DELRAY BEACH — Federal agents conducted an early-morning raid of Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty's home today, leaving after a few hours with several boxes of documents.

McCarty said the agents' search warrant sought records related to lobbyist and political consultant Blake MacDiarmid, a former ally who has become known in county political circles as a McCarty rival.

MacDiarmid - who does not appear to be a target of the investigation - could not immediately be reached this afternoon.

"I have done nothing wrong," McCarty said from Maine, where she is vacationing. "I am very surprised that they did this."

McCarty added that she planned to stay in Maine, for now.

"I'm not feeling the urgency to come back," she said. "I'll be here for another 10 days."

Her husband, Kevin, was home when the agents arrived sometime after 7 a.m., she said. Kevin McCarty, a bond writer and former board chairman of the South Florida Water Management District, could not be immediately reached for comment.

FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela and the U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment.

Mary McCarty's staff members said no agents came to either of her offices, in West Palm Beach and Delray Beach.

"I don't know what they're looking for," said a surprised McCarty, who is a Republican. "They didn't have to do it this way. All they had to do was ask and I would give them anything they needed."

She added, "They were very respectful."

At least six vehicles, including an SUV, were parked outside the Delray Beach house at 7:30 a.m., according to a neighbor who asked not to be identified.

By 9 a.m., the neighbor said, he saw about six federal agents carry large plastic bins out the front door and load them into the SUV. The vehicle was nearly filled with bins, he said.

Boxes on the ground in front of the yellow one-story home with white trim were marked with the words "search kit."

The neighbor said he approached the agents, who said: "Everything is fine. Don't worry about it."

He said the agents left about 9:30 a.m.

Mary McCarty , a public relations and promotional consultant, was a Delray Beach city commissioner from 1987 to 1990, when she was elected to the county commission. She is the sister of Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and former top campaign adviser to Gov. Charlie Crist.

McCarty's current term is her fifth - and last, because of term limits.

She also is one of several county commissioners to have become the subject of legal scrutiny in recent years, a period in which federal corruption investigators have placed the commissioners' votes, friendships and charitable causes under the microscope.

In the past 15 months, former Commissioners Tony Masilotti and Warren Newell both were handed down five-year prison terms after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges.

Federal prosecutors were still on the case this summer, when The Palm Beach Post reported that they were examining the commission's 2004 deal to build a hotel and garage, next to the county convention center in West Palm Beach, with at least $35 million from county taxes. Investigators questioned commissioners about whether they had accepted free or deeply discounted lodging from the project's Delray Beach-based developer, Ocean Properties.

On Tuesday - the same day the commission unanimously voted to end the faltering hotel deal - McCarty and fellow Commissioners Karen Marcus, Burt Aaronson and Jeff Koons disclosed that they had stayed at Ocean Property hotels, and Bob Kanjian said he had eaten at one. The commissioners did not reveal whether they were given discounts.

McCarty and her husband have known the owners of Ocean Properties and its senior executive, Tom McMurrain, since the early 1980s. McCarty has said she was "social friends" before she was elected to the commission.

In a separate inquiry, federal authorities also have been looking into a 2005 transaction in which McCarty aide and Boynton Beach Mayor Jerry Taylor steered a developer to lobbyist Hugo Unruh, a close friend of McCarty's.

The developer paid Unruh a $100,000 fee after Taylor said it would be hard to win county approval of a shopping center without Unruh, The Post reported in June. McCarty maintained she knew nothing about the referral and that Taylor, who has retired as her aide, was wrong to do it.

McCarty's not the only currently sitting commissioner to have drawn the feds' attention.

Federal prosecutors also have been examining a 2005 sea cruise, worth nearly $2,000, that Aaronson accepted from the chairwoman of the Palm Beach International Film Festival, a charity he founded that's subsidized with county money. Aaronson is up for his fifth and final term on the commission.

And a federal grand jury in January subpoenaed records of a state ethics committee investigation that cleared Marcus of allegations she traded her vote for a $50,000 contribution to a turtle rescue center, one of her favorite charities. Marcus won a seventh and final term on the commission in August.

Commissioner Jess Santamaria, who was elected in 2006 to fill Masilotti's former seat, said of today's raid: "That is the reason I am a county commissioner today. I didn't like what I was seeing for the last 10-15 years. It was going from bad to worse."

Kanjian, who was appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist to replace Newell, said: "If there is something, then she (McCarty) should be held accountable. But until more comes out, I think it would be premature to make a judgment."