Last year, the Pasco County Republican Executive Committee solicited soft money from candidates' families, used the cash to pay for a mass mailing to tout its first-ever endorsements in nonpartisan judicial races and then failed to disclose the donations and expenditures as required by law.

Even party treasurer Scott Factor, who blamed his own bumbling bookkeeping skills for filing the inaccurate financial reports, admits the whole thing looks suspicious.

That much is true, but party officials' other excuses for the campaign tactic lack credibility. Factor, an MBA candidate who runs his own business, said his "absentmindedness" caused him to overlook the local party's biggest expense and three of its largest private contributions in the 2002 campaign. Hugh Townsend, Pasco's GOP chairman at the time, claimed authorship of the idea, but told Times staff writer Cary Davis he didn't know the flier was sent to voters beyond Pasco.

Odd, considering the campaign strategy for successful judicial candidate John Renke III, the son of Pasco's Republican state committeeman, emphasized GOP ties in heavily Republican Pinellas. The campaign downplayed partisanship in Pasco because of an expected large Democratic turnout in the Sept. 10 election.

You can excuse Townsend's claim of ignorance if he was relying on the party's campaign finance reports for his information. Townsend and Factor both signed the document that failed to disclose the $2,500 contributions from family members of judicial candidates Renke, Robert "Bo" Michael and George Brown. The money paid for a $7,300 mailer to Republican voters in Pasco and Pinellas counties endorsing the three candidates, as well as Linda Allan and incumbent Judge Wayne Cobb in the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court judicial races.

Though the party is free to endorse, the candidates face tight restrictions from Florida's Judicial Canons. The canons do not allow them to tout their party affiliations to get elected, and they discourage, but do not prohibit, their families from doing likewise. That doctrine, though, carried little weight with the politically active families of the judicial candidates. By donating to the party, the relatives skirted the state's $500 contribution limit to individual campaigns. The state should disallow such maneuvering if its judicial races are to remain clean and nonpartisan.

Factor, meanwhile, feigned indignation at being left out of the loop when it came to approving the expenditure, which Townsend said was done via telephone conversations with the Republican Executive Committee's board members. Factor, who ran unsuccessfully for Pasco County Commission in 2000 and has ambitions to try again, would serve the public better if he focused on providing accurate financial information, as required by law, instead of on his own feelings at being slighted by the party's officers.

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