FL. House candidate to face litany of charges after alleging vote fraud

[pnwmom]

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Florida_House_candidate_to_face_litany_0612.html

"In an exclusive interview with Florida House of Representatives candidate Charlie Grapski - arrested after he filed a lawsuit alleging voting fraud against Alachua County City Manager Clovis Watson, RAW STORY learns of corruption allegations that can only be described as not seen since the days of Boss Tweed.

"Charlie Grapski, a Democrat running for the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested in April after filing a lawsuit alleging that City officials abused power and influenced the outcome of an election by manipulating the absentee voting process. The story, however, does not start or end with election fraud allegations. What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.

"Clovis Watson is not only the City Manager of Alachua county and, as such, the defendant in Grapski’s lawsuit, he is also the Police Commissioner of Alchua, Florida, a town dominated by the Republican Party and pro-development Democrats. Watson, one website alleges, is funded by the Alachua County Republican Party, and declined to accept the Democrat of the Year Award because he is planning a switch to the Republican Party. The site also takes aim at Grapski.

"According to Grapski, 'Clovis Watson filed a sworn complaint as a police officer himself, and as City Manager he was the aggrieved party. As Police Commissioner, he was his own boss and accepted the sworn complaint from himself--and then instructed his subordinates on the police force to have me arrested.'”

SNIP

[wizdum]

1. What a gad awful mess!

Alachua is a beautiful place, but it is very conservative since it is in the north close to the panhandle. Full of right wing psychos it seems. I don't see it changing anytime soon.

[GOPNotForMe]

2. That's my county.

Gainesville is a lovely little island in a sea of red, so to speak. This information is disheartening to say the least.

[pnwmom]

4. Has there been much publicity about this down there?

[MadMaddie]

3. Sounds like the Gestapo to me....

[ShockediSay]

6. Brownshirts in the Weimar Republic which "freely elected"

Adolph Hitler

[TexasLawyer]

5. sounds like a microcosm

of the U.S. federal government under Bush.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. Maybe if Grapski did things properly to begin with

he would have gotten what he wanted rather then stirring everyone up, which it seems is what he really wanted to do.

This isn't the first time he's done this either. He also sued the President of UF last year in another public records case.

Sorry Rawstory, this guy is bad news.

[pnwmom]

8. Okay, I'll bite. What did he do that was illegal?

[Robbien]

9. He taped conversations

An Alachua County Sheriff's Office detective has filed sworn complaints against State House candidate Charlie Grapski and another man, alleging the pair unlawfully recorded Alachua city employees, the department reported Friday.

The complaints accuse Grapski and Michael Canney of unlawful interception of oral communications, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Steve Maynard said.

Grapski, a University of Florida instructor and doctoral student, had been arrested and jailed last month after he was accused of recording Alachua City Manager Clovis Watson Jr. without his knowledge. Grapski was at the Alachua City Hall that day because he was looking through materials relating to absentee ballots for a city election, which has been challenged in a lawsuit he is participating in.

"I find it highly disturbing that the Alachua Sheriff's Office, the State Attorney's Office and city officials of Alachua are going out of their way to harass two private citizens who are attempting to investigate allegations of a fraudulent election," Grapski said after learning about the pending sworn complaints.

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060610/LOCAL/206100325/1078/news

[pnwmom]

11. He openly taped his own conversations with them, while the news people

taped him taping. What's unlawful about that?

This isn't like secretly putting a recording device on a phone that people can't see. He was using a video camera with a red light blinking and he told Watson that he was recording him.

The news people weren't arrested.

[Robbien]

12. I know, but who says they play fair

Jails in oppressive countries are full of people who fight political corruption. The US is rapidly joining that oppressive classification.

[pnwmom]

14. I agree. I'm still waiting for a response from DoYouEverWonder,

who seems to think Grapski could have handled things better. I'd like to know how, when the same guy can accuse him, charge him, and send police over to put him in jail.

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. This didn't just happen out of the blue

This was not his first confrontation. It seems that Grapski likes to be confrontational. He's good at pushing buttons and then playing the victim. It's a small world up here. When someone starts showing up at commission meetings and acting like a jerk, you get a reputation pretty quick. Of course, since he's a manipulator he usually gets the response he wants.

[pnwmom]

16. He was victimized when the FBK flyers went up accusing him of being

a child molester, don't you think? Apparently U. Florida thought so too, since they paid him $85,000 to settle the defamation suit.

It appears to me that his public records suit was well justified too. And, as it happens, it also involves the Florida Blue Key. You can hardly blame the guy for first requesting -- and then suing for -- information about the funding of the group that had been targeting him (and others).

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060422/LOCAL/204220331/1078/news

Grapski's case centers on a series of public records requests he's made since 2005, demanding documentation related to the funding of UF Homecoming activities and Florida Blue Key, a leadership honorary that sponsors Gator Growl.

Grapski says he's interested in the documents because he believes Blue Key, a limited membership organization, has skirted state law by receiving student activities fees to help fund Gator Growl.

Student fees should only go toward groups that are open to all students, Grapski said, not exclusive organizations like Blue Key.

[pnwmom]

10. CommonDreams.org also supports Grapski on this

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0608-33.htm

This kind of vindictive, very personal politics is far from unprecedented in Florida. In Orlando, the Republican Party spent considerable energy gunning for the city’s popular Democratic mayor, Buddy Dyer, after his re-election in the political hot-potato year of 2004. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, run by a political appointee of Jeb Bush’s, raided his offices, intimidated his union supporters and eventually had him indicted on charges of absentee ballot fraud that were dropped for lack of merit after just six weeks.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Alachua County is one of only two Democratic Party voter strongholds in the state (the populous metropolitan counties of south Florida being the other), and that an informal coalition of Republicans, property developers, and entrenched city officials like James Lewis has been working for years to row against the political tide and shut out anyone foolhardy enough to propose smart-growth policies, or work to keep big-box retail giants like Wal-Mart out of the county.

SNIP

As in so many election disputes around the country, the Alachua authorities have not released all the documents requested of them, raising suspicions that the records were either incomplete, shoddy, or don’t exist. The minutes of the vote count itself, for example, have been approved by the City Commission – sight unseen, according to one renegade commissioner – but remain unavailable to the public.

Instead, the mayor and other city officials, along with the local Republican Party, have invested considerable energy in smearing Grapski as a serial litigator (“Lawsuit Charlie,” they have dubbed him) and political extremist. Really, though, they are the extremists. Politicians who have their opponents arrested on bogus charges are not usually treated kindly by history. It may only be a small town in Florida, but the affront to democracy should affect us all.

[pnwmom]

13. U.Florida's FBK paid him $85,000 to settle a defamation suit;

then turned around and defamed another student, who is also suing.

I agree that he was bad news to U.Florida, but it sounds like they deserved it.

http://www.ccsf.edu/Events_Pubs/Guardsman/f981207/uwire07.shtml

(U-WIRE) GAINESVILLE, Fla. --

Jen Cardon, a 21-year-old public relations senior, filed a civil lawsuit against Florida Blue Key on Dec. 8 alleging she has been damaged emotionally and professionally because of a statement in the back of this year's Gator Growl program: "I've never had sex with Jen Cardon."

The suit, which claims Cardon was made to look promiscuous in the program, comes three months after FBK agreed to pay UF graduate student Charles Grapski $85,000 to settle his 4-year-old defamation suit.

SNIP

Grapski, 33, accused FBK members Peter Vlcek, 43, and McGovern, a 23-year-old law student, of portraying him as a child molester on campaign fliers posted around campus during the Spring 1995 Student Government election campaign fliers.

SNIP

While it sponsors high school debate tournaments and scholarship programs, FBK has long been accused of controlling SG through tactics such as using fraternity and sorority votes to guarantee election to key positions.