The Reid Report

By Joy-Ann Reid

In a conference call with reporters that just wrapped up, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (who’s also the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and easily one of the party’s most effective spokespeople) along with DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse, Florida Democratic Party Executive Director Scott Arceneaux and Florida party spokesman Eric Jotkoff blasted away at the Republican Party of Florida over AMEXgate, calling on Gov. Charlie Crist and Bill McCollum to take action, and the former to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate what Wasserman-Schultz called Florida Republicans’ use of party American Express cards as a “personal slush fund.”

DSW led the attack, saying that in all her years of public service, “it never would have occurred to me that if my car was parked outside a party event and something happened to it, that I would send the repair bill to the Democratic Party,” a reference to charges leveled in a Miami Herald/St. Pete Times story today that former House Speaker Marco Rubio billed the RPOF for repairs on his family minivan, after he says it was damaged in the parking lot during an event. Rubio’s charges, for wine, airline tickets for his wife, shopping at Winn Dixie, a visit to the Apple Store, meals at the Macaroni Grill and even a $130 spa day in Miami are the latest embarrassment for the scandal-plagued Florida GOP, which is steadfastly refusing to open up its books so donors can see what they bought (besides the wine, and let’s hope it was at least good stuff, and not the cheap boxed crap.) The participants in the call invited the IRS to look into the facts behind Republican Party officials’ use of the party credit cards, since any personal usage not reported on tax forms as incomes could be a crime. They also dropped hints that the personal use of the cards could violate Florida laws that were supposed to prevent politicians from accepting gifts from lobbyists.

More DWS highlights: she called the AMEX scandal “a growing distraction that’s preventing our public officials from governing,” and said “it’s time for Gov. Crist and (A.G.) Bill McCollum to do what’s right for Florida, and it’s time for Marco Rubio to own up to what he did with party cards.” For good measure, she reminded the call that “it’s illegal to use party credit cards for anything other than electioneering. …This is not a joke.”

Clearly, the gloves are off in the AMEXgate scandal. Even before the call, DNC spokesman Woodhouse put out a blistering statement asking whether the RPOF is itself a “criminal enterprise.” On the call, he also tied the Florida scandal to recent revelations about Michael Steele’s lavish lifestyle spending at the Republican National Committee, including “limos, private aircraft and other gratuities,” concluding that “one thing we may learn out of this episode, both in Florida and nationally, is that whether you’re donors or taxpayers you can’t trust your money to Republicans.”

Sounds like a campaign theme, especially coming on the same day CFO and gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink held her own reporters’ call to discuss her new proposals on ethics reform.

For his part, Arceneaux asked, “how bad does it have to get before Republicans in Florida have to come clean? The Republicans have continued to want to hide their actions, and prevent the public from having full disclosure.” And he named who the Democrats plan to paint as two of the big “culprits” in preventing the truth from coming out: Charlie Crist and Bill McCollum. It’s going to be a long, ugly campaign.

UPDATE: Two interesting questions from the call 1) does the Florida Democratic Party have credit cards it issues to politicians? (Answer: no. The party uses a debit card or writes checks to pay for its expenses.) and 2) would the party welcome Charlie Crist as a member, should he decide to ditch the teabagging Republicans, which is a persistent rumor that won’t go away? (One word answer, I think from Arceneaux: no.)