Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings wanted to thank emergency workers.
Alan Levine, secretary of Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration, wanted to see the damage at Community Hospital in New Port Richey.
Bill Bunting, chairman of Pasco's Republican Executive Committee, wanted to talk politics.
All three converged in west Pasco County on the last Tuesday in September in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Frances and Hurricane Jeanne.
By the end of the day, Republicans were worried about the potential political damage from Hurricane Bill. The casualties could include Rep. Tom Anderson, R-Dunedin, whose district includes much of west Pasco, and the president's re-election campaign.
Levine, from his home computer in Tallahassee, typed out an e-mail that evening of Sept. 28 and hit the send key at 9:31 p.m. It was addressed to Karen Unger, spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush, and copied to the governor and to what Levine thought was the re-election campaign's e-mail address with the domain name of georgewbush.org.
Levine's message and Unger's response indicates Tallahassee's unease with Bunting's usual hardball tactics. Levine's e-mail states:
"Karen, today I was in Pasco County with the LG (lieutenant governor). While there, Bill Bunting pulled me and the LG aside and told us that he was going after Rep. Anderson because Anderson would not drop mail for the president.
"I don't know what is going on, but Bill is capable of sometimes being fairly extreme and it worries me that he may do something that draws attention. It may be worthy of someone talking to him."
"Dropping mail," incidentally, is a political euphemism for distributing campaign literature to voters via the U.S. Postal Service.
Unger answered Levine within minutes.
"Oh yeah. Bill can be a bit nutty."
She asked Brett Doster, Bush-Cheney Florida campaign director, if he was familiar with the situation. All parties involved apparently thought that was the end of it.
One small problem. The web address used to reach Doster actually belongs to John Kerry supporters. They discovered the e-mails in a default basket and posted the contents on the Internet, according to the Web site.
Cyberspace. You've got to love it. (Or hate it, if you've Levine and Unger.) Where else would we get a peek into the private thoughts of Gov. Jeb Bush's high-level appointees characterizing the head of Pasco's GOP as "fairly extreme" and "a bit nutty."
Levine, a former executive at HCA's Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point, knows Bunting from Levine's 1996 failed run for the state House District 46 seat in west Pasco. Levine also is aware that politicking and the Internet don't always mesh well. As the governor's deputy chief of staff last year, Levine landed in hot water for writing an e-mail to a former HCA colleague. In that message, Levine endorsed the idea of recruiting opponents for two Republican senators because they disagreed with the governor's call for capping pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice claims.
As expected from party loyalists days before a dead heat of a presidential election, Levine, Anderson and Bunting all played down the recent exchange when interviewed this week.
"That's not what happened," said Bunting.
So, did Levine misinterpret Bunting's comments?
"Apparently," Bunting said via cell phone Friday morning as he checked out at Home Depot with stakes for campaign signs.
Anderson said he was unaware of any ill will.
"No one asked me to distribute material, I've never refused to distribute material, I don't know what the heck is going on," Anderson said.
Bunting said Anderson was working on behalf of the president's re-election effort, even though the GOP chairman said he had been told something contrary earlier in the campaign.
Oh. You mean Bunting heard something, and instead of conferring with Anderson he grabbed Levine and Jennings at a public event and relayed a message that Levine took as a potential political threat to a sitting Florida state representative?
"Whatever conversations I had with him were private and were intended to be private," Levine said. "Despite whatever was said to me, I've known Bill a long time. Bill is one of those people who works very hard for whatever cause he believes in. I give him a lot of credit for his hard work, not just this year, but historically."
In other words, Levine did his best to dress up the naked truth floating around the World Wide Web.
