Advice for Jack Latvala

Dear Senator Latvala:

Undoubtedly if I could not sleep last night, I am sure you could not either.

What kept turning over in my head is the possibility that I may have witnessed your last speech as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee/candidate for Governor. Your remarks to the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists were 100 percent pure Latvala, full of boldness, bluster, honesty, and humor.

It makes me sad to think that I may not see that again.

It’s now clear that you will fight the allegations reported by POLITICO Florida that six women say you had either touched them inappropriately or made demeaning comments about their bodies.

Without judging the merits of those allegations, here is some advice as you proceed forward.

This advice is based, in part, on my own experience of being falsely accused of something. That is not to say you are or are not being falsely accused. But, as you may remember, in 2013, the Tampa Bay Times reported on accusations made against me. It turned out that those charges were without merit.

After the Times published its story, I responded a lot like you did on Friday (your birthday, to boot). Full of fury and righteous indignation. Unfortunately, the more I responded, the worse it appeared to the outside world. It was like a Chinese finger puzzle. The harder you try to get out of it, the harder it becomes to escape. Fortunately, like you, I have a wife smarter than me, one who was smart enough to make us decamp to Disney World, turn off my cellphone, and let the investigation proceed without me doing anything to make the situation worse.

That incident will always be fresh in my mind (as our friend, Rick Baker, told me after all was settled: the Times wanted to see me put in jail, it was that determined to take me out; the same can be said of POLITICO and you). So let me offer these recommendations.

1. Shut up. No matter what else is reported … no matter how much you want to respond … don’t say another damn word! At least not for 48 hours. 72 hours of silence would be even better. The longer you go without saying anything, the less fuel there will be for the fire.

The truth is your instincts for how to respond are horrible, if not downright incriminating. You are your own worst enemy. This line — “If my political opponents want a fight, then it’s a fight they will get it” — is, without a doubt, the worst thing you can say right now.

To be brutally honest, you do not have enough of the right people in your orbit to construct the appropriate public relations response. Just go dark for the time being. It’s the last thing the political world expects from you right now.

2. Tell Chris to stay quiet. I love your son and it’s commendable how quickly he rises to your defense, but anything he posts to social media just exacerbates the situation.

3. For the time being, stop asking female lobbyists and staffers to come to your defense. Although it’s a good sign that several powerful women, Rep. Kathleen Peters and lobbyist Missy Timmins, are speaking out on your behalf, there are other neutral parties who see the effort to recruit other women to your side as EXACTLY the kind of behavior which landed you in this position in the first place.

What if they don’t want to speak out either way? Will they be “remembered” for their disloyalty? The request that you stop doing this was echoed by a managing director of one of the top ten lobbying firms, so please take it seriously.

4. Ask Joe Negron to sack Dawn Roberts. The moment Negron ordered the Senate general counsel to investigate this situation, your critics and critics of the Senate pointed out that Roberts is your friend and previously served under you as a staff director. It doesn’t pass the smell test that she oversee this investigation (something Negron should have known better about, but that’s for another blog post).

If you believe you are innocent, you will immediately ask Negron to create an independent, third-party investigation that is headed by some sort of white knight former judge with zero ties to the Florida Senate.

5. Stop blaming others, including Richard Corcoran, for this predicament. As Henry Kissinger noted, even a paranoid has some real enemies. You have many enemies, Speaker Corcoran among them. But the idea that he hired a private investigator MORE THAN TWO YEARS AGO to gather dirt on you does not make sense. Remember, you were still fighting to be Senate President, which also rules out Adam Putnam‘s supporters or anyone else afraid of you becoming Governor.

The bottom line is you’ll probably never really know who is at the center of all of your troubles. Except the person most responsible for this is looking right back at you in the mirror. That does not mean you are guilty of sexual harassment, but even you will admit you are not perfect.

6. Do not threaten to burn the house down. Let’s be real: most people don’t care what happens to you, they care what happens to them. Most neutral parties will remain that way so long as you are not perceived to be a threat to the entire institution.

But there are more than just whispers which suggest that if you go down, you will not go down quietly. I have zero doubt that you know where more bodies are buried than any single person in Florida politics. But you will lose allies quickly if you suggest that you’ll lead others to said bodies if you go down. This entire situation will accelerate at a pace beyond anyone’s control if you become a kamikaze.

That’s all I have for right now. Undoubtedly you are receiving more advice than even you, with your once-in-a-generation brain, can process. In fact, if I have any advice worth taking it’s that you determine the best way to process all of the incoming advice you are being bombarded with today. Your friends and allies are gonna wanna know they are being listened to, even if their advice is half-baked.

Fortunately for you, you have many, many friends who are still standing with you.