One of the less watched but most interesting races on the First Coast on Tuesday was the primary challenge to the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), John Thrasher, who also serves as State Senator for Florida District 8. This race, between Thrasher and Beaches dermatologist Charles Perniciaro, illustrated a growing inter-party factionalism among Republicans. This rift has grown more prominent with the growth of the “Tea Party” movement and it often described as a conflict with the establishment and the Tea Party challengers, but in fact it is a three way struggle between three distinct factions: The social/neo conservatives, the “Liberty Right” and the business interests dominating the establishment Republicans.
John Thrasher was the former Speaker of the House when he was first elected in a special election in 2009 and soon after became the head of the RPOF after former chairman Jim Greer left in disgrace. While already evident, the rift between Thrasher and the Liberty Right (represented by the Republican Liberty Caucus[RLC]) became crystal clear when a member of the St. Johns Executive Committee stepped down so Thrasher could be elected to the committee and fulfill the rules requirements to ascend to the party chairmanship and RLC members were removed from the meeting after they claimed they were scrubbed from the voting rolls.
Thrasher had aligned himself with the “establishment” wing of the party with endorsements from Jeb Bush and the tacit support of REC’s in some counties. Thrasher has also courted the social conservative wing with a barrage of mailers describing him as a “pro life politician who keeps his promises”. His connections to the traditional Republican business interests became more clear when a 527 group known as the Committee for Responsible Leadership, funded primarily by donations for Blue Cross and Blue Shield, began a series of mailers making hay of Perniciaro’s recent party switch, stating a series of controversial statements by Democrats and asking why “Lifelong Democrat Charles Perniciaro said nothing”.
Dr. Perniciaro ran in stark opposition to the morality of Thrasher serving as both RPOF chair and State Senator, a key sticking point for the RLC and articulated a clear opposition to the “legislation of morality”, even refusing to answer several questions on the Christian Coalition candidate questionnaire. In the end, like many challengers on Tuesday, Perniciaro lost. The social and establishment Republicans touted this as a triumph of their faction over the oft ridiculed “Republitarians”. However, the real lesson to be taken here is the fact that a completely unknown challenger with no political clout and no experience received 41% of the vote against the sitting chairman of the Republican Party of Florida with the full weight of the establishment behind him. This bodes for interesting results in the next three election cycle as Florida’s three factions vie for supremacy.
