I attended the party, as I have on one previous occasion, as a guest and not as a journalist.I worked with Scientologists when I was the president of the Clearwater Jazz Holiday Foundation and forged some friendships.
(Some of the officials who attended - including Harrison, Hibbard, Brown, Rice, Jackson and Crist - are former political clients of mine.)
It's a strange position to be in, given that when I was a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times in the early 1990s, Scientology was my beat for about a year. I did regular battle with Scientology's spokesman over what I wrote and whether the stories I pursued were newsworthy or not.