Rick Scott Scrubs TEA Endorsement from his Website

Within hours of receiving -- and touting -- the Florida TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party endorsement, Rick Scott obliterated all references to it.

The TEA endorsement, announced this morning and relayed statewide by a Scott campaign e-mail blast, disappeared into the ether after other tea party groups called to complain.

"It was another example of the Florida TEA Party political party trying to confuse folks by representing themselves asthe tea party movement.The Scott campaign, thinking it was us, readily accepted," said Tom Tillison, a tea party activist in Orlando.

"Once the endorsement was discovered by those of us in the movement, it was quickly brought to the attention of the RickScott campaign, who subsequently removed a reference to the endorsement from their website."

See the sanitized page here.

Another tea group, calling itself "Florida Tea Party, LLC," called on Scott to refuse the endorsement of what it called the "fake political TEA Party."

The LLC group, headed by Everett Wilkinson of Palm Beach Gardens, calls itself "an activist website with over 35 groups." It says it has not endorsed any candidates.

Wilkinson is suing the TEA Party in U.S. District Court, accusing TEA Chariman Frederic O'Neal and TEA consultant Doug Guetzloe of illegally appropriating the "tea" name. Wilkinson, by the way, has personally endorsed Bill McCollum.

Earlier this month, Scott appeared with a group called "Tea Party in Action" to protest the South Florida Water Management District's plan to purchase 28,000 acres of U.S. Sugar Corp. land as part of Everglades restoration. He also used the occasion to jab McCollum for taking more than $900,000 in campaign contributions from U.S. Sugar.

Guetzloe said of today's web wrangling:

"If (the Scott campaign) put up the endorsement and took it down, that would be pretty stupid since they would be letting McCollum and his operatives control his actions.

"We made our point. Our folks are looking at websites and we sent out 100,000 e-mails supporting Scott."