Top Florida GOP operative admits role in Artiles’ ‘ghost candidate’ scheme
For the first time, the lead consultant to Florida Senate Republicans has admitted to hiring a disgraced ex-senator and approving a dirty trick to recruit a third-party candidate to siphon votes from a South Florida Democrat.
The scheme succeeded. In 2020, Jose Javier Rodriguez, the Democrat targeted by the GOP and by Florida Power &
Light, lost by 32 votes to Ileana Garcia, the founder of Latinas for Trump. A third-party candidate who didn’t campaign and who shared the same last name as Rodriguez drew over 6,000 votes.
Patrick Bainter, the Senate GOP’s chief consultant, told Miami’s chief public corruption prosecutor in a December deposition that he was the one who gave the green light to former state Sen. Frank Artiles to find third-party candidates to help defeat two Democrats.
“He said he thought that was something he could do and do well,” Bainter said. “Great. Go knock yourself out.” Bainter then had $100,000 transferred to a dark money non-profit Artiles controlled.
In March 2021, Artiles was arrested and charged with making over $45,000 in illegal and undeclared campaign contributions to Alex Rodriguez, the “ghost” candidate. Bainter said in the deposition he did not direct how the money he sent Artiles was to be spent and was unaware of how Artiles used it.
But he did admit for the first time in the deposition that the District 37 ghost candidate was part of his 2020 campaign strategy on behalf of Senate Republicans. And Bainter acknowledged that Artiles had been seeking a consulting agreement with the Senate Republicans’ campaign
arm shortly before signing on with Bainter.
Bainter’s description of his involvement in the scheme came in a deposition released by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office earlier this year in response to a public records request from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
It, along with other released documents, draws an increasingly strong line from the ghost candidate scandal of 2020 to Florida Senate Republicans. Rodriguez, the South Florida Democrat, also had other enemies. FPL, the nation’s largest utility, which had vowed to make his life a “living hell,” has been accused in a lawsuit by its shareholders of orchestrating the scheme.
The suit alleges that political consultants who worked closely with the utility’s CEO and lobbying staff plowed FPL funds through a series of dark money groups “to prop up the ghost candidates.” The company has repeatedly denied the allegations and has moved to dismiss the suit. “I supported the Republican Party who I knew was targeting this race,” former Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy said in a June 2022 interview with Floodlight and other news outlets. Silagy resigned in January 2023, due, in part,