The Dirty South: Florida: Alachua's corrupt nature makes LA City Beat

No matter how lousy politics can get, it’s consoling to remember that it’s almost always worse somewhere else. The Westly-Angelides gubernatorial primary was about as distasteful a race to the bottom as we’ve seen in this state, a textbook example of what happens when campaign fund-raising trumps any pretense at meaningful debate, and negative advertising tries to fill the void of public indifference. But at least neither candidate stooped so low as to try to have the other arrested.

Over in Florida, where the politics are almost invariably lousier, no such indignity has been spared a state assembly candidate by the name of Charlie Grapski. Grapski, an energetic proponent of ethics reform and a political scientist who teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville, found himself under arrest last month for the heinous – heinous! – offense of tape-recording a conversation with a public official in the small nearby city of Alachua.

The tape recorder had been sitting openly on a table throughout the conversation, according to everyone present in the room, and did not appear to cause undue concern to the official, City Manager Clovis Watson, even after he acknowledged it. No matter: When Grapski returned to City Hall a few days later, he was slapped in handcuffs by three police officers summoned by Watson, told he would face third-degree felony charges for taping Watson without his express consent, and hauled off to the county jail.

...."Grapski has been railing for years against what he denounces as a good-ol’-boy network running Alachua, and has based his assembly campaign largely on his desire to open up its inner workings to public scrutiny and clearer ethical standards. In other words, his arrest looks like the worst kind of dirty politics: a piece of pure nastiness by a network of political operatives determined to prevent him from disturbing their cozy existence. Burgess denies any personal involvement in the decision to arrest Grapski. On the other hand, it is no secret that the people who made the arrest are all supporters of hers."