With a local Internet site alleging over the past five days that District 58 House Democratic candidate Janet Cruz has been claiming a homestead exemption for a house that she does not live in, the St. Petersburg Times today has unleashed three of their best Tampa-based reporters to report on that allegation, as well as a counter-attack by the Cruz campaign. That regards a decade-old charge of child neglect on the part of Randy Wynne, the spouse of Cruz's opponent, Pat Kemp.
First, some background. The Politics in Tampa blog has been active in following the District 58 race, and is no doubt written by a Kemp supporter. (We don't know who this person is, and officials close with Kemp insisted to CL earlier this week that they didn't either.) But the blog began writing early last week about Cruz's involvement in a housing deal with convicted felon Matthew Cox last week. Cox is currently serving 26 years in federal prison for mortgage and bank fraud, identity theft and passport forgery. Those reports ultimately began surfacing in comments on the Times' Buzz Blog page, and led to a story written by Janet Zink last Sunday.
Immediately after that story's publication, rumors surfaced that the Cruz campaign wanted to hit back at Kemp. Apparently, they weren't able to find much. However, there is a legal paper trail when it comes to Kemp's husband, WMNF radio Program Director Randy Wynne.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.