So Robert Wexler, the self-proclaimed "fire-breathing liberal," is backing Charlie Crist?
This reminds me of his last big promotional event: the Iraq War. Wexler was one of the Democrats who broke from the majority to support George Bush's invasion of Iraq. At the time, he was working closely with Turkey -- and he guaranteed that Islamic nation would join Bush and America in attacking Iraq.
We saw how that went. I came away believing Wexler was short-sighted, biased as hell, not all that moral, and certainly not too bright. He ran into a few other problems -- including possible residency fraud -- before he quit Congress to become president of a Washington-based organization, the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.
The upside to this is that we aren't seeing Wexler every other day shouting and slobbering about Democratic talking points on national cable TV shows.
So where is Wexler making his stand for Crist? Did you have to ask?
The Kings Point Condos in Tamarac, of course, that great refuge for political scoundrels, the place where Democratic Party cronies like Diane Glasser and Marc Sultanoff hold court and Stacy Ritter is a princess. The place where Rick Greene was backed over Kendrick Meek by the powers that be and helped elect the likes of Glasser, Sultanoff, Ed Portner, Beth Talabisco, and Patricia Atkins-Grad to the Tamarac City Commission.
We all saw how that went for Greene. He was trounced. Wexler's visit to Kings Point today on behalf of Crist says a whole lot more about Wexler than it does about Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek. To back an ideological empty suit like Crist, who has stood for just about everything that Wexler supposedly despises during the governor's political career, is just more evidence that Wexler, for all his travels to Turkey and Israel, is really a political nowhere man.
-- Now some updates on the little criminal background check scandal in Cooper City, where the politicians are as nasty as they wanna be.
I spoke with Commissioner Lisa Mallozzi, and she told me that she had learned about her opponent David Nall's bogus "criminal record" from her supporter Diane Sori on Friday, September 17. Sori is indeed one of the five folks who obtained the records from the city, according to official emails. The others are Mayor Debbie Eisinger, Eisinger's former campaign manager Lori Green, and
anti-Eisinger city activists Brenda Kezar and Gladys Wilson.
The twist is that Mallozzi says she never repeated the information to anyone. She says it was rather Nall himself and his supporters who spread the bogus information about Nall's criminal record.
"Never ever, ever did I bring this up to anyone," she told me on Friday. "Do you have that clear? Do you know what I think? I think David Nall brought this out, because I didn't say a word about it."
Now it may be true that Nall told people that the city was spreading an erroneous background check obtained from the company Intellicorp that he had a 1987 arrest for credit card fraud. If there is a lawsuit filed over this -- Nall said he's not interested in one at this time -- then the question of who disseminated the information will be paramount.
I asked Mallozzi if she had discussed Nall's criminal record with Eisinger -- who was behind the ill-fated policy of criminal background checks -- about the bogus information regarding Nall.
"I don't really have conversations with the mayor," Mallozzi said of her political ally.
I asked her again if she ever spoke to Eisinger about the faulty background check on Nall. The question was met with a long silence on the other end of the phone.
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, not until all this stuff happened," said Mallozzi.
She said that she and Eisinger and the city manager talked about it at City Hall on Thursday after the story broke. "I was in City Hall, the mayor was in City Hall... we had just had a tribute to the troops," Mallozzi explained. "After that, I had gone to City Hall, and the mayor was already there. [Cooper City Manager] Bruce Loucks said there was going to be something in the paper about [the Nall background check]. [Eisinger] said she had nothing to do with it."
I asked Mallozzi if her supporters might have spread the bad word on Nall. She said that she walked neighborhoods over the weekend in question and never mentioned it and that no one else walked for her.
"I can't say that Mr. A didn't email Mr. B," she said. "But I never did and never will."
