Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire reported 30 minutes ago:

In a much closer-than-expected race, Rick Scott (R) beat Bill McCollum (R) in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He will face Alex Sink (D) and Bud Chiles (I) in the general election. One caveat: McCollum has refused to concede.

CNN reported at 10:54 p.m. EDT:

Rick Scott is the winner of the GOP nomination for Governor in Florida, CNN projects.

The Florida Republican Party had expected McCollum, currently the state attorney general, to win easily. That was before it was disclosed that McCollum had paid at least $120,000 in taxpayer money to discredited veteran ex-gay “therapy” quack George Rekers, to testify against gay adoption. On May 6, 2010, Rekers was exposed using that taxpayer money to travel with a male prostitute to Europe.

Rekers resigned as a board member of NARTH, the ex-gay think tank, on May 11.

One day after stating that gay people should be banned from foster parenting, Florida Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum tried to back away from his statements.

This is the latest twist in the scandal involving McCollum giving $120,000 to discredited witness George Rekers, who was later caught with a male escort he’d hired on rentboy.com as the pair returned from a European vacation.

Nadine Smith of Equality Florida has done an amazing job staying on top of this story.

McCollum Was Warned That George Rekers Testimony Was Suspect, Says TWO

NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out called on Florida Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum to return $120,000 in taxpayer’ money that he used to hire anti-gay activist Dr. George A. Rekers to testify in favor of the state’ gay adoption ban. According to records made public on Thursday, McCollum had been strongly warned against hiring Rekers by the lead attorney in the case to uphold the ban. Yet, he went out of his way to ensure Rekers was placed on the payroll.

According to the Sarasota Tribune, Assistant Attorney General Valerie Martin wrote in a July 2007 e-mail that after talking to Arkansas officials and reviewing the background of the former University of South Carolina professor that she would “recommend NOT using him.” E-mails also show that during a conference call Martin — who said the state considered more than 30 possible expert witnesses — was ordered to hire Rekers “against my strong cautions.”

“Instead of doing the right thing, McCollum was working for the right wing and not serving the citizens of Florida,” said Truth Wins Out’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “McCollum should immediately refund Florida taxpayers and refrain in the future from abusing his position and spending tax dollars to support his extreme ideology.”

“The plot thickens once again in the George “Rentboy” Reker’s affair. Turns out Florida’s Attorney General Bill McCollum not only ignored the Dept of Children and Families objections, he overruled his own lead attorney in the adoption ban case to strong arm Rekers onto the case.

None of this passes the smell test.”

(Weekly Column)

Sure, its scandalous when an anti-gay charlatan employs a male escort to lift his sack and rub his back. But the larger story is that Florida’s Attorney General, Bill McCollum, hired now disgraced professor George Rekers for $120,000 to testify as an “expert” witness in favor of the state’s ban on allowing gay people to adopt. He did so knowing that Rekers testimony had already been debunked and lacked credibility. While the handsome Jo-Vanni Roman was a bargain for Rekers at $75 per night, “Big Spending Bill” bilked taxpayers for a handsome sum of money to defend his bible-based bigotry. As the rent boy hoopla begins to subside, people should begin to focus on the far more dangerous rent-a-quack industry, where puritanical politicians funnel public money to fellow fundamentalists who twists facts in the name of faith.

“Rekers is part of a small cadre of homophobes-for-hire that charge top dollar for their bogus’expert’ witness testimony despite the fact that they’ve been discredited over and over again,” Nadine Smith, Executive Executive Director of Equality Florida, told me during an interview. “McCollum knew this guy was a fraud but he paid him anyway to burnish his conservative credentials. While thousands of children languish in the foster care system and hundreds age out of the system never having been adopted, Rekers is an ideological hired gun who will distort the truth for pay in defense of this law that dehumanizes gay people and denies children in need the stability and permanency that only adoption can bring.”

Rekers was paid a $60,900 retainer in Florida. He also received a $59,793 payment for hourly billing, according to the Department of Children and Families, for 402 hours at about $150 per hour. The payments were made by the office of the Florida attorney general, Bill McCollum, which was defending the DCF’s policy in court.

Rekers, an officer of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, testified in 2008 that LGBT people have a higher likelihood of depression, drug addiction and failed relationships. He claimed these ailments made them unfit parents who could not provide stable homes for children. Of course now we all know that Rekers thinks its okay to rent boys, not raise them.

What McCollum got for the loot was pure lies at the expense of tax payers. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman found that Rekers testimony was “motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy.”

Of course, McCollum, a Republican who is now running for Florida governor as a “fiscal conservative” had to have known that he was wasting public money. Rekers had already testified in Arizona against gay foster parents. But the judge called his testimony “extremely suspect and of little, if any, assistance to the court.”

Rekers also testified on behalf of the state of Arkansas. A two-year legal battle followed after Rekers billed the state for $165,000, more than the state wanted to pay. The case concluded with Rekers receiving a $60,000 settlement, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In an Orlando Sentinel article, “Big Spending Bill” admitted that he hired Rekers because he could not find a credible mental health expert to testify in favor of the ban.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of choice,” said McCollum.

Well, there was a choice. McCollum could have decided to save the peoples’ money and not place a disreputable witness on the stand that he knew was pushing junk science. That is what a man of good character and strong morality would have done. Clearly, McCollum has no problem abandoning the facts in the service of justifying his faith.

McCollum’s actions were a clear violation of the public trust and he has a duty to return the money to the state he was elected to represent. It would be nothing less than disgraceful if he did not pay restitution for the political prostitution that happened on his watch.

As for George Rekers, he should return the dough he has not yet squandered on rent boys to Florida, Arizona and Arkansas. He bamboozled taxpayers and should not get away with it. Of course, now we all know why he needed a strapping young man to lift his baggage. They could possibly have been filled with dirty money from his anti-gay money-grab in Florida.

It seems that Jo-Vanni Roman’sbiggest mistake was that he was in the wrong business. The quickest way to make a buck is to buck reality and provide propaganda for ambitiouss politicians such as Bill McCollum.

Our friends at Equality Florida report:

Attorney General Bill McCollum has scrambled to distance himself from the “star” witness he paid to defend Florida’s anti-gay adoption ban after George Rekers was caught in the Miami Airport with a male prostitute.

But did McCollum mislead the public and reporters when asked about the huge sums the Attorney General’s office directed to Rekers and his co-hort Walter Schumm?

First of all, it turns out the number is much, much larger than originally reported.

An online search of Florida vendors shows Rekers was paid roughly $120,000 and his co-hort Walter Schumm recieved an additional $36,000 in taxpayer money.

McCollum’s office also tried to downplay their relationship with Rekers, insisting that DCF paid him, ignoring the fact that the Attorney General’s office prosecuted the case, defined the strategy and selected its witnesses. But was McCollum’s attempt to shift focus to DCF more than a political sleight of hand? Was it simply a lie?

The same records that show that Rekers was paid double what was originally reported, also show the agency responsible for the funds as “Office of Attorney General- Finance & Accounting.”

Here’s the link to search the payments to Florida vendors: http://flair.myfloridacfo.com/approot/dispub2/cvphsrch.htm

As far as we are concerned at Truth Wins Out, McCollum defrauded Florida taxpayers and ought to repay the wasted public money. He deliberately used discredited quacks to distort science and back up his anti-gay theological worldview. McCollum may call himself a fiscal conservative, but he had no qualms about flushing tens of thousands of dollards down the toilet.

Rekers, for his part, should relinquish what remains of his healthy retainer – that hasn’t already been spent on Rent Boys. (I suppose there might not be much money left.)