The Ascent

Michael Kruse: The 1993 DUI arrest of Jim Greer started as a 911 call from a woman in a drunken panic.

A police officer responded to a Shell station in Palm Bay shortly before 4:30 one morning that June. The woman stepped out from behind the building and into the light by the pay phone. Wet streaks of mascara ran down her face.

The officer asked her what had happened. She wouldn't say. He asked her again.

A white Chrysler convertible whipped into the parking lot. The officer recognized the driver as Greer, a city council member, and he smelled like booze.

Greer looked at the officer and the woman and asked the woman where she'd been. He told her he'd been worried and looking for her everywhere.

The officer decided to check if Greer was as drunk as he seemed. He asked him to balance on one foot and walk a straight line and to say the alphabet. Greer swayed and flapped his arms to stay standing and couldn't get past the letter T. "If I hadn't had anything to drink at all," he told the officer, "I'd still forget the rest."

In November 2006, Charlie Crist, who had just been elected governor, made Greer his pick to be chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. The DUI was never mentioned.

Greer was so unknown that his soon-to-be staffers at the party offices in Tallahassee plugged his name into Google. Crist, who is running for U.S. Senate, knew him better than many — but not nearly well enough. Greer's DUI wasn't a mere misstep but rather one piece of a record of red flags.

Now Greer, 48, is charged with money laundering, theft and fraud. Authorities say he created a company to funnel to himself and an associate a cut of donations made to the party. His RPOF credit card statements say he spent his three years as chair living a lavish lifestyle of private planes and luxury hotels. He was pressured to resign in January and arrested at his home in Oviedo in June when Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents led him handcuffed past his kids while they ate breakfast in the kitchen.

His current predicament is widely known. Much less discussed — in fact never before told — is how Greer ascended to such prominence in the first place. He is a man with limited education and a past that includes resume fibs and racy run-ins with the police — also, though, an undeniable ability to shake the right hands, meet the right people and charm the ones who had what he wanted.