Payments Boost GOP Claims That Grayson Is Supporting Fla. Tea Party In Effort To Split Conservative Votes
Tony Pipitone

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-tea-party-pushback-20100621,0,575022.story

POSTED: Monday, June 21, 2010
UPDATED: 7:38 pm EDT June 21, 2010
Alan Grayson
Alan Grayson.

ORLANDO, Fla. — U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson’s campaign has paid nearly $20,000 to a corporation created by a Florida Tea Party candidate, with help from that party’s top consultant, lending support to Republicans’ claims that Grayson is funneling some of his $30-plus million fortune toward a party that is running a candidate against him in the general election.

Grayson’s motivation, Republicans say: to support a “sham” party whose candidate will siphon away conservative votes from the eventual Republican nominee in November, boosting Grayson’s chances of re-election.

A Local 6 investigation has found Grayson’s campaign spent $19,898 with Public Opinion Strategies Inc., a company formed by Victoria Torres, a Florida Tea Party candidate for a state House of Representatives seat in Pinellas County. Torres has said she created the company in December 2008 with the help of the Florida Tea Party’s public relations consultant, Doug Guetzloe.

Guetzloe and his attorney, Frederic B. O’Neal, who created the Florida Tea Party last year, are being sued by Republican tea party movement activists who claim the pair created the Florida Tea Party to “hijack” the tea party movement for their own “gains (and) profits.”

The actual owners of Public Opinion Strategies — the people who stand to benefit financially from the multimillionaire Grayson’s campaign money — are not revealed in public records.

The only corporate director listed in state records is the Florida Tea Party candidate Victoria Torres, who swore in court papers in April that she has no cash, no income, no potential income, no stock and no possible asset from any corporation.

In a financial disclosure statement filed last week with her candidacy papers, Torres revealed she earned $10,000 last year from Public Opinion Strategies, but claims no financial interest in the company. Grayson paid the company $16,898 last year and $3,000 in February 2010, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission.

Torres did not respond to phone calls, visits to her Orange County house (which is also the corporation’s official address), or a note left there by Local 6 asking about the company.

But Torres has for years worked off and on for Guetzloe and — like Guetzloe — has been represented by attorney O’Neal, the Florida Tea Party chairman.

“I do things for (Guetzloe) that he asks for me to,” Torres testified last year in a deposition in an unrelated lawsuit.

For his part, Grayson, a first-term Democrat, continues to maintain Guetzloe has played no role with anyone in his campaign.

When Local 6 began to question Grayson about how his campaign came to find and pay the company Guetzloe helped form, Public Opinion Strategies, Grayson said, “That is a campaign matter. I’m not going to be disclosing anything more” than required by federal law.

Republicans Demand Full Disclosure

Bruce O’Donoghue, a Republican seeking the nomination to oppose Grayson, called a news conference last week to accuse Grayson of concealing his links to the Florida Tea Party.

“Alan Grayson’s fingerprints are all over the creation of this so-called ‘party,’ and he insults the intelligence of voters by claiming he had nothing to do with it,” O’Donoghue said. “These political games are designed to hide the cozy relationship between Grayson and this sham organization.”

Monday, shown the paper trail revealing money from Grayson to Public Opinion Strategies, O’Donoghue said Local 6 had uncovered the “direct connection. We were connecting the dots and this research you’ve been able to bring forward really solidifies that. It shows the conduit and it’s what we said, these guys ought to come clean and tell us exactly who’s doing what and who’s paying whom.”

The $19,898 paid by the Grayson campaign to Public Opinion Strategies Inc. between October 2009 and February 2010 was for field work consulting and survey and polling expenses, according to Grayson’s filings with the Federal Elections Commission.

Guetzloe, 56, refused to tell Local 6 how much, if any, money has flowed from Grayson through Public Opinion Strategies to him.

O’Neal said he does not know who owns Public Opinion Strategies, or how much money Torres and Guetzloe may have received from the company. “I know nothing about it. He (Guetzloe) has his own agenda. He has his own thing.”

As for whether Grayson is directly supporting the Florida Tea Party, O’Neal said, “I don’t know of any Grayson money. Grayson hasn’t given any money to the (Florida) Tea Party.”

But he has bought advertising on Guetzloe’s radio show on WEUS 810 AM, which was cancelled effective today.

In addition to last year paying $2,750 for ads on Guetzloe’s show, Grayson also apparently authorized more ads after March 31; those expenditures will not become public until July.

Guetzloe said he is required to run ads from any campaign that requests it.

But documents on file at WEUS purport to show Guetzloe-related entities were involved in the proposed or actual purchase of time for Grayson campaign ads on other shows. The station owner, Carl Como, said one of those deals would have resulted in one of Guetzloe’s companies receiving a commission. But Como said he canceled the ad buy because Guetzloe did not sign a required document and he is going refund the $750 to Guetzloe’s company.

State elections records confirm Guetzloe is working hard for the Florida Tea Party while promoting that party’s candidate against Grayson.

Guetzloe’s consulting company has donated $30,800 in public relations services to the Florida Tea Party, more than any other outside consultant helping the party.

In turn, the Florida Tea Party has donated $7,500 in public relations consulting to the campaign of Peg Dunmire, a former Republican chosen by the Florida Tea Party to run as its candidate in Grayson’s Eighth Congressional District.

On his now-canceled radio show, Guetzloe promoted Dunmire to conservative listeners, saying, “Peg Dunmire is beginning quite the juggernaut of a campaign. … She is a great, great candidate and she’s tremendously conservative.”

Lawsuit: Profit From Deception

There is nothing illegal with Grayson paying a corporation formed by Torres, Guetzloe or anyone else — as long as it is properly reported.

But if any funds are flowing from Grayson to Guetzloe, O’Neal or others helping the Florida Tea Party, it would support Grayson critics who say he is using his considerable fortune to indirectly help bankroll a “fake” tea party.

It would also lend support to a federal lawsuit that claims the Florida Tea Party, O’Neal and Guetzloe are profiting from deceiving the public about the true nature of their Tea Party.

In the suit, tea party activists from South Florida — some of them Republican political consultants — claim the Florida Tea Party and its leaders are “confusing the public” and attempting to “hijack” the tea party phrase as they “obtain gains, profits and advantages.”

Grayson’s motivation, they say: The more money the party and its candidate have to siphon conservative votes away from the eventual Republican nominee, the better Grayson’s chances of prevailing in the Nov. 2 General Election.

Splitting The Vote

The Florida Tea Party’s actions have upset those who claim they are the real “tea party,” a grass-roots movement they claim is not linked to any one party.

“We’re all against what Fred O’Neal has done” by creating the Florida Tea Party and running a candidate against Grayson, said Patricia Sullivan, a Lake County tea party organizer seeking the Republican nomination to oppose Grayson in November.

“It more likely than not is going to split the Republican Party. I’m totally opposed to this Florida Tea Party,” said another Republican candidate, Dan Fanelli, adding he spurned Guetzloe’s efforts to recruit him to the Florida Tea Party.

O’Donoghue’s take: “They’ve got a great bedfellow in Alan Grayson and Alan Grayson (thought), ‘This makes sense if I can distract just a small number, or percentage points of the voters, then I have a better chance of winning.’”

Guetzloe, O’Neal and Dunmire all say she is in the race to win it.

“I expect that my running will take traditional votes away from both the Republican and Democratic parties,” said Dunmire. “I fully expect to win in November. We are witnessing a true political change here in Florida. The two-party system is under assault by the actions of candidates like me and the voters will tell us in November if they are in fact supportive of this change.”

“Everything has changed,” said Guetzloe, “because not only of the tea party movement, because of the angst in America today and the possibility tea party candidates can win.”

“I am 100 percent committed to seeing to it that Peg Dunmire is elected the next Congressperson from the 8th Congressional District,” O’Neal said today. “Knowing Peg, knowing the electoral trends over the past year, and knowing the disdain the majority of the voting public has with both major parties, I am convinced that once Peg gains name ID and once her positions on the issues are known by the voters … of all the candidates running to replace Alan Grayson, Peg stands the best chance of actually unseating Congressman Grayson. “

Grayson Money For Poll

Grayson’s campaign said some of the money paid to Public Opinion Strategies was for a February 26 poll conducted by Middleton Market Research that claimed to show Grayson is so popular among registered Republicans in his district, he would win the Republican primary. The campaign Middleton Market Research of Melbourne was “a call-center subcontractor for Public Opinion Strategies.”

A similar poll of Republicans conducted by Middleton in May showed Grayson still outdrew a slate of lesser-known Republican names mentioned in the poll — and claimed 16 percent of registered Republicans surveyed said the were most likely to support the Florida Tea Party in the election.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Andy Sere called the survey “the most bogus thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” adding Grayson was “not using a reputable firm” because “reputable firms are not going to participate in those shenanigans.”

O’Donoghue, the Republican candidate who appears to have drawn the most support from the national party, said there was “something fishy” about that poll because Grayson and the Florida Tea Party are both trumpeting its results — results that O’Donoghue said were concocted “to bring recognition and credibility” to the Florida Tea Party congressional nominee, Peg Dunmire.

In a brief phone call, Middleton Market Research’s David Middleton would only tell Local 6 he knows of Doug Guetzloe, before cutting off the conversation and not returning further calls.

Neither Public Opinion Strategies nor Middleton Market Research has ever been directly paid by a campaign in Florida, according to state records.

The Grayson campaign said it was referred to Public Opinion Strategies by Middleton Market Research, but would not say who referred it to Middleton Market Research.

A Grayson campaign aide declined to say whether the campaign knew Guetzloe helped form Public Opinion Strategies. Questions about any connection to Guetzloe, the campaign said, suggest a story that is “rife with speculation, exaggeration and conspiracy theories.”

While both Guetzloe and Grayson were willing separately to discuss their radio-ad relationship — noting there is nothing wrong with Grayson buying ads on Guetzloe’s show — they both refused to answer detailed questions about Public Opinion Strategies.

Searching For The Company

Internet searches by Local 6 revealed no website and no working phone number for Public Opinion Strategies Inc., which is not affiliated with the widely known and respected Alexandria, Va.-based Republican polling firm of the same name.

Public Opinion Strategies Inc. lists one director in Florida state records: the Guetzloe associate and O’Neal client Victoria Torres, formerly known as Victoria Frauman. In addition to working for Guetzloe, she’s previously worked for a preschool, sold cosmetics, run a cleaning service with her current husband and worked at Florida Hospital.

In June 2009, Torres, 44, gave sworn testimony revealing Guetzloe helped her form Public Opinion Strategies in December 2008. “When (Guetzloe) requests things to be done, I do things for him that he asks for me to,” she said in a deposition involving a lawsuit Guetzloe filed in 2007 against Local 6 and Public Storage.

(Guetzloe, with O’Neal as his attorney, is still suing Public Storage and Local 6 in an attempt to regain possession of files that were auctioned off from a Public Storage unit in November 2006 for $10 and then given to Local 6 by the winning bidder.)

Online phone records revealed another address apparently once referenced by Public Opinion Strategies: 20 N. Division Ave, an Orlando building owned in part by Ken Mulvaney, a 2004 Orlando mayoral candidate who was helped by Guetzloe.

Behind the building sits a deteriorating van plastered with images of Guetzloe and activities of his Ax the Tax group.

Dueling Lawsuits

As for the federal lawsuit filed against the Florida Tea Party, O’Neal, Guetzloe and the party’s communications director, Nick Egoroff, a judge has set a hearing for Wednesday on their motion to dismiss the suit. They are also seeking sanctions against the plaintiffs for bringing what O’Neal argues is a frivolous complaint.

The lawsuit claims O’Neal threatened to sue the South Florida tea party activists if they used the “tea party” name and seeks to have a federal judge declare the Florida Tea Party has no exclusive right to the phrase “tea party.” In court papers, defendants deny the allegations in the lawsuit.

Guetzloe has since sued two of the South Florida tea party activists who sued him, along with their public relations consultant and a former associate of Guetzloe who is now an Orlando tea party activist. Guetzloe claims defamation, harassment, interfering in his business and “abuse of process” for filing the lawsuit against him.

Guetzloe claims they are engaged in a conspiracy rooted in the “Republican Party Establishment” to “harass and discredit” him and “turn other tea party movement organizations against Guetzloe and the newly formed Tea Party.” He says their actions cost him business opportunities — including potential work with erstwhile Republican gubernatorial candidate Paula Dockery — inflicted emotional distress and damaged his reputation by, in part, calling him “unscrupulous … dishonorable … and a disgrace.”

For example, Guetzloe argues it was defamatory for one of the defendants to say Guetzloe was subject to a 60-day jail sentence. In fact, Guetzloe faces up to a year in jail at a court-ordered resentencing, but is arguing his 2006 conviction on an elections law violation should be dismissed because a federal court has in another case since ruled that statute unconstitutional. Prosecutors disagree and a court has yet to rule on Guetzloe’s motion to dismiss.

In his defamation claim, Guetzloe also cites “a statement (albeit incorrect) that Guetzloe had been ‘indicted for extortion.’” In fact, in March 2007, Guetzloe was indicted on two felony perjury counts for allegedly lying under oath in proceedings related to a Florida Elections Commission investigation of the 2003 Daytona Beach city elections. The perjury charges were dropped in July 2007 after a key witness against Guetzloe died suddenly.

Guetzloe was fined $4,000 by the Florida Elections Commission in 2007 for willfully violating state elections laws by not properly reporting how much money he spent on that 2003 Daytona Beach city election.

The state says he has failed to pay his fine.

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