Florida attorney general

Al’s
Loupe                                                                                Read Spanish Version

Florida
attorney general’s 2004 campaign pays fine for a crime and nobody
seems to care…

By
Alvaro F. Fernandez
alfernandez@the-beach.net

“…as
a high ranking state public official he has done something which will
keep him from being effective in the future…”
— Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum

Unbeknownst
to most in Florida, Attorney General Bill McCollum had already
reached an agreement with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to
pay a fine for failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars
spent during his failed 2004 U.S. Senate campaign when he suggested
in a blog that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer should resign after
being linked to a Washington, DC, prostitute. Seven hundred fifty-six
thousand dollars is a lot of money. Strange sense of morality,
McCollum’s — he has not applied his reflection on Spitzer, for
example, to himself.

The
Miami Herald last week reported that McCollum failed to report that
amount spent in the bitter electoral battle with eventual winner Mel
Martinez in 2004. A $50,000 fine was recently paid to the FEC by the
McCollum campaign. Not much more has been said about this crime.
There have been no editorials from newspapers around the state. Most
striking, in my opinion, is that not a word has been heard from the
governor’s office.

Why?

By
definition Florida’s attorney general is the state’s number one
law enforcement official. He is there to assure that laws are
followed in the state. It does not mean he is above those laws.

When
I read this news, I waited days for a reaction. Little has been said.
And I don’t expect much to be done from here on in.

If
Florida’s attorney general had been a big name Democrat, not Bill
McCollum, how would have our republican governor — he who wants the
vice presidency so badly — reacted? And where has the outrage by
newspaper editorial boards been?

The
most interesting paragraph in the Herald report said, “The
settlement [in the McCollum case] was reached in December after a
lengthy, non-public investigation. The FEC delayed making the case
public until Friday, but did not explain the delay.” Nobody, yet,
has asked why. As a tax-paying Floridian who did not vote for
McCollum, I am interested in knowing why our attorney general is
investigated non-publicly and why the FEC held off for so long in
making the case public. Is it simply because he is
Florida’s attorney general?

You
would think, at least I do, that in the position of attorney general,
McCollum or anyone before or after should be transparent and
definitely clean of crime. Not so with Mr. McCollum.

Let
us just say that McCollum cannot be considered one of our most free
of conflicts attorney generals. I cite a November 2006 editorial from
The St. Petersburg Times which says, “Bill McCollum, the Republican
candidate for state attorney general, is a lobbyist for big business
and spent much of his earlier congressional career supporting
anticonsumer legislation that would benefit banks, insurance
companies and the credit card industry. […]

[…]
“McCollum’s record in Congress vacillates between carrying the
water for corporate interests, which rewarded him with lavish
campaign contributions, and devising ways to undermine civil rights
and civil liberties.

“McCollum
introduced a bill that would give law enforcement the ability to
conduct illegal searches of American homes … It would have eroded
our Fourth Amendment right to be protected against unreasonable
searches. … Can he be trusted?”

Apparently
not.

It
boggles the mind to think that most decent people in this country
agree that the biggest danger American democracy faces is the
influence of money in its politics. But here in Florida our attorney
general broke the law four years ago for failing to report
three-quarters of a million dollars and his campaign gets off with a
fine.

Where
are our priorities? Compare it to congress wasting hundreds of hours
investigating steroids and sports. Threatening to put athletes I care
little about in prison for injecting steroids. Whoopee!

And
yet, the highest law enforcement official in the fourth largest state
in the country breaks the law, and his campaign gets a slap on the
wrist: a fine that will probably be paid by someone who owes him a
favor in Tallahassee or maybe even Washington, DC, from his days in
Congress.

We
are living in a country where too many slime-balls, from the
president on down (including big business executives), are getting
away with crimes. It all depends on whose side your own and if you
have friends who can afford to pay your fines.