Republican check-writers say they didn’t know of fundraiser’s lucrative contract

By Aaron Deslatte Orlando Sentinel Tallahassee Bureau

2:50 p.m. EST, February 3, 2010

TALLAHASSEE – For the past year, Delmar Johnson mixed and mingled with the well-heeled and powerful, chasing checks from large Republican donors from fishing piers in Key West to a football stadium in Boston.

But even as the economy soured and GOP fundraising lagged, Johnson earned more than perhaps any party leader in Florida history — at least $408,000 as executive director and chief fundraiser for the Republican Party of Florida. His total pay was more than triple what party chairman Jim Greer made.

Nearly $200,000 of that came through a contract signed by Greer and Johnson naming Johnson as the party’s chief fundraiser. That contract was apparently never divulged even to senior members of the party’s executive committee.

Anger over the party’s flailing finances prompted an unusual combination of grass-roots activists and big-ticket donors to force Greer’s resignation last month. And that was before party elders knew of Johnson’s fundraising contract – and his outsized earnings.

Now a number of prominent donors are coming forward to complain they were kept in the dark about the contract, and they want Johnson to refund what he was paid.

“Obviously, that is absolutely unconscionable compensation, and it was done in a way to obfuscate or hide the intent,” said Al Hoffman, a former Republican National Committee finance chair and one of the state’s largest developers and GOP check-writers.

“I don’t think in history any party chairman would have allowed their executive director to earn that kind of stash.”

Greer, who did not return calls to his cell phone and to the state party, will be replaced in a party election scheduled for Feb. 20. Johnson, whose last day was Monday, was one of 19 staffers laid off last month.

Word of Johnson’s pay has been spreading through the halls of the Capitol this week. State Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, who is running to replace Greer, called Johnson’s compensation “a gross overpayment.

“It sends exactly the wrong message to the people who we want to participate in the Republican Party,” he said. “It’s not going to happen again.”

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