George Kruse accused Carol Whitmore Jan. 26 of blackmailing him to influence his votes in an ongoing dispute over Manatee County administration.
Both are elected at-large members of the Manatee County Board of Commissioners.
Kruse, elected in November 2020, leveled the accusation during a board meeting at the Bradenton Area Convention Center in Palmetto.
He read from a prepared statement, admitting to a “short but nonetheless real affair” in 2020 and then alleged that Whitmore knew about the extramarital relationship and set out to manipulate his commission votes by acquiring photographs of him and the other person in the affair in a public place.
“I believe her intention for obtaining the pictures was to use them to manipulate votes on this board. As my wife knows about it and it is, in fact, over, the only blackmail she could hope to achieve would be the public embarrassment that would inevitably trickle down to my 11-year-old daughter and my 14-year-old son. This is how far I believe she’d go to retain power and destroy fellow commissioners if she doesn’t get her way,” Kruse said during the meeting, which was broadcast on cable TV and YouTube.
The accusation came during a discussion over a meeting that occurred Jan. 22 between Kruse and Whitmore. The meeting was noticed and did not violate the Sunshine Law.
But Kruse said he found the meeting inappropriate and followed his accusation of blackmail with a motion to fire county administrator Cheri Coryea, blaming her for scheduling the meeting and calling it a scheme to embarrass him over the affair.
Whitmore, during the Jan. 26 meeting, said she is “an old island hippie” and insisted she does not act with malicious intent or seek to deceive anyone.
Responding to the allegation of blackmail, Whitmore said, “I just want to be very clear, again, for the 10th time today: Carol doesn’t break laws and I want that very clear. And I’m ethical.”
About her knowledge of Kruse’s affair, she said, “Mr. Kruse knows this, I was sent a picture. I don’t even know, maybe two or three months ago. …Mr. Kruse was somewhere with another party and they sent a picture. It was really very benign but everybody was making a big deal out of it and to me it was nothing. It was just two people sitting there talking and that was all.”
Whitmore said Kruse stopped by her office days after she received the photos and told him they were circulating.
“I could care less what you do in your personal life. I said, you do have the most powerful job in Manatee County. And you’ve got a family and whatever goes on in your personal life is personal, but you are a very powerful person now and you have to figure out what you’re going to do and work it out with your family or not.”
Whitmore, a former Holmes Beach mayor and city commissioner, defended herself to the commission and said she did not set out to use evidence of Kruse’s affair as leverage.
She also denied Kruse’s accusation that she spread the photos on social media.
The Jan. 26 meeting events led the League of Women Voters of Manatee County to issue a call for action.
“The important business of the county is being hobbled by reopening prior discussions on matters of little substance,” the statement read. “Write your commissioners and let them know of your concerns and demand they perform their duties in a constructive, proper and functional manner.”
Whitmore announced she had hired an attorney to represent her with regard to the blackmail threat.
Neither Whitmore nor Kruse were reached by The Islander for comment Jan. 27 or Jan. 28.