The news rocked Adam Putnam’s campaign, which issued a statement late Friday from Putnam, who said criminal background checks were later completed on all applicants. | AP Photo Gun background check failure haunts ‘proud NRA sellout’ Putnam

MIAMI — Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam’s agency failed to conduct complete criminal background checks on concealed weapons permit applicants for more than a year, a failure that rocked the Republican’s front-running campaign for governor after it was kept hidden for 12 months.

The scope of the failure, first reported Friday by the Tampa Bay Times, was not immediately clear because Putnam’s agency refused to give details and wouldn’t say exactly how many people impermissibly received concealed weapons permits.


Nearly four hours after the story ran, Putnam personally issued a statement that blamed a “negligent” employee who was fired and stated that 291 permits were improperly licensed and then revoked after a review. On Saturday, Putnam called the Tampa Bay Times story “flat wrong and misleading” and clarified that criminal checks were performed on all 349,923 permit applicants during the period in question and that the now-fired employee was in charge of further review for 365 applications flagged as problematic.

But by then, the controversy — and Putnam’s slow-footed response in getting the facts out in a timely fashion — was the latest to haunt his campaign. Putnam was already a target of gun-control activists for having called himself a “proud NRA sellout." It's a term he used on Twitter in July 2017, one month after an Office of Inspector General report, marked “confidential,” detailed the background check failure in the Division of Licensing, which his office oversees.

As the news blazed across the news media, Twitter and Facebook, Democrats called on Putnam to drop out of the gubernatorial race for incompetence. Even the National Rifle Association expressed concerns. Some Republicans were also critical, with Gov. Rick Scott’s office noting it was blindsided by the news. And at least one parent of a child murdered in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Feb. 14 massacre wondered how this unfolded on Putnam's watch.

"Isn’t that breaking the law?” asked April Schentrup, mother of Stoneman Douglas shooting victim Carmen Schentrup. “Isn’t that part of the whole process of applying for a concealed weapons permit, don’t they have to go through a background check? Does that mean we have to go back and rescind all of those concealed weapons permits?”

Schentrup wondered if Putnam could face legal trouble by “not abiding by the law.” She said many Parkland parents were already upset with Putnam for opposing Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, FL SB7026 (18R).

In its initial statement and the inspector general’s report, Putnam’s Agriculture Department said the issue was promptly dealt with when it fired a Division of Licensing employee in charge of determining eligibility for applicants. She simply stopped checking the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System after she encountered log-in problems in February 2016. The problem wasn’t caught until March 2017.

Initially, Putnam’s office would not estimate how many people improperly received concealed weapons permits. Nor did it say why the office did not have policies and procedures to ensure the checks were performed.

In his statement Friday night, Putnam blamed a former employee for being “deceitful and negligent.”

“To be clear, a criminal background investigation was completed on every single application,” said Putnam. “Upon discovery of this former employee's negligence in not conducting the further review required on 365 applications, we immediately completed full background checks on those 365 applications, which resulted in 291 revocations.

“The former employee was both deceitful and negligent, and we immediately launched an investigation and implemented safeguards to ensure this never happens again.”

Until the Parkland shooting, Putnam had made guns a central part of his campaign for governor as he felt pressure on his right flank from the more conservative challenger Rep. Ron DeSantis. But though the NRA supports Putnam, its lead Tallahassee lobbyist, Marion Hammer, was aghast at the snafu because the NRA is a staunch supporter of background-checking concealed weapons permit holders and any problem with the system opens it up to criticism from gun control opponents.

“I'm almost speechless. Anyone would assume that checks and balances were in place so that something like this couldn't happen,” Hammer told POLITICO. “I imagine Commissioner Putnam is furious, I would be. Although the agency's comments indicate they reacted quickly to correct this disastrous failing, it certainly leaves us with a bad feeling.”

But after Putnam gave his side fully on Saturday, Hammer stood by him in an e-mail that explained what happened. She said “the facts don't fit the narrative being pushed by the anti-gun political opponents of the Commissioner of Agriculture, Adam Putnam, who is a candidate for Governor.”

NRATV personality Dana Loesch on Friday night tweeted her displeasure as well: “This was the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for applicants and it failed because someone forgot their password. Good grief.”

She then deleted the tweet

The problem that unfolded at the Division of Licensing, which Putnam’s office oversees, had no effect on the Parkland shooting or the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack in Orlando that left 49 dead and 53 wounded, although it occurred in June 2016 when the additional review wasn't being performed on concealed weapons permit applicants.

Though the additional review wasn't performed on concealed weapons, anyone who bought a gun in Florida still would have had a background check run on them. Concealed weapons permit holders, however, don’t have to wait three days to get their firearm after purchase.

Under state law, lawful Florida gun owners can get a concealed weapons permit if they take an approved course, have not been found guilty of a serious drug crime in the previous three years, have not been committed for drug abuse and do not chronically and habitually abuse alcohol.

Florida has 1.8 million concealed weapons permit holders.

This is the second high-profile background check issue Florida officials have encountered recently. At one point, nearly 20 percent of mental health records were entered late into a background check database, a long-running problem that state law enforcement officials acknowledged could have led to someone with a known mental illness buying a gun.

“The risk of late reporting of mental health records is that an individual who is prohibited from purchasing or possession [of] a firearm may be approved at the time of the background check if the disqualifying mental health record is not available,” according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

FDLE is not directly overseen by Putnam’s office. The Division of Licensing is. And Putnam has paid close attention to concealed weapons permits. In 2012, he streamlined the application process. And, according to the Tampa Bay Times, Putnam wanted to make issuing permits even easier in cases when background checks proved inconclusive. He backed off the measure after the Parkland shooting.

Scott’s allies privately became critical of Putnam after he criticized the limited gun control in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act that Scott pushed through the Legislature and signed in the face of NRA opposition.

On Friday night, Scott’s office pointedly noted it was surprised by the news that Putnam kept hidden.

“Our office was not provided this report from the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services,” said McKinley Lewis, spokesman for the governor.

Putnam’s campaign already took a hit from Parkland students when they held a widely publicized “die-in” at Publix last month to protest political donations the grocery store chain had given to Putnam as a “NRA sellout.” Publix said it would suspend political contributions going forward.

The Publix controversy also cast light on how Putnam removed online health inspection reports for grocery stores after news reports detailed how seven of the company’s supermarkets had failed. One Democrat called it “pay to play” — a criticism the agriculture commissioner also faces for receiving outsize support from the sugar industry for his gubernatorial campaign.

Then came Friday’s bombshell and questions about how his agency forgot to perform the additional background check reviews. The employee in charge, Lisa Wilde, told investigators that it was her fault.

“I dropped the ball — I know I did that, I should have been doing it and I didn’t,” she said in the report.

But she was only on the job for one month and, in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, suggested she wasn’t ready for the job, which she got after working in the mailroom.

"I didn't understand why I was put in charge of it," she told the publication.

Former Republican congressman and Senate candidate David Jolly, who is close to Democratic candidate Gwen Graham, said the problem could be “a legit career-ender.”

“This is a national story,” Jolly said. “When you hear something like this, you feel two emotions: anger and fear.”