South Florida Election Law Handbook: How Voters Can Prevent Election Fraud and Make Elections Fair

By William J. Skinner

TWO QUOTATIONS ABOUT THE BOOK

This book puts truth to the lie that voter fraud is rare and insignificant. A must read for understanding the battle space of the modern political campaign.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS, election lawyer and author of the New York Times bestseller INJUSTICE

Election fraud is alive and well in Florida. This book is a must read for anyone who believes in election integrity and wants the tools to oppose corruption.

PETER M. FEAMAN, national committeeman, Florida

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493199808

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Copyright © 2014 by William J. Skinner.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906982

ISBN:              Hardcover          978-1-4931-9981-5

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Contents

Why This Book Is Needed

First Political Experiences in Palm Beach County

The Bigger Picture of Election Fraud

Comparing the New York State and Palm Beach County Vote in 2006

Voter Fraud Committee Activity

The PBC REC from 2003 through 2012

Outline of News Articles on Election Law in 2012

McCain-Feingold Act and Other Election Law Cases

FDLE Election Fraud Cases

—January 2009 through October 2011

State Attorneys Survey and Analysis

Lynch v. Wexler in 2008 and After

West vs. Murphy Congressional Race in 2012

Using Data to Research Voter Registrations

Acknowledgements

This book is possible thanks to the legislators and governors who passed the Florida Public Records Act of 1909 and the Government in the Sunshine Law in 1967. The voter registration records are available because a Florida Circuit judge struck down the Florida restrictions on obtaining these records in 2004.

There are many dedicated law enforcement investigators and prosecutors to thank for their understanding of Florida’s election laws and their willingness to use the law to stop illegal acts of registering, voting, and cheating in elections with false schemes. I also thank those investigators who spent the time to develop cases that should have been prosecuted. There are many dedicated election clerks who manage Florida elections and endure preelection training for every election due to changes in laws and procedures concerning elections. Without all these, people we would not be able to have efficient, well-run, and honest elections. Those who break the Election Code are difficult to catch, but who wants to vote if some voter uses fraudulent tactics to cancel your vote? We need to catch those who use fraud to vote so others have the confidence that their vote will count.

There are many details in this book that have been reviewed and redacted by state attorneys’ office staff, Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigative staff, and others at the Florida Department of State before they provided information to the author. Most of those offices deserve thanks for doing their job in a reasonable time and expense. Only one of the twenty state attorney offices sent the documents out to a copy shop. Only one office took several months to get around to sending the materials after I paid for them.

I have to acknowledge the major contribution made by the writers for the Palm Beach Post and other paper news organizations and those on the Internet. We have given every one of them credit for what they have included in their publications throughout the book. It would be impossible to see the state-wide picture without reading the almost daily election law events that happen all over the sixty-seven counties in Florida.

When I first got interested in Election Fraud, it was for the preservation of his own vote and the vote of his family, friends, and fellow political activists. As I learned about the subject of Election Fraud, which includes voter fraud, I discovered there was a wealth of information available that had not been compiled into a single volume.

One comprehensive resource on the subject that I must acknowledge is the book by Tracy Campbell, entitled Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, An American Political Tradition 1742-2004.¹ Campbell is a professor of history and codirector of the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center at the University of Kentucky. That book was in preparation as the author was starting to think about what to do to stop election fraud in Florida. Now that I am aware of this work of history, I highly recommend it to others. Deliver the Vote will widen the ranges of past experiences of election or voter fraud and will help give new insight to solutions. Unfortunately that book came out in 2005, and the publisher was bought out leading to little publicity about the book.

There have been a few crusading newspapers and crusading judges over the years that held people responsible and stopped gross abuses of elections. But many people are in denial about there being any election fraud and it appears that the statute evaders continue to find ways to manipulate elections. Some of those people will call this book an attempt to suppress minority voting.

Other recent resources are J. Christian Adams’ book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department² and John Fund and Han von Spakovsky’s Who’s Counting: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Out Your Vote At Risk.³ Injustice exposes the lengths that Department of Justice officials will go to push a political viewpoint in law enforcement. Who’s Counting also covers the Department of Justice issues and some Election fraud cases around the United States. We are glad to have read those books in 2012 after we started doing research for this book. Those books report many examples of election fraud not covered in this volume so you must read these three books sometime soon.

I’ve been my own typist for many years writing law pleadings, motions, and supportive documents in my law practice, so all the typing errors are mine and those of Microsoft Word 10’s spellcheck software program.

Special thanks to the Republican Club of Central Palm Beach County for originally sponsoring the research effort to compare registered voters in Palm Beach County with registered voters in New York. After the November 2006 publicity we received, the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee came forward to help. I thank both groups for stepping up to the challenge.

During the ten years I was active with the Palm Beach County REC Sid Dinerstein was the chairman. Dinerstein always marched to his own drummer, but he would listen, and occasionally follow suggestions. He had several other advisors who had different ideas, but he tried to make sense out of it all to improve the county and state GOP. Not only did Dinerstein contribute lots of time to making things happen, he was generous to the County party and to many candidates with financial contributions.

Edward Lynch ran for Congress two times and I helped him get a campaign rolling because he was determined to have better representation in Washington DC. After Lynch ran against the long-time incumbent Democrat Robert Wexler, Wexler quit Congress mid-term. Lynch deserves the credit for accomplishing this. At the County GOP level he received the highest number of votes against Sid Dinerstein in any of Dinerstein’s contested elections. Lynch got many of his campaign workers to join the Republican Executive Committee (REC). He backed the change from the district system to the precinct system and other ideas to apply the Loyalty Oath to all members of the REC Board. Just track the REC attendance records in this book. Thanks to Ed Lynch for accomplishing so much.

An early draft of the book was reviewed by a friend who was familiar with some of the contents and events. George Blumel is a businessman, an investor, political activist, and family man. George Blumel is a blogger on political subjects at: www.posterchildrenfortermlimits.com/feeds/posts/default. I appreciate having someone with the brains and tenacity to read through the original 330,000 word tome and offer suggestions.

Our son, Mark, is recognized for his contribution in chapter 12 with the description of the steps needed to load and link the Florida voter registration files that are available for citizen Election Fraud researchers to use. Mark is a computer and IT guru with a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins in Business with a specialty in computer technology.

The members of my voter fraud committee deserve thanks for meeting with me multiple times at their homes and prior to REC meetings and thinking about how we can solve the problems we discussed more than six years ago. They all made it worthwhile to continue studying the election fraud problem. The committee members all contributed to our efforts.

Election fraud in Florida is defined by Florida Statutes, chapter 104. Voter fraud is another way to describe the lengths some voters will go to in order to vote illegally. Election fraud can also be thought of as candidates running in districts where they do not live, or candidates saying they will do one thing and then do the opposite.

Writing a book takes time away from family, so I would be remiss if I did not thank, Elaine, who has spent over fifty-three years with me so far. She has learned the hard way my writing takes time. We both hope this book helps improve the understanding of political process in South Florida.

William J. Skinner

Introduction

Why This Book Is Needed

This book chronicles some of the election practices used by Republicans in South Florida that sometimes lead to victories but more often lead to defeats. Many people think they know the political system, but many of those do not know what goes on in election law enforcement. Some voters are quick to have instant solutions to any election problem, but they are usually short of patience and participation needed to help find permanent solutions to election problems.

Readers will get an insider’s look at what goes on and what the facts are about South Florida Republican participation in elections. If you read this book, you may learn about ways to get yourself or your candidate elected. You will see what criminal charges are made when candidates and voters violated the law. Or better yet, you will learn what it takes to conduct elections in Southeast Florida and decide to participate. After more than fifty years of taking part in Republican politics, I have learned long ago that no one on the sidelines wins.

Republicans in South Florida could be organized better than they are as Republicans are a definite minority in South Florida. If you look at the years since the 2000 presidential election and 2002 when the McCain-Feingold Act was passed, politics as usual has become politics by court decision. There is a continuous filing of cases in Florida state and federal courts by candidates and organizations representing special interests. Many of these cases have the short-term effect of stopping or enjoining some activity just before an election. But some of these cases continue on after the election to be decided by an appeals court.

You will learn in chapter 3 how the author became interested in voters who vote in two states, double voters, and how he went about trying to identify those voters. You can even learn more about how to do your own research with state voter registration database in chapter 12.

Typically, newspapers do not give you court case numbers, the names of attorneys or judges, or the titles of cases. This leaves knowledge about the law to the lawyers and politicians. I am an attorney who believes that the law needs to be simple enough to be understood by the voters too. Every eligible voter needs to know the federal and state constitution and how to look up the law.

Voters can sort out some, but not all, of the campaign promises made by candidates who get elected over and over, but not many voters know the moves that are made in court and how those decisions are made. Chapter 7 summarizes the main federal laws and recent major court decisions about election law in Florida so you can better appreciate the reasons litigants are in court. Readers will get the names of the litigating parties, their lawyers, and judges so you can identify more closely with what is happening. You will notice that some attorneys’ names keep appearing for one side or the other year after year.

Palm Beach County is the largest and northernmost county in South Florida. Palm Beach County was named as the Corruption Capital of the United States in January 2009 by many pundits after five county and city commissioners and the husband of one, who were Republican at one time or another, plus some attorneys and an engineer partner of one county commissioner were implicated in honest services fraud or other illegal schemes. Investigations, pleas, and sentencing of what turned out to be two West Palm Beach City commissioners and three Palm Beach County commissioners during the years immediately before the 2012 elections unavoidably tainted public opinion against Republicans at least during the 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections.

How long this taint will last depends on the stellar performance of Republicans now in office and on the oversight the voters make of their actions.

Elected officials continue to violate ethics laws in 2013. Boynton Beach Mayor Jose Rodriquez (nominally a Republican as he attended only one meeting of the Central Republican Club during the years he was running for the city commission and mayor) was suspended from office by Governor Scott in February 2012 and in April 2013 pleaded guilty to corrupt misuse of position as part of a deal on several pending counts. See Palm Beach Post (April 27, 2013). Wellington Mayor Robert Margolis faced an ethics complaint in May 2013 that he received prohibited gifts that could violate conflict of interests rules. See http://tinyurl.com/l6obs6o.

The complaint also contends that gifts may have been accepted in exchange for his votes on important development matters before the Village of Wellington Council. This charge was later handled by the ethics commission sending a letter of instruction not to do it again in July 2013. Some think the commission did not want to have a hearing since one of the commissioners resigned after Margolis’s attorney found that an ethics commissioner gave a political contribution to a candidate for federal office in the August 2012 primary. Ethics commissioners in Palm Beach County are prohibited from contributing to political races.

North of Palm Beach County are, south to north, the Treasure Coast counties of Martin, St. Lucie, and Indian River. It is in Palm Beach, Martin, and St. Lucie counties that Rep. Allen West was defeated by less than 1 percent of the vote in 2012 by a former Republican turned Democrat. That loss is covered in chapter 11. True the Vote, an organization of citizen activists in Houston, Texas, used the National Voting Rights Act in Florida to find out why a Republican lost a race for first time. The voting data is being collected and analyzed by True the Vote.

South of Palm Beach County are Broward County, Miami-Dade County, and at the edge of the Florida peninsula to the Keys, Monroe County. This book covers only a few instances of election fraud from this southern area of the state.

Chapter 6 gives an entire year review of election law news from Florida for 2012 to support that idea that election fraud is present and it is serious. Just the magnitude of election law news is overwhelming to many voters, perhaps driving them from considering to vote with so many laws being contested.

In Miami City in November 2009, the day after being sworn into office for a second term, Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones was charged with grand theft, the charges saying she was forging letters to steer money toward a family business in 2004 and 2005 when she was an aide to Mayor Manny Diaz. Governor Crist removed her from office the day after she was sworn in for a second term.

Also, Miami City Commissioner Angel Gonzalez agreed to resign and plead guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor for helping his daughter get a $500 a week job at a local construction company. Miami City commissioner positions are so-called nonpolitical offices, but these two commissioners demonstrated certain tendencies; nevertheless, their predicaments demonstrate the corruption in another South Florida County.

The US Justice Department had been monitoring the election processes in Southeast Florida for some years and took one city in Palm Beach County to court over abuses. United States v. Town of Lake Park, FL (SD Fla. 2009). On October 26, 2009, the court entered a consent judgment and decree replacing the current at-large method of election with a limited voting plan providing for the election of four commissioners with concurrent terms. On March 31, 2009, the Department filed a complaint against the Town of Lake Park for violations of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The complaint alleges that the Town’s at-large system of electing its commissioners denies black voters an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. Although black voting age citizens compose 38 percent of Lake Park’s total citizen voting age population, no black candidate ever has been elected to office since the town’s founding in 1923.

Other cases were brought against county commissioners and West Palm Beach City commissioners under the Honest Services Law, federal tax laws, and other violations. See list of commissioners in appendix. After the 2008 election, the state attorney in Palm Beach County (the elected Prosecutor for the 15th Judicial Circuit) conducted a Grand Jury investigation and in May 2009 recommended some ethics law changes and an inspector general system to help stop the questionable decision making with public funds. Some provisions were enacted into law by the Palm Beach County Commission. Nevertheless, the system continues to point out conflicts occurring by the still unindicted members of the commission, one who has recently admitted accepting $400 worth of tickets to a public event from a road builder. The commissioner with twenty years’ experience in office said he did not realize the road builder was paying lobbyists to ask for projects from the county. This commissioner was term-limited, but was openly flaunting the idea of filing a suit to throw out the term limits law passed by over 70 percent of the voters.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in a Broward County case and a Sarasota County case that charter counties can set their own term limits under the Florida Constitution. William Telli challenged the term limits in Broward County Circuit Court that relied on a 2002 decision of the Florida Supreme Court to strike down the term limits law. The 4th District Court of Appeals reversed the decision, and on May 10, 2012, in William Telli v. Broward County, no. SC11-1737, the Florida Supreme Court agreed with the 4th District. Attorneys in the case were William R. Scherer Jr.; Daniel S. Weinger; and Eric J. Rayman of Conrad and Scherer, LLP, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Bruce S. Rogow of Bruce S. Rogow, PA, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; for Petitioner Joni Armstrong Coffey, Broward County attorney; Andrew J. Meyers, chief appellate counsel; and Benjamin R. Salzillo, assistant county attorney, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; for respondent, Broward County Burnadette Norris-Weeks, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; for respondent, Dr. Brenda C. Snipes.

The same day the Florida Supreme Court resolved the case of Cathy Atunes v. Sarasota County, no. SC12-109, certified by the 2nd District Court of Appeals. Attorneys in the case were Andrea Flynn Mogensen of Law Office of Andrea Flynn Mogensen, PA, Sarasota; for appellants David P. Persson of Hankin, Persson, Davis, McClenathen & Darnell, Sarasota for appellees.

These cases gave direction to two of Palm Beach County’s commissioners who had served twenty and twenty-seven years in office and were thinking about defying the term limits statute passed by more than 70 percent of Palm Beach voters more than eight years ago. The commissioners decided not to ignore the voters and the Florida Supreme Court.

Broward County Republicans fought over their chairman during 2010 and 2011. Some of this is recorded by Javier Manjarres on February 25, 2011, at http://broward.shark-tank.net/?p=164. The issue was a lack of support for the Broward REC Chairman Richard DeNapoli by the Sunshine Republicans. DeNapoli was said to demand the Sunshine Republican Club to support him for chairman or the Sunshine Republican Club charter would not be renewed. DeNapoli wanted Benjamin Bullard to step aside as the club president in favor of Nick Stone. Bullard and the Sunshine Republican Club referred the matter to RPOF Chairman David Bitner for resolution. Bitner died in office not to long after these events.

Mr. DeNapoli is raising money in the Palm Beach-Broward County area at the end of November 2013 to run on the the west coast of Florida for a seat now held by Rep. Doug Holder (R-Venice). Julio Gonzalez will probably face him in a primary race. Qualification for office is not until June 2014. So we will not know where the candidates live until then.

Governor Charlie Crist and RPOF Chairman Jim Greer, highly recommended by Crist, tainted the voters against Republicans in Crist’s effort to become a United States senator in 2010. Crist and Greer would not recognize three Republican candidates for the US House of Representatives during the 2008 and 2010 elections. Crist was appearing in campaign photos with Democrat Robert Wexler who was a Crist roommate and also a Florida state senator when Crist served in the Florida Senate. Wexler had not had a real opponent until Edward Lynch stepped up to be the Republican candidate. Allen West came home from Afghanistan in 2007 to run for Congress against Democrat Ron Klein who had beaten former Republican Congressman Clay Shaw. Marion Thorpe, MD, a former Florida chief medical officer ran against Alcee Hastings. Crist and Greer ignored all three Republican candidates, seeming in favor of the Democrats who they did not explicitly endorse, but they left no doubt were they stood by their actions.

The Republican Party of Florida announced it was finally getting trust restored to the state GOP after the Greer mess in a March 8, 2013, e-mailed news release that promoted an op-ed article by the new RPOF Chairman Lenny Curry that had been published in the Orlando Post. The RPOF suffered a 42 percent decline in donor base, dipping from 26,474 in 2008 to 15,131 donors in 2010 with the Crist and Greer fiasco.

Nobody knows all the shenanigans that occurred in the Crist campaigns, but Palm Beach County people were involved along with persons from other counties. This book is about election fraud. Have you noticed that Charlie Crist has reversed dozens of stands that he made as attorney general, governor, and early candidate for the US Senate? Crist now stands for positions 180 degrees from his Republican stands. Of course, Charlie Crist is now registered as a Democrat.

Significant portions of this book are about the interplay of the federal McCain-Feingold statute, also known as Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), and how the Republican Party of Florida decided to implement that law as it is applied to the state party. When you read about the legal challenges to BCRA and the resulting slowness in implementing regulations for the law, there will be no surprise that enforcement of some provisions was delayed.

After Charlie Crist was elected governor in 2006, the Republican Party of Florida, under the leadership of Chairman James Greer, tried to persuade all county GOP organizations not to file a federal committee under BCRA and RPOF asserted state control of all state and federal elections, including the state legislature, and Congress, as well as the presidential election. Only the candidates for office dare do any get-out-the-vote activities that are not approved by the RPOF. Palm Beach County went along with this. The Palm Beach County Republicans were told that we had to do it the way the RPOF wanted. Some Florida counties apparently were not persuaded.

Still, in 2013, more than twenty of the municipalities, led by the West Palm Beach City Commission, are suing to determine how the new county inspector general will be paid for work done in their cities. The Palm Beach County School Board voted to have its own inspector general and the Palm Beach county sheriff objects to making his department subject to anyone.

The county inspector general filed to intervene in the case between the cities and the county, and the 4th District Court of Appeals has declined to allow the intervention. This caused the county commission staff director to declare he would fire the inspector general. So in the middle of 2013, corruption county is still polluting the body politic.

The chapter 8 on Executive Investigations for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement will show you what happens when FDLE investigates at the request of the Florida Department of State, a State Attorney’s Office, a county sheriff or a city police department. The chapter 9 survey of the State Attorney’s Offices in the twenty Florida judicial districts will help you understand the extent of election fraud prosecutions in Florida.

With all the information in this book, Republicans can learn what has happened or is happening and get on the same page for future elections. Reapportionment will be coming in seven years, and before then, voters will be subjected to more changes in the Florida Constitution and more court battles between special interests and the Florida Legislature.

This is not a novel; rather, the book is packed with history and research that will allow careful readers to connect the dots on many election fraud issues. This is not a mystery book, but one that tells what happened in election fraud in Florida for the last few years.

In every chapter, there are reflections or summaries to direct the reader’s attention on the significance of the information reported. Throughout there are recommendations about what needs to be done to make elections fair and honest. In the concluding chapter, the solutions to election fraud become obvious.

But who is working on these issues? Where are the new laws? Where are the citizen researchers? Is anybody doing anything? This book is my effort to educate more citizens to get involved. Where is your effort?

Let me remind you that the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero⁴ said, Not to know what happened before you were born, that is to be always a boy, to be forever a child. If we do not learn from history, we will find ourselves repeating it, said George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher. Today, and for as long as we are allowed to vote in Florida, you must know the election law to be able to affect the outcome of elections.

Chapter 1

First Political Experiences in Palm Beach County

Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision.

If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.

—Abraham Lincoln

The author pursued politics in the same way he had in Maryland for thirty-two years and earlier in Pennsylvania and Indiana. He found the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee (REC), applied and was elected as an alternate committeeman.

Palm Beach County Republican Activities

District 59 was a growing area of new housing in the west county from the turnpike to the developed areas on both sides of US Highway 441. This district had close to 3,500 Republican voters before the districts were reapportioned by the supervisor of elections at the request of the County GOP for the 2008 REC elections. I was then placed in District 65. More about the reorganization later.

Each district was allowed one committeeman and one committeewoman and one alternate for each of these persons that were elected. No Republican I had met in my neighborhood knew who the committeeman or committeewoman was where we lived.

Each of the 100 REC districts were supposed to have about 2,400 Republican voters, giving the whole REC a total of about 240,000 voters to motivate. Only Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade County had the district system. All other Florida counties at that time had a precinct system. There are about five to seven precincts in a district, but there were no precinct chairs as there are in the Democratic Party in Palm Beach County.

REC meetings were pretty dull. As an alternate committeeman in 2003 and most of 2004, I did not get to vote on any motions or resolutions if my committeeman was present, and usually when votes were taken, the only thing to vote on was the new candidates to vacant positions on the REC. The only really good reasons to go to most meetings was you got to know a few other people and eventually hear candidates for office speak about why he or she wanted to be elected. Attendance was mandated by the rules. If you missed three meetings in a year, you were automatically out.

Central Republican Club

The author and wife showed up at the first organization meeting of the Republican Club of Central Palm Beach County (we called it the Central Republican Club for short) in August 2003 at the Atlantis Grill & Bar restaurant in Atlantis and we joined on the spot.

Richard Appleby was president of the new club. Appleby wanted to organize this club because there was no Republican presence in the central part of the county from West Palm Beach to Lantana and Boynton Beach. Appleby, a hospital employee in the area, was gregarious and friendly fellow and I am sure he still is from his e-mails from Georgia where he retired. His wife, Virginia, attended meetings with him and the club was a good way to meet other local Republicans. This club had speakers at each meeting, not just people who were running for office, but people who knew about important issues of the day. We did have politicians speak from time to time. Warren Newell, the county commissioner from the central part of the county (he received a three year prison sentence) spoke to the club one time, and Gary Nikolits, the county property tax appraiser, spoke during that first year. Nikolits is one of the honest public servants.

After Appleby stepped down in 2004, new officers took over and the club continued to grow its meetings that were moved to the Atlantis Country Club. I was elected in succession as secretary, then vice president, and then president, each year pushing the club to support a December Dinner that helped raise money used to invite voters to join the club in order to expand activities. A number of the club members pitched in to help with club activities, but most of the members are older folks, some being snow birds, and many were more than willing to let the officers do whatever they wanted to do.

In 2005, the author had the good fortune to learn that Dick Morris, the political commentator and author, moved into my neighborhood, but I had not met him. It would be a meeting courtesy of Sid Dinerstein, the Palm Beach County GOP Chairman, when the author met Morris. Dinerstein invited me downtown to West Palm Beach one day to meet Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann. Morris was open to helping Republicans where he lived. In a few months, we were able to get Morris to speak to our first Annual December Dinner. It took the author about three months to convince the officers of the club that Morris would be a good speaker for us. Some officers said that we could not afford him. Morris did a great job. Morris did not charge us a dime. Lots of people came from all over the county and we raised money for club business. Dinerstein thought we ought to be able to get one hundred people to attend for Morris; instead we got over 170. I introduced Morris to Jim Bowman, a district scout executive, at this dinner and Bowman convinced Morris to speak at a fund raiser for the Boys Scouts the next year, in 2006.

The December Dinner speaker in 2006 was Kenneth Timmerman, the author and reporter for Newsmax and other publications. Timmerman lives in Maryland and was recruited by me as my successor as president of the Maryland Taxpayers Association. As an interesting aside, Timmerman won the Republican 8th Congressional District primary in 2012 and was the candidate against Democrat Chris Van Hollen, Nancy Pelosi’s left-hand man, who has been in Congress since I moved from Maryland.

The next speaker the club hosted was Robert Kanjian who was appointed to the County Commission by Governor Charlie Crist after Warren Newell pleaded guilty to violations under the Honest Services Fraud Act. Kanjian happened to be a Marylander originally from the Baltimore area. Kanjian lost his seat in November 2008 to Shelly Vana, then a state representative for District 85 where I lived. The next year, I asked Michael Zak, an author and historian who is focused on the history of the Republican Party, and who lives in the District of Columbia, to come the fourth time the Central Republican Club sponsored a December Dinner. The fifth dinner speaker was Lawrence Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education. Kanjian, Reed and the speakers for the monthly meetings throughout these years were recruited by George Blumel, chair of the Program and Activities Committee. In 2010, I invited David Bego, owner and CEO of the Indianapolis based Executive Management Services Inc., a five thousand employee company, to speak about his ongoing battles with the SEIU trying to organize his employees in several Midwestern cities. Bego has a real story worth the hearing. In 2012, I invited J. Christian Adams, Esq., former US Justice Department attorney who spoke to the club about election and voter fraud in the country.

The Central Republican Club has always supported the Palm Beach County GOP events and recently began contributing to the REC as a Patriot Member for the last couple of years. The club meetings normally have speakers on issues as opposed to candidate speeches. The club is concerned about taxes, term limits, monitoring Islamic fanaticism, good government, voter fraud, and many other issues that are addressed by guest speakers.

Republican Executive Committee Operations

Shortly after I was elected to the REC as an alternate committeeman in 2003, I contacted my committeeman and committeewoman to see what their plan was to get out the voters in the 2004 election. I wanted to know how I could help. The committeeman was an optometrist who was also running for another nonpolitical office in the county. He would not speak to me on the telephone, or give me an appointment to see him, despite a number of telephone calls and e-mail requests. He did tell me he would ask GOP staff about what information was available and get back to me, but he never did get back to me until I had received other information from others. I ask him face to face at an REC meeting if we could meet to talk about the district, and he said he would not have time. However, I was able to contact the Committeewoman and we met at her home. I ascertained that the committeeman was not speaking with the Committeewoman either, so the two of us made a plan as to how we would organize the Republican voters for the general election in our District 59 in 2004.

After several more attempted contacts with the committeeman in 2004, the committeeman finally told me he did not have time to work for Republican candidates as he was too busy running for his other nonpolitical office. Besides he said he did not favor George W. Bush for president in 2004, he really wanted Pat Robertson as president, so he told me that I had to do the work to get the Republican vote out. He was unwilling to help. But he continued to attend the REC meetings and kept the vote to himself.

Not long after the Committeewoman called me to say that she had decided to resign. She offered that I would do just fine without her. She said I would be able to get help from some of the voters. She no longer had time to help elect Republicans in this campaign.

I soon discovered that there were a number of REC members, some of whom were elected quite a few years back and they were not going to help with any election and would not speak to other people about helping the REC. It was as if some of them felt the position was an honorific position, not really a neighborhood political organizer job that it was supposed to be. After all, I was told organizing the voters was what the job during the one hour initial training session I was required to attend before being elected as an alternate committeeman in 2003. I assumed, perhaps falsely, that all REC members heard the same talks and agreed to help organize their districts.

Some of the REC members I met had the idea that if anyone new in their district became too familiar with them and what they did in the district, the new person might challenge them for their position, so it was best to keep quiet and not let others know what they did. The thought occurred to me that some of these people may be closet Democrats who got elected to GOP’s REC just to fowl up the organization and election efforts.

Steven Ledewitz had moved to Florida from Connecticut during this time period and joined the Central Republican Club. Ledewitz was in the convention scheduling business and had been president of the statewide Association of School Boards in Connecticut. Steve was also elected to the REC as an alternate committeeman. Ledewitz knew how to be polite and effective with people. Ledewitz related to me how his district committeeman and committeewoman, a husband and wife, would not discuss the district political organization with him, actually telling him one time, that they did not want him to know about the district as they felt he might run against them.

Other REC members told me stories about how certain people never did anything except attend REC meetings. These people were holding down seats that should have had party workers in them. At one point I overheard a party officer mentioning to an out of county person that in Palm Beach County, only 20 to 30 percent of the Committeemen and Committeewomen would really work their districts.

Few committeemen and committeewomen were taking the instructions to obtain voter registration lists or other materials and the County Party was often lax in providing needed tools. Some REC members used excuses: that they could not download the e-mails, they could not open the e-mails, they did not know who to call to get the list printed. One committeewoman who asked me what she should do and I suggested who to contact. She told me that after she asked for a list, she received nothing. It became apparent that there was a great deal of confusion among the people supposedly having an interest in getting Republicans elected.

Other than changing to a county of precincts instead of districts in 2008, the REC meetings did little more than provide a timely speaker or a hot topic.

Working with the Republican Executive Committee in Palm Beach County

George W. Bush had won Florida in 2000 with a very small number of votes—537. Many sincere Republicans wanted to do a better job in 2004 of getting out the vote. We had enough of the hanging chads and butterfly ballots in 2000. Republicans needed to make certain that Bush won with a margin that could not be questioned this time.

However, in his first three years, President George W. Bush had not pleased everyone with his actions, particularly refusing to use the veto pen to rein in the big spending Republican Congress. But many of us imagined how much worse the spending would be if the Democrats were in charge, so we were not going to abandon Bush for anyone else.

Since my committeeman was not going to help in the 2004 election and I could not obtain the voter lists as an alternate committeeman under Florida laws, I decided to run against him at the August 2004 primary. Why did we need a dead weight holding office, I wondered? So I filed qualifying papers for the office, signed the documents for the supervisor of elections, as well as the GOP Loyalty Oath and turned them both in to the supervisor of elections. At that time, the Florida laws only allowed candidates, registered political committees, and officers of county parties to obtain lists of registered voters from the Supervisor’s Office. I had already tried to purchase a list of voters in 2003 after becoming an alternate committeeman and was turned down by the Supervisor’s Office. As an alternate committeeman, I was getting no help from the REC members in my district or from the County Party.

After filing to run for committeeman, the Palm Beach County GOP office did provide me a list of addresses from the primary voters in Republican primaries for the past two primaries and I designed a letter and postcard message that was sent to likely primary voters in the August 2004 primary election. I won the election handily and my soon-to-be-former committeeman called to congratulate me on the successful campaign, saying I conducted a good campaign. He still was not going to do anything. Now I had the official responsibility to get out the vote in my district under the Palm Beach County GOP Rules of Procedure. But my job as a committeeman would not start until 2005. From August to November I had to work on getting out the vote in District 59 without the help of my deadbeat committeeman or former committeewoman.

With the help of my wife, Elaine, we made a great effort to let Republicans in my district know I was