Tampabay.com
OCTOBER 29, 2009

Rich Heffley: Happy to stand up for Charlie Crist

Heffley Lots of Buzz out there, fueled heavily by the good folks at RedState, that the Charlie Crist campaign may have gotten itself in trouble with federal election officials for setting up an anti-Marco Rubio Web site. The main evidence is the source code on that site included the name of Rich Heffley, one of Florida's top GOP operatives who helped lead Crist's 2006 campaign, works out the state GOP headquarters, and whose firm has earned millions from the state party. Some people are speculating Heffley, in a Machiavellian diversion tactic, also created that offensive and/or hilarious Charlie Crist/Hitler spoof.

That's insane, Heffley told Buzz. Someone forwarded him that Hitler YouTube video the other day, Heffley said, and he was so offended and annoyed about that and the barrage of one-sided attacks on Crist lately that he sent out a bunch of news articles to people who were putting together a Web site. He didn't create truthaboutrubio.com, but he was happy to feed it with factual news accounts in the public record.

"I'm tired of this guy getting an open field running without accountability and without the other side of the story being told that's out there,'' an unapologetic and undefensive Heffley said of Rubio. "Nobody on the Crist campaign asked me to do it, and I'm not being paid by the Crist campaign."

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