Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's chances of becoming John McCain's VP may be about to implode. And not because everyone thinks he's gay. Rather, it's his close alliance with defense contractor and former frat brother Harry Sargeant that could keep him in Florida.

Sargeant had already rustled up some publicity for McCain a few months back. First, he got sued by the brother-in-law of Jordan's King Abdullah, who had reportedly helped the former Marine pilot obtain a contract to ship fuel to Iraq through Jordan. The details of the lawsuit subsequently spurred an investigation by Rep. Henry Waxman's oversight committee into Sargeant's possibly over-charging the U.S. government for his oil shipment services.

And now Sargeant's work as a McCain bundler —one who goes around chiseling campaign donations out of friends and businesses associates—is making him far more radioactive. The Washington Post and the New York Times have both published pieces this week implying but not alleging that Sargeant and his Jordanian business partner might be paying those who have written checks for McCain, a scam popularized by Norman Hsu. The Times spoke to the owner of a discount stereo store, for instance, who said McCain was like "a worse copy than Bush" and initially denied giving $9200 to McCain. He later admitted to the donations, but vowed "I'm still not voting for him."

Sargeant may have been unaware of some of the activities of his business partner, and no concrete evidence has surfaced to elevate this to a Norman Hsu level scandal. But that probably doesn't do much to change the reality that the best way for McCain to mitigate his exposure to this story is to cut bait soon. As NBC's Mark Murray wrote earlier today, "Who wants to bet that by 6:00 pm ET on Friday that the campaign returns all of the money this guy bundled?"

Given that Sargeant is a very close Crist ally who's given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Crist's Florida GOP, accompanied Crist on a trip to the Middle East last year, and hosted a fundraiser in March attended by both Crist and McCain, it's unlikely that Charlie's VP chances could survive such a repudiation of his pal. Sad news for Crist and brand new fiancé, but a promising development for those of you who have been crying yourselves to sleep ever since super-boring Mormon robot Mitt Romney left the race in February.