to stand up for yourself and defend your record.
Sincerely,
Faye Armitage
Democratic Nominee for U.S. Congress
Florida 7th District
TIME FOR A NO-BRIBERY CAMPAIGN IN ST. JOHNS COUNTY
I both agree and disagree with the editorial (below).
The Governor did the right thing.
However, the editorial also calls for an immediate replacement to THOMAS G. MANUEL to be named by the Governor, whose staff told the Record that the Governor ordinarily does not replace a suspended official until there's a conviction or guilty plea.
Nothing good could come from immediately naming the next hanger-on in line from among the Courthouse Gang.
Let the names of qualified, independent, non-Republican applicants be discussed and debated, and let the Governor choose a non-Republican to hold the seat for two years, until the next election.
Appointing a lame duck now would only allow speculators to euchre another vote for their schemes.
Let the Governor publish a list of all persons seeking the permament appointment, so that the public can respond -- just as we do with judicial nominations.
Thattaway, if there is adverse information on any of the candidates, the public can share that information with the Governor, so that we have no more bribetakers in St. Johns County Government.
Meanwhile, we need an anti-bribery campaign in St. Johns County and St. Augustine and the other government agencies here.
People who are offered bribes should turn in the bribepayer.
People who are asked to give bribes should turn in the public official.
A culture of corruption can be changed one day at a time.
What do you reckon?
Republican St. Johns County Commissioner Tom Manuel is crushed by suspension from office after indictment by a federal grand jury.
Political mover and shaker St. Johns County Commissioner Tom Manuel is crushed by suspension from office after indictment by a federal grand jury.
Manuel was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Jacksonville on two counts of bribery totaling $60,000. The indictment, unsealed on Thursday, ends months of speculation after Sheriff David Shoar confirmed media reports that Manuel was under investigation. Manuel denied it at the time.
Manuel, the commission's chairman, moved quickly to take leave Friday morning under the federal Family Medical Leave policy for the sake of his family, his health and the good of the county. Manuel's medical problems are well documented making him eligible for benefits. He did the right thing removing himself immediately from county decision-making. By late afternoon, Gov. Charlie Crist suspended Manuel from office until a further executive order or as otherwise provided by law. He further suspended all of Manuel's benefits of the office.
The two actions give the county the ability to operate separately from Manuel's problems. They give Manuel time to attempt to prove his innocence.
The suspension comes at a critical juncture for the County Commission. Now, it will have three new commissioners out of five after reorganization Nov. 18.
We urge Crist to move by next week on a temporary replacement for Manuel, someone with no political agenda of their own but with knowledge of the county and its issues. This new person should be seated by the Oct. 28 regular meeting. That will give the county at least three weeks to acclimate the new commissioner before two more new members are seated during reorganization.
In the meantime, Manuel's suspension creates some holes on regional and local boards on which he served such as the county's Tourist Development Council where he was chairman. There should be no break in the county's representation on any of those boards.
Vice chair Cyndi Stevenson took over as chair immediately on Friday. Manuel's term as chairman was to end in November. We wish her well in this difficult time. We urge her to fill those critical board roles herself or by appointing other commissioners as soon as possible.
We believe that county government is in good hands under the steady leadership of County Administrator Michael Wanchick and the remaining four county commissioners.
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© The St. Augustine Record
Manuel was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Jacksonville on two counts of bribery totaling $60,000. The indictment, unsealed on Thursday, ends months of speculation after Sheriff David Shoar confirmed media reports that Manuel was under investigation. Manuel denied it at the time.
Manuel, the commission's chairman, moved quickly to take leave Friday morning under the federal Family Medical Leave policy for the sake of his family, his health and the good of the county. Manuel's medical problems are well documented making him eligible for benefits. He did the right thing removing himself immediately from county decision-making. By late afternoon, Gov. Charlie Crist suspended Manuel from office until a further executive order or as otherwise provided by law. He further suspended all of Manuel's benefits of the office.
The two actions give the county the ability to operate separately from Manuel's problems. They give Manuel time to attempt to prove his innocence.
The suspension comes at a critical juncture for the County Commission. Now, it will have three new commissioners out of five after reorganization Nov. 18.
We urge Crist to move by next week on a temporary replacement for Manuel, someone with no political agenda of their own but with knowledge of the county and its issues. This new person should be seated by the Oct. 28 regular meeting. That will give the county at least three weeks to acclimate the new commissioner before two more new members are seated during reorganization.
In the meantime, Manuel's suspension creates some holes on regional and local boards on which he served such as the county's Tourist Development Council where he was chairman. There should be no break in the county's representation on any of those boards.
Vice chair Cyndi Stevenson took over as chair immediately on Friday. Manuel's term as chairman was to end in November. We wish her well in this difficult time. We urge her to fill those critical board roles herself or by appointing other commissioners as soon as possible.
We believe that county government is in good hands under the steady leadership of County Administrator Michael Wanchick and the remaining four county commissioners.
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© The St. Augustine Record
GAUCHE "ANONYMICE" QUOTED IN THE RECORD, ONE ACTUALLY ENDORSING LYNCHING -- VIOLATING JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS AND COARSENING PUBLIC DEBATE
Anonymous publication of opinions in a respectable newspaper? What's going on here?
It started in small towns across America ten years ago.
People call/write the newspaper anonymously, and are quoted in print.
Poor journalism. Today's St. Augustine Record carries some hot-under-the-collar-types' justified anger at corruption in our county, but not one person posted under their own name.
On the one hand, I can understand people are afraid to be quoted opposing a corrupt Courthouse and City Hall regime that grooves on retaliating. (Where else in the world do you get kicked out of a city for disagreeing with the City Manager?)
But I think it's kind of sleazy to let people talk about public hangings of bribetakers without signing their name to it.
Politicians abused the St. Augustine Record's Talk of the Town site (including NANCY SIKES-KLINE, the ringleader of a site that became filled to the brim with obscenity and obloquy directed against persons critiziing the City Government and its strange romance with speculators, tree-killers, wetland-destroyers and people whom Commissioner Ben RIch termed "worse than any carpetbagger."
The Record rightly abolished its site, whose members moved to Plazabum, destroying the reputation of our city for tourists, making them think St. Augustine is just a homeless camp. Then the Record allowed posting after every news story. Now the Record is publishing its anonymice in the print edition.
If I were publisher, I would not print anonymous opinions. In this case, some of the opinion-writers are Plazabum posters. Some of them are government officials and employees and their entourages. (See below for photos and phone numbers to ask about Plazabum's bigotry).
What if I were publisher of the Record? Anonymous sources should be allowed to be quoted in news stories for good and sufficient reasons (like fear of retaliation or firing). Anonymous opinions are not worth the paper they're not printed on, but in this case, the Wreckord wasted good newsprint on trashtalking.
Anything I have to say, I sign my name to (despite Plazabum's E-mail invitation for me to join the anonymous Anonymice).
I am concerned that the Record's printing the anonymice opinions about hanging THOMAS G. MANUEL could deny THOMAS G. MANUEL a fair trial. MANUEL could win a reversal of his conviction --- or a change of venue -- if his defense lawyer simply staples the Anonymice opinions to a motion filed with the U.S. District Judge.
By the way, the former Soviet Union and Communist China have executed bribe-takers, and the book Bribes, a scholarly history of world bribery by Judge John Noonan finds other cultures that have dealt with bribery harshly, sincde ancient Mesopotamia.
JUDGE JOHN T. NOONAN, JR., Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, author of the scholarly, readable book, "Bribes -- the Intellectual History of a Moral Idea."
Nevertheless, when someone calls for public hanging of a public official where none is provided by state or federal law, and that unconstitutional opinion is then placed in a newspaper, it's bad for public discourse and cheapens debate. It's awfully close to the bad old days of lynching in St. Johns County.
Lynching a criminal defendant is not a fit subject for a family newspaper. It's not one bit funny when you consider the long history of people lynched in the South, including here in St. Johns County.
Would the Record support lynching? Then why post an intemperate post from some anonymous ax-grinder, making inflammatory remarks about hanging THOMAS G. MANUEL?
That is altogether rude, crude and uncivil, and should not be published in the pages of a family newspaper.
During the past year, I've heard from people who submitted letters expressing strong convictions about sign-stealers and a cruel, corrupt local County Court Judge, which have been withheld from publication on the Opinion Page. Yet less temperate opinions (calling for lynch law) are posted on the news page?
I would not have printed the anonymous hanging comment. However, I would have printed the signed letters on sign-stealing and the cruel, corrupt County Court Judge.
But then again, I've never had a journalism course (they didn't teach it a Georgetown University when I was there). (I learned journalism on the job in East Tennessee, where the people working together ran off a crooked school superintendent, helped the FBI arrest a crooked Sheriff and exposed the largest mercury pollution event in the history of our frail planet.)
Comments posted by readers at www.staugustine.com
Comments posted by readers at www.staugustine.com
Publication Date: 10/18/08
Here is a sampling of what readers posted on our Web site, www.staugustine.com, Friday expressing their reaction to the indictment of St. Johns County Commission Chairman Tom Manuel:
Posted by: Watchinourbucks: Tell me it isn't so !!! Charged with taking a bribe, twice, ???
With only 20 % of the BCC voting power, why would an individual or corporation risk an "investment" of this type? With whom did these dalliances occur?
Posted by: Schmidtgeorge: There's nothing to think about. Manuel should resign immediately.
Posted by: Activevoter: He should resign IMMEDIATELY. I, for one, have had, and heard, enough of this drama. Let the County get on with business at hand and place this embarrassment behind us.
Posted by: Finder: With only 20 percent of the BCC voting power, why would an individual or corporation risk an "investment" of this type? With whom did these dalliances occur?
Since everyone knows that Manuel didn't scratch his butt without the support and assistance of Ben Rich (and vice versa), that answer should be obvious. Apparently, Manuel always knew that Rich, at the very least, would go along with everything he pushed for... as he always has.
It's also important to remember that these specific two bribery counts were only the one's Manuel was 'caught' at. We have to wonder what else he didn't get caught at.
Maybe now the county will wake up to the spin and rhetoric that Manuel and Rich have used against all those 'evil greedy developers,' -- a non issue in reality. What we truly have to fear are 'evil greedy commissioners,' and many (although too few) of us have understood that all along.
Posted by: tinawilson: Tom Manuel has an ego the size of Texas -- I doubt he has the integrity of character to resign. If he were concerned about doing the right thing, he would have resigned in June. Instead, he denied he was under investigation (which we all knew he was) he denied he was approached at the restaurant in Jacksonville Beach and went so far as to threaten the newspaper editor with a lawsuit if they printed the story and now he enters a plea of "not guilty."
I have to ask, what exactly is he "not guilty" of?
Posted by: lilysmom: He should quit immediately! I wonder who he'll take down with him? Can anyone say Ben Rich!
Posted by: NicoleSue87: He weighs (resigning)? What? Are you serious? This man should quit ASAP... or somehow he should be displaced from his seat for ethics violations... this just really disgusts me. Fat cat, ego the size of Canada..... makes me want to vomit.
Posted by: Islandgirl080: Well people, this should help you determine if the charter is a good idea or NOT!!
Vote NO!
The charter is a selfishly motivated pet project of Manual, no wonder he was so (upset) when it failed, somebody was going to want their money back!!!
Posted by: mgeronimo: He's indicted for taking two bribes in the last four months, but the FBI investigation has been going on for over a year...hmmmmm....
Posted by: alfordwd: If you want him out so bad, call /e-mail /write Charlie Crist. He can do it, and you won't have to waste your time doing these postings!
Posted by: siobhan1970: Weighing (resignation)?! ARE YOU SERIOUS? Unbelievable...it must have been pretty easy for Manuel to cut, cut, cut... cut funding to programs for the indigent, cut raises, cut employees, etc... and bellow the "tighten your belts" battle cry, all over the county, when he was taking at least $60 thousand on the sly ... proud to say I did not vote for him!
Posted by: justwondering: alfordwd -- there are other sites for you to spend your time reading and providing comments. I don't view any posting to this site as a person's waste of time.
Posted by: cptnbuzz: If Manuel had the slightest concern for the public's interest, ahead of his own, he would resign immediately.
Posted by: gotlucky: "Everyone knows that Manuel didn't scratch his butt without the support and assistance of Ben Rich..." Finder, I love it! Can I borrow that line sometime?
Posted by: steve1: We need to recall the other two commissioners and the new one before he takes office because they have all scratched each others butts (birds of a feather stick together).
Posted by: schmidtgeorge: I hope Gov. Crist acts quickly to remove Manuel from office. Better yet, he should do the right thing and resign immediately.
Posted by: nonspook: This is just the tip of the iceberg ... who's next, when he turns State's Evidence for a lesser sentence ?
Posted by: Chefbuck: Hard to believe he's the only one!
Posted by: TG: Fire them all and lets start over!
Posted by: NicoleSue87: Believe me Manuel is not the first county commissioner to do this kind of thing...Most of the good ole boys in this town are dug in deep.... What you want to bet he only gets a slap on the wrist?
Posted by: chancex: nichole sue87, I know our system here isn't perfect but if you really can't stand the so-called [good ole boys] in this lovely town we have, you do know I-95 runs north, don't you?
Posted by: acureforgravity: "What you want to bet he only gets a slap on the wrist...." Of course, or a few months in a country club 'prison' at worst. Personally I'd be happier to see him swinging from a lamp post with those who bribed him twisting in the wind on either side.
Posted by: TheOldManandthesea: Good old Boy? Sorry, he's a transplant like most of ya. The good ole boys got railroaded a long time ago. Wish we had 'em back. Wasn't much you wouldn't do for your neighbor in those days. Now it's see what you can do TO your neighbor :-).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/101808/news_1018_023.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Publication Date: 10/18/08
Here is a sampling of what readers posted on our Web site, www.staugustine.com, Friday expressing their reaction to the indictment of St. Johns County Commission Chairman Tom Manuel:
Posted by: Watchinourbucks: Tell me it isn't so !!! Charged with taking a bribe, twice, ???
With only 20 % of the BCC voting power, why would an individual or corporation risk an "investment" of this type? With whom did these dalliances occur?
Posted by: Schmidtgeorge: There's nothing to think about. Manuel should resign immediately.
Posted by: Activevoter: He should resign IMMEDIATELY. I, for one, have had, and heard, enough of this drama. Let the County get on with business at hand and place this embarrassment behind us.
Posted by: Finder: With only 20 percent of the BCC voting power, why would an individual or corporation risk an "investment" of this type? With whom did these dalliances occur?
Since everyone knows that Manuel didn't scratch his butt without the support and assistance of Ben Rich (and vice versa), that answer should be obvious. Apparently, Manuel always knew that Rich, at the very least, would go along with everything he pushed for... as he always has.
It's also important to remember that these specific two bribery counts were only the one's Manuel was 'caught' at. We have to wonder what else he didn't get caught at.
Maybe now the county will wake up to the spin and rhetoric that Manuel and Rich have used against all those 'evil greedy developers,' -- a non issue in reality. What we truly have to fear are 'evil greedy commissioners,' and many (although too few) of us have understood that all along.
Posted by: tinawilson: Tom Manuel has an ego the size of Texas -- I doubt he has the integrity of character to resign. If he were concerned about doing the right thing, he would have resigned in June. Instead, he denied he was under investigation (which we all knew he was) he denied he was approached at the restaurant in Jacksonville Beach and went so far as to threaten the newspaper editor with a lawsuit if they printed the story and now he enters a plea of "not guilty."
I have to ask, what exactly is he "not guilty" of?
Posted by: lilysmom: He should quit immediately! I wonder who he'll take down with him? Can anyone say Ben Rich!
Posted by: NicoleSue87: He weighs (resigning)? What? Are you serious? This man should quit ASAP... or somehow he should be displaced from his seat for ethics violations... this just really disgusts me. Fat cat, ego the size of Canada..... makes me want to vomit.
Posted by: Islandgirl080: Well people, this should help you determine if the charter is a good idea or NOT!!
Vote NO!
The charter is a selfishly motivated pet project of Manual, no wonder he was so (upset) when it failed, somebody was going to want their money back!!!
Posted by: mgeronimo: He's indicted for taking two bribes in the last four months, but the FBI investigation has been going on for over a year...hmmmmm....
Posted by: alfordwd: If you want him out so bad, call /e-mail /write Charlie Crist. He can do it, and you won't have to waste your time doing these postings!
Posted by: siobhan1970: Weighing (resignation)?! ARE YOU SERIOUS? Unbelievable...it must have been pretty easy for Manuel to cut, cut, cut... cut funding to programs for the indigent, cut raises, cut employees, etc... and bellow the "tighten your belts" battle cry, all over the county, when he was taking at least $60 thousand on the sly ... proud to say I did not vote for him!
Posted by: justwondering: alfordwd -- there are other sites for you to spend your time reading and providing comments. I don't view any posting to this site as a person's waste of time.
Posted by: cptnbuzz: If Manuel had the slightest concern for the public's interest, ahead of his own, he would resign immediately.
Posted by: gotlucky: "Everyone knows that Manuel didn't scratch his butt without the support and assistance of Ben Rich..." Finder, I love it! Can I borrow that line sometime?
Posted by: steve1: We need to recall the other two commissioners and the new one before he takes office because they have all scratched each others butts (birds of a feather stick together).
Posted by: schmidtgeorge: I hope Gov. Crist acts quickly to remove Manuel from office. Better yet, he should do the right thing and resign immediately.
Posted by: nonspook: This is just the tip of the iceberg ... who's next, when he turns State's Evidence for a lesser sentence ?
Posted by: Chefbuck: Hard to believe he's the only one!
Posted by: TG: Fire them all and lets start over!
Posted by: NicoleSue87: Believe me Manuel is not the first county commissioner to do this kind of thing...Most of the good ole boys in this town are dug in deep.... What you want to bet he only gets a slap on the wrist?
Posted by: chancex: nichole sue87, I know our system here isn't perfect but if you really can't stand the so-called [good ole boys] in this lovely town we have, you do know I-95 runs north, don't you?
Posted by: acureforgravity: "What you want to bet he only gets a slap on the wrist...." Of course, or a few months in a country club 'prison' at worst. Personally I'd be happier to see him swinging from a lamp post with those who bribed him twisting in the wind on either side.
Posted by: TheOldManandthesea: Good old Boy? Sorry, he's a transplant like most of ya. The good ole boys got railroaded a long time ago. Wish we had 'em back. Wasn't much you wouldn't do for your neighbor in those days. Now it's see what you can do TO your neighbor :-).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/101808/news_1018_023.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Governor Suspends Republican County Commission Chairman THOMAS G. MANUEL OVER INDICTMENT FOR TAKING $60,000 IN BRIBES -- NO REPLACEMENT PLANNED
Governor suspends Manuel
Crist does not plan to name replacement now
By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 10/18/08
On Friday, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist suspended former St. Johns County Commission Chairman Tom Manuel from office after learning that Manuel was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of bribery Thursday.
Since the alleged crimes are felonies, Crist issued Executive Order No. 08-214, which said, "It is in the best interest of the residents of St. Johns County and the state of Florida that Thomas Manuel be immediately be suspended from the public office which he now holds...."
Manuel remains free on $50,000 bond with a trial tentatively scheduled for December.
Earlier Friday, Manuel had voluntarily sought a leave of absence for health reasons.
Under county regulations, he would not have collected a pay check, but would have been covered for 12 weeks by the county's health plan.
With his suspension, however, Manuel won't be eligible for the health benefits.
Sterling Ivey, spokesman for Crist, said Friday evening that Manuel will not immediately be replaced.
"That suspension does not lead to a vacancy in the office," Ivey said. "Typically, there's a suspension until we gather more facts and then have the case heard in court. We will not be appointing anyone to fill that seat right now."
Asked if anyone in particular is being considered, Ivey said there's no candidate list,
"People are calling the office to say they are interested," he said.
Commissioner-elect Mark Miner issued a prepared statement Friday that said, "This is a sad day for the people of St. Johns County. Now more than ever it is imperative that the new Board of Commissioners and the county staff unite and work diligently to re-establish the trust of the citizens of St. Johns County. While the alleged actions of Commission Chairman Tom Manuel are regrettable and inexcusable, my thoughts and prayers are with his family during this very difficult time,"
County Administrator Michael Wanchick said the suspension order "prohibits Mr. Manuel from performing any official act, duty or function of public office and from receiving any pay, benefits or privileges of public office during the period of suspension."
The suspension period will end when a further Executive Order is issued, he said.
But Wanchick assured county residents that, "The county remains committed to serving the needs of (both) residents and businesses."
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© The St. Augustine Record
LIKE LADY MACBETH, ERRONEOUS JONES OBSESSES ON HIS UNCLEAN HANDS IN ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM BY CITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE
Like William Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth washing the blood off her hands, ERROL JONES a/k/a ERRONEOUS JONES is obsessed with his overt acts, repeatedly talking about the damage that he has done to our beautiful City of St. Augustine under the reign of ruin of JONES, who has become controversial City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS' attack parrot on issues ranging from illegal dumping to government waste.
What was supposed to be a profile of ERROL JONES a/k/a ERRONEOUS JONES turned into an angry man's idee fixee obsession with the lady who single-handedly organized St. Augustine residents into opposing the City of St. Augustine's illegal dumping in two (2) different African-American and low-income neighbhorhoods, Lincolnville and West Augustine.
Take out JONES' hatred of reformer JUDITH SERAPHIN and there's almost no profile article left. These are quotes from the article below, followed by rebuttal:
Errol Jones seeks to complete projects, help historical infrastructure
Errol Jones wants to keep his seat in the City Commission and says his opponent is not "working for the best interest of the city."
Balderdash. JONES is obviously mistaking the interests of BIG BAD BOSS WILLIAM B. HARRISS with the interests of the people.
Jones is running for Seat 1, a four-year term, against Judith Seraphin, a resident of the historical St. Augustine neighborhood Lincolnville who says the public can't trust city government.
Jones feels he's "done a good job" for the city and feels Seraphin spends too much time criticizing instead of finding productive ways to do good for residents.
Harrumph. Is JONES' Mrs. Seraphin's overseer? Is he running a stop watch? The only thing that ERROL JONES knows how to run is his mouth.
"We need to bring our community together as one toward a common cause," he said. "Government is not a ghost out there doing something evil to (the public). I welcome (Seraphin) to spend a day with government and see who these people really are."
As Freud would say, what does he mean by that? So does ERRONEOUS JONES want Judith Seraphin to "spend a day with" BIG BAD BOSS WILLIAM B. HARRISS, sitting in his lap? Or riding around like ERRONEOUS JONES has been wont to do, pretending he is a policeman, harassing people on St. George Street and according to Folio Weekly, opening closed drawers in a ghost tour hostess' table at the Slave Market?
Jones has been a commissioner for six years and says his record proves he tries to do what is right for residents. He said there have been many times when he has voted against the other commissioners on issues because he thought there was a better way.
"It shows that I'm independent and I'm not in anybody's pocket," he said. "I listen to people and I've been man enough to step up and say, 'OK, let's do it differently.'"
Again, the Commissioner "doth protest too much," claiming he wasn't "in anyone's pocket. Where ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBARD and CHESTER STOKES and GEORGE MCCLURE are concerned, JONES aligns himself with them 100% of the time. He reminds me of the remark of Commodore Vanderbilt when he said "Let the public be damned." So many times ERRONEOUS JONES has talked down to neighorhood residents, whether it was Leonardi Street about heavy trucks zooming down a 25 foot wide street to AMEERIGAS, or Lincolnville, West Augustine, Davis Shores or NOrth City about developments there.
Jones grew up in St. Augustine, and worked in the public and private sector for 40 years, including in New York and Hawaii. In June, he retired as dean of students at St. Augustine High School.
So JONES calls Judith Seraphin a "carpetbagger" for moving here and then becoming involved in politics, when it appears JONES moved back here with the express purpose of becoming involved in politics.
He hopes to be re-elected so he can get several projects completed that started during his tenure, including the Bridge of Lions rehabilitation project and the San Sebastian Harbor condominium and hotel development.
There's a crock worthy of satire. JONES is not a construction worker or an engineer, so there's nothing for him to do on the Bridge of Lions rehabilitation project, which is being done by Skanska and subcontractors for the Florida Department of Transportation. Sebastian Harbor is a private development that is moribund, as predicted, with no work taking place there for a year. Perhaps JONES wants to stay on the job so he can smirk at another ribbon-cutting and drink champagne and eat canapes with developers wearing pinkie rings.
He has also been an advocate for more of the city budget to be dedicated to St. Augustine's historical and aging infrastructure. He believes the city should craft a 10-year plan of how to tackle this problem during such tight times in the economy.
Plan? What plan? JONES doesn't even have a plan to stop illegal dumping by our City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS. Our City doesn't plan anything except how to ripoff taxpayers and destroy tourism by kicking buskers off St. George Street and the Plaza de la Constitucion at the behest of WILLIAM B. HARRIS, creating lacunae left open for the homeless to come and beg.
Jones' and Seraphin's disagreements stem from an incident in 2005.
Incident? Disagreements? That's damning with faint praise. It was a massive violation of environmental law, involving 2000 truckloads of solid waste moved from one Environmental Justice community to another -- 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste moved secretly to the Old City Reservoir, specifically disobeying written and verbal orders from the St. Johns River Water Management District not to dump. JONES was repeatedly nasty, brutish, bullying and pig-ignorant when we raised these issues in front of the City Commission, serving as BIG BAD BOSS WILLIAM B. HARRISS' designated attack parrot, the cognitive miser who interrupted, heckled and mocked every single citizen who tired to get our City to take action. I once presented City Commissioners with a visual aid, pouring colored water through coquina to show the porosity of the material (rated 47 out of a 100 by geologists -- JONES' inane retort wss "that's not coquina." In fact, the reactive, reactionary, ridicule from JONES reached its nadir when ERRONEOUS JONES voted for a resolution praising WILLIAM B. HARRISS in the midst of a pending criminal investigation, which borders dangerously on obstruction of justice.
Judith and Tony Seraphin took center stage during a conflict with the city over illegally dumped landfill material. In 2005, the city took dirt from an old landfill site on Riberia Street, near the Seraphins' home, and dumped it into a water-filled borrow pit on Holmes Boulevard. The state Department of Environmental Protection fined the city and told staff to remove the waste.
The State's orders were to move the waste to a Class 1 landfill, but CITY MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his henchmen gave instructions to the City's mouthpiece, AKERMAN SENTERFITT lawyer WILLIAM PENCE, not to agree to move the waste to a Class I landfill under any circumstances. The State of Florida caved under political pressure.
The city planned to return the material to the Riberia site, but the Seraphins said no.
The entire city said no, in a display of righteous wrath that brought some 300 people to St. Paul's A.M.E. Church for a community meeting on January 10, 2008, led by Judith Seraphin. Not one person stood up and said they favored the City's stupid plan to destroy property values by bringing contaminated solid waste back to Lincolnville. It was JONES who made the motion to bring the contaminated solid waste back to LINCOLNVILLE, in a meeting on November 13, 2007 where the public was forbidden to speak and threatend with ejection.
They filed a petition with Environmental Protection against the city's plan. The city has since changed its plan and is now taking the material to a landfill in Nassau County.
Unlike the City's spin machine, which uses the term "water-filled borrow pit," the Administrative Law Judge referred to the dumping site as the Old City Reservoir. Former EPA Region 4 Regional Administrator John Henry Hankinson, Jr. told us in 2006 that the coquina pit is an "open sore going straight down into the aquifer and the groundwater." While the City apparatchiks claimed it was "clean fill," lying to then-Mayor George Gardner, EPA's 40-year veteran John Marler says "there are no bedsprings in clean fill." Or arsenic or heavy metals.
Jones said he is tired of the Seraphins holding on to the incident.
So JONES is tired? Maybe it's from spending too many wasted hours in bars like Slugger's and Scarlett O'Hara's, while neglecting his legal, moral and ethical duties to residents and visitors. "Holding on?" "Incident?" JONES insulted concerned citizens, voted to commend the lawbreaker, and never apologized for the CIty's sins, crimes and torts. So is Mr. JONES saying he is a a martyr because the Seraphins (and every thinking person in the City) criticize the City's repeated bad judgment on environmental matters? Cry me a river.
"We've not been perfect in all our decision making. ... (The dumping) was not done with malice," he said. "We've corrected that. We've righted that ship. We learned from it. Let's move on with things."
JONES is a liar. Chief Operating Officer JOHN REGAN tried to sell this line of hooey at the January 10, 2008 meeting, claiming there had been a "root cause analysis" as to why the dumping occur ed. When we asked for a copy, he said there was nothing in writing. That's not "root cause analysis" by any professional engineer's definition. That's the thermal equivalent of what scientists call "drylabbing" and what NASA engineers call "warm fuzzies" -- vague, incoherent, inarticulate, glib assurances that everything is "OK." That specious illogic has killed seven astronauts.
Jones said he has served his constituency well and he wants "to continue to work for them and represent them."
JONES doesn't represent anyone but the rich people like ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBAD who want to kick working people out of St. Augustine.
"It's not an easy job," he said. "Unfortunately, we can't satisfy people all the time. ... (But) I think we do a pretty good job."
JONES' self-delusions have no bounds. "Pretty good job?" Our seawall's crumbling, our tourism's declining, our city is full of waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance, culminating in two large FDEP environmental fines in less than one year. "Pretty good job" compared to what other city? Calcultta?
If JONES weren't so insecure and smart-alecky, he would have treated citizens with dignity, respect and consideration. He's never even apologized for the illegal dumping or thanked anyone for raising the concern about illegal dumping, let alone thanked the Seraphins. He and City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS are no different than any criminal defendant -- sorry they got caught.
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