Grand Old Police Blotter: Rum's Bush Edition

Dozens of e-mails detailing a lobbying campaign by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his staff on behalf of Bacardi Ltd. have been filed with a U.S. trademark court as evidence of illegal "political pressure" by the president's brother.

Havana Club Holdings S.A., a joint venture between Cuba and France's Pernod Ricard, is using the governor's e-mail traffic to try to convince three administrative law judges at the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to reconsider a Jan. 21 ruling that Bush's one-sided contacts with U.S. Patent and Trade Office officials did not break any law.

Federal rules prohibit ex parte communications on the merits of a case between interested parties and certain agency officials.

The governor's e-mails flowed while the world's biggest rum maker and its Miami-based executives poured tens of thousands of dollars into the political war chests of Bush and the Florida Republican Party -- more than $200,000 since 1998, the Miami Daily Business Review reported in October.

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Specifically, Rodriguez Marquez asked Gov. Bush to help persuade the trademark office to cancel the registration of the Havana Club brand by Havana Club Holdings. "We need your help," Rodriguez Marquez wrote.

"Jorge, I will see what I can do," Gov. Bush wrote back the next morning.

It was the first of 12 e-mails the governor wrote over the next three months to his staff, including his chief of staff, Kathleen Shanahan, or to Rodriguez Marquez about the matter.

The e-mails show representatives of the governor's office spoke and met in secret with various officials from the trademark office, including Deputy Director Dudas. -- Dan Christensen, Miami Daily Business Review