Sweetest Fliers Arrive in Mailbox

Remember JD Alexander bought a business next to the proposed rail hub and stands to make millions off the backs of Polk County! By Lonnie Brown Published: Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 12:01 a.m. Last Modified: Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 2:36 a.m. The Coffee Guzzlers Club members were gathered at the usual table at the Sam 'n' Ella Cafe. Nevermore, the club's pet raven and mascot, had a special request to make. Quoth the Raven: "I need to have my mail forwarded to one of your addresses, because there's a state senator living in my mailbox: J.D. Alexander." Hmm. That may not work either. Mine is full of him too. Nearly once a week, if not twice, a full-color postcard mailer tumbles out of the mailbox. I have almost a dozen since I started saving them several weeks ago. J.D. in a suit, blue shirt and tie. J.D. in a white polo shirt. J.D. The Lake Wales Republican is up for re-election to his District 17 seat, which covers the southern half of Polk County, and all or portions of six other counties to the south. Even though Democrats have a slight edge in registration throughout the district (44 percent Democratic, 39 percent Republican), Alexander has a long lead in campaign contributions and name recognition. He has drawn Democratic opposition in the Nov. 4 election from Scott Thompson of Winter Haven, 42, a third-generation citrus grower who characterizes Alexander as "a professional politician," who "has been in Tallahassee for a decade, and he has made some very powerful friends." The powerful friends have stoked Alexander's campaign treasury with $383,000 in monetary donations and another $75,300 in in-kind contributions, according to the September contribution list. Thompson's contributions pale by comparison: $7,840 in monetary donations and $8,300 in-kind contributions. For every $1 Thompson has raised, Alexander has collected $28. Thus far in the campaign, Alexander has outspent Thompson by an even grander margin: $53 for every $1 Thompson has spent. But Alexander doesn't have any money in the stream of mailings that have been stuffed in the district's mailboxes. Of the ones I have collected, many are from the Republican Party of Florida, touting Alexander for cutting taxes "to help stimulate our economy and create new jobs." Others, however, come from political committees with warm, fuzzy names. One of those was paid for by Citizens First, which lists its address as 400 Capital Circle SE, Suite 18-123, Tallahassee. The "suite" is rather small. It is measured in inches, actually. According to a report last year in the St. Petersburg Times, the address "is a UPS store in a strip shopping center, where mailboxes rent for $12 a month. Each of those political committees had its own postal box or, as they more elegantly put it: 'suite.'" The contact person listed for Citizens First when it was formed just before the November 2004 elections was Kim LeeBove. A news story in The Palm Beach Post identified her as a bookkeeper for a company run by Randy Nielsen, a political consultant whose clients include sugar-industry and home-building interests. In the past three years, Citizens First has raised $368,000. Of that amount, just more than half - 54 percent - came from the U.S. Sugar Corp. and Florida Crystals Corp. Interestingly, another of those oversize postcard mailings featuring Alexander - this one from Floridians for Conservative Values - came from the same street address as the one from Citizens First. It was only three mailbox suites away from Citizens First. In fact, the treasurer for Floridians for Conservative Values is the same Kim LeeBove listed as the contact person for Citizens First. Like Citizens First, Floridians for Conservative Values is a 527 political group, named for the section of IRS code that created them. This mailer praised Alexander, who "slipped an amendment prohibiting the commercial garbage [proposed for a Bartow landfill] into a bill passed by the Legislature." Who are these Floridians who take such an interest in Alexander - or what goes into a landfill in Bartow, for that matter? As it turns out, Floridians for Conservative Values is largely financed by the sugar industry. According to campaign reports filed by the organization, of the $271,000 raised since 2006, nearly 80 percent has come from the U.S. Sugar Corp. and Florida Crystals Corp. This is what passes for campaigning for office these days: suites that are smaller than a bread box. "Citizens" with "Conservative Values" who aren't living, breathing people, but corporations masking as them. That's the reality of it - once you peel off the sugar coating. [ Lonnie Brown, The Ledger's associate editor, is interlocutor of the Coffee Guzzlers Club. The club motto this week is: "Now that you're in there, can we bring you anything? A sandwich? How about a sugar cookie?" ]