In August 2009, with a burgeoning spending scandal already producing damaging headlines for the Florida Republican Party, state GOP chair Jim Greer appeared before a quarterly party meeting in Orlando and made a show of taking out a pair of scissors and cutting up his party-issued American Express card.
Except, we learn today in the arrest affidavit for Greer, it was not Greer’s card at all — and party staff had to scramble to stop the media from seeing the cut card.
State GOP “staff retrieved the cut card immediately because reporters were attempting to take pictures of it and would have discovered that it was in fact not Mr. Greer’s card at all, but that of an RPOF [state GOP] staffer,” party Executive Director Delmar Johnson told investigators, according to the affidavit.
At the time, Greer’s performance was played by media as a show of fiscal responsibility.
“Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer cut his party-issued American Express card in half Saturday, saying GOP elected officials and political operatives will leave home without them,” reported the Tallahassee Democrat in a story titled “Chairman Jim Greer cuts spending for GOP.”
The paper went on (via Nexis):
“‘I am tired, as you are, of reading this garbage that is being promoted by people who ultimately want this party to fail,’ Greer said as he produced scissors at the rostrum of the Republican State Committee quarterly meeting and snipped his American Express card.”
For the record, the Miami Herald did accurately refer to Greer snipping up “what he said was his own American Express card.”
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