Hans Tanzler’s outsider persona does not match his insider game

Hans Tanzler, one of the Republicans running in Florida’s 4th Congressional District, has studiously crafted an image as a “conservative outsider” during his campaign.

In fact, Wednesday evening finds Tanzler as a “special guest speaker” at a fundraising event for the “Conservative Outsider” political committee.

The committee predated Tanzler entering the congressional race; contributions from a vice president of Monsanto and from CropLife America, a trade association for “the manufacturers, formulators and distributors of pesticides” awaited Tanzler, who has marketed himself as a rancher, before he became an active candidate.

But Tanzler is more than a candidate who got in the race to run interference for companies making GMOs.

He is an insider’s insider, and fellow insiders have donated to the “Conservative Outsider” political committee in recent months.

Charter school magnate Gary Chartrand ponied up $5,000. Land magnate David Hutson and real estate executive John Baker went $10,000 deep. Robert Shircliff anted up $12,500. And Ring Power went in for $25,000.

The committee, associated up until now with an Indiana politician named James Banks, a Tea Party darling, will be spending on behalf of Tanzler. The committeee has $121,000 on hand before Wednesday’s fundraiser.

And, it’s assumed, the committee money will be used to attack either Lake Ray or John Rutherford, likely opining they are politicians with long histories in public office.

The carefully crafted perception that slick political operatives push to CD 4 voters is that Tanzler is a fresh face, a straight talkin’, straight shootin’ outsider coming in to clear the insiders out of Washington.

The reality, borne out over time, is that Tanzler himself is an insider, much more comfortable in a boardroom than on his ranch, shooting a rifle from atop a horse.

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One example of Tanzler’s inside game: his ascension “from unpaid member of the St. Johns River Water Management District’s governing board to the high-salaried job as the agency’s top lawyer,” which Florida Times-Union columnist Ron Littlepage said “doesn’t pass the smell test.”

The job opening wasn’t advertised. And there was no reason for it to be.

Not when the retiring executive director “simply recommended [Tanzler] for the post.”

“Tanzler resigned from the board, which he was appointed to in 2008, and on the same day his now-former board member colleagues said he was the one for the job, which will pay him $165,000 a year,” Littlepage observed.

One blogger pointed out a dilemma created: “As a regulatory agency, the staff needs legal guidance and representation at least as much as the board, if not more. Importantly, placing the legal team under the board also creates two silos of power from which the board will never be sure who’s giving the right answers. Saying it’s just not good management understates the obvious.”

Tanzler, predictably enough, went on to become executive director of the water management board.

His performance in that role got at least one negative performance review from a governing board member.

Tanzler’s “2014 Water Supply Plan … the most deficient plan I’ve seen presented at a board level … was a major managerial failure. The district spent $5,000,000 on the Water Supply Plan initiative … and the document produced was replete with factual errors, internal inconsistencies, omissions and language our legal department couldn’t explain. After presenting my critique to Hans, I requested he schedule a meeting with me to discuss; he declined to do so.”

But what’s $5 million between friends?

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Tanzler has donated to candidates that may not jibe with how Republicans in 2016 see themselves.

Charlie Crist, for example, garnered multiple donations from Tanzler, both from his own name and that of his company, Marion Equities.

In 2009, as the Florida GOP sought to nominate Marco Rubio for Senate, Tanzler fell in behind Crist, soon to be an apostate Republican, and even was on the host committee for a fundraiser in Jacksonville, reported the Tampa Bay Times.

Crist appointed Tanzler to the water management board in 2008.

Beyond supporting candidates who were about to change into Democrats, Tanzler also was willing to put money behind Buddy MacKay in his campaign against Jeb Bush in 1998.

Are MacKay and Crist also “conservative outsiders”?

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Tanzler, despite running an anti-government campaign, in fact is a fully vested member of the governmental class. His donations, his connections, and his actions are much closer to the penthouse than the farmhouse.

And, for those worried about his financial security (especially in light of his decision to delay his financial disclosure for this race until the last possible day), they shouldn’t worry too much.

Tanzler is a member of the FRS Investment Plan, so he won’t have to worry about, as the saying from his ad “Rawhide” goes, having to eat his own seed corn.