Florida Senate: State ethics violator Thrasher to head Ethics and Elections Committee (Jeb's man)

The Florida Legislature, reeling from two separate influence-peddling scandals, has an opening on an ethics and elections committee. That's the panel that's supposed to help keep elected officials and candidates in line. And the guy picked to be the chairman is a lobbyist-turned-legislator-turned- lobbyist-turned-legislator who has gotten in trouble twice for violating -- wait for it -- Florida's ethics and elections laws?

Welcome to Tallahassee, where term limits amount to a quick spin through the revolving door between public office and special interests.

John Thrasher represented the Jacksonville area in the Florida House from 1992 to 2000, when term limits forced him to leave office at the top of his game. So, like many other politicians, he cashed in. Southern Strategy Group, one of the leading lobbying firms in Tallahassee, eagerly brought him in as a partner.

State law bars ex-lawmakers from lobbying their former colleagues for two years, so Thrasher registered to lobby the governor's office and state agencies. But just two months after leaving office, he invited legislators to a luncheon with officials from the University of Miami, one of his firm's clients. Whoops.

Thrasher's earlier run-in with the law was in 1993, his first year in Tallahassee, when he lobbied the state Board of Medicine on behalf of his former employer, the Florida Medical Association. He was reprimanded by the House speaker two years later.

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It could be worse. Thrasher could have been chosen to head the energy committee at the same time his wife is lobbying for offshore oil drilling.

Except that honor went to Republican state Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla of Miami, who insists his spouse's position in the high-stakes debate over oil and gas exploration off Florida's coastline won't affect his position.

I guess we'll have to take his word for it. Florida's ethics and elections commission isn't known for keeping elected officials shaking in their boots. Thrasher's fine for his ethics slip-up in 2001 was $500.

In a Capitol awash in special-interest money, that's a dinner tab, not a deterrent.

Senate President Jeff Atwater tapped former House Speaker John Thrasher, the most recent addition to the Florida Senate, to head up the Ethics and Elections Committee.

Thrasher is no stranger to ethics violations. He admitted to breaking state ethics rules twice, once when he was a House member and again after he returned to lobbying.

The first violation took place in 1993 when Thrasher appeared before the state medical board as a paid representative of the Florida Medical Association. State law bans sitting lawmakers from lobbying.

In 2001, after he left the legislature and returned to lobbying, Thrasher was hit with another ethics violation.

The Jacksonville Republican lobbied lawmakers on behalf of his client the University of Miami without waiting for the two-year waiting period to elapse before former lawmakers can legally lobby current lawmakers.

Thrasher admitted he had violated the ethics laws and was chastised for the first violation and fined $500 for the second.

TALLAHASSEE -- Newly minted state Sen.-elect John Thrasher, who was at the epicenter of a multimillion-dollar interest group slugfest over his Jacksonville area seat, has been appointed to chair the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee.

Shortly after he survived a blistering Sept. 15 GOP primary in which the state's trial bar lobby spent millions of dollars to defeat him, Thrasher said lawmakers needed to re-enact some type of disclosure requirement for the stealthy electioneering groups that were freed from reporting their donors in the state thanks to a federal judge's ruling earlier this year. Thrasher is a former House speaker who pushed for broader limits on personal-injury lawsuits when he had the post, which explains the trail bar's campaign against him.

Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said he named Thrasher to the post because he wants to reform the law.

"The events that surrounded the recent District 8 election highlighted the importance of transparency in elections, particularly 527 political committees," Atwater said, in a statement. "I chose Senator Thrasher to chair this committee because I believe he is best-suited for this task."

But Thrasher also benefited from ads financed by stealthy groups backed by business interests. By the end of the campaign, almost everyone involved seemed to agree that re-enacting some manner of disclosure provision was preferable to having to guess at who was behind the next attack ad.

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TALLAHASSEE -- As business groups rejoice in the return to power of John Thrasher as a state senator, their archenemies in the legal profession downplay the result as just one election.

Thrasher, 65, cruised to victory Tuesday over three Republican opponents in the race to replace the late Sen. Jim King, who died of cancer in July and was viewed by the trial bar as an ally on some key issues.

The election of Thrasher in Senate District 8, which stretches from the Georgia border to Daytona International Speedway, means a moderate Senate long receptive to the trial bar's agenda has shifted more favorably toward businesses.

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A former House speaker and lobbyist for doctors and other business interests, Thrasher had the support of former Gov. Jeb Bush and an army of pro-business allies that helped him weather a steady barrage of hard-hitting ads largely funded by personal injury lawyers.

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Mark Wilson of the Florida Chamber of Commerce said Thrasher's win is a welcome sign in a state that industry groups see as too fertile for nuisance lawsuits.

``This state has to change its judicial and legal climate,'' Wilson said. ``And it's becoming clear to people that we were serious about it.''

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TALLAHASSEE - The Florida Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for a 2010 ballot amendment designed to end political gamesmanship in drawing district boundaries, in what could be the first step to reshuffling the state's Republican-dominated political landscape.

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The unanimous ruling hands a long-sought victory to Florida Democrats, who have virtually no way to loosen the Republican grip on the state Legislature without changes to the way voters are grouped into districts.

The amendment bars districts from being "drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party."

Districts also must be "compact," the amendment says, and can't be created to block racial or language minorities from having "equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice."

The Supreme Court decision is only a first step, however. Now, the group Fair Districts Florida has to gather 677,811 valid signatures by Feb. 1, 2010, to secure a spot on the November 2010 ballot. And then, 60 percent of voters must approve.

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The next once-in-a-decade round of redistricting comes in 2011, so putting the issue before voters in 2010 is a critical mission for Democrats and good-government groups like Common Cause that are pushing the initiative.

"Right now, we have a situation where there are no races because districts are so unbalanced and gerrymandered," said Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston. "The goal of this is to make sure that people, constituents, get to pick their representatives and the representatives don't get to pick their constituents."

Republicans have derided the campaign as a partisan power grab and since last week have demanded to know who is financing it. In a meeting with The Tampa Tribune's editorial board Monday, Gov. Jeb Bush described "a group of Secret Squirrel liberals who go to some fancy resort somewhere, and they divvy up the states and the ballot initiatives. They write large checks; they launder the money through places like Common Cause, ironically."

Bush raised money in Florida for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt to pass a similar measure in California in November.