Police raid home of ex-lawmaker who bragged about planting candidate
The latest shoe to drop in a long-brewing Florida political scandal came crashing down Wednesday when authorities raided the Palmetto Bay house of former Republican state Sen. Frank Artiles.
Former Florida state Sen. Frank Artiles is believed to be linked to a state investigation involving a no-party candidate who likely swayed a key Miami-Dade election.
Artiles is believed to be tied to a state investigation involving a sham no-party candidate who likely swayed the outcome of a key 2020 Miami-Dade state Senate race.
After months of scant information and little public focus, questions over Artiles’ involvement in the race
reached an all-time high as the public-corruption task force for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office executed a morning search warrant, seizing box loads of items.
The whereabouts of the former senator were unknown. Artiles did not re
spond to requests seeking comments, and MiamiDade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office said it could not “confirm or deny the existence of any possible investigation.”
No one answered the door when reporters approached the house after law enforcement left.
A copy of the search warrant, which officers executed before 9 a.m., was not immediately available on Wednesday afternoon. Generally, search warrants are not made public until they are filed in court along with a list of what was seized.
Artiles’ defense lawyer, Greg Chonillo, said late Wednesday that his client has been “fully cooperative” with prosecutors and has provided documents and other evidence to investigators.
“As you can understand, the ongoing criminal investigation limits us in what we can say,” said Chonillo, who would not say if he expects Artiles to be charged.
“If this matter is going to be litigated in court, we shall defend him in court — and not in the media,” Chonillo said.
THE NO-PARTY CANDIDATE
While details remain sealed, the Miami Herald found last December that Artiles got involved in Miami-Dade’s Senate District 37 race when he recruited and boasted about planting Alex Rodriguez, an auto-parts dealer who lives in Boca Raton, to run in the race.
Rodriguez was on the ballot as a no-party candidate, shared the same surname as the incumbent Democrat. His mysterious candidacy has been under investigation since November by Fernandez Rundle’s office.
Rodriguez had never been a political candidate and had been a registered Republican just days before he filed to enter the race. Two days after Miami-Dade state prosecutors opened an investigation into his candidacy, Rodriguez retained
Miami attorney William Barzee, who did not respond to requests for comments on Wednesday.
Rodriguez’s candidacy is in question after he listed a Palmetto Bay house as his address on his sworn candidate oath even though he lived in a rented a house in Boca Raton. Rodriguez also appeared to be struggling financially.
His landlord told the Herald his rent was often paid late, with cash or, in one instance, a bounced check. The money woes added a layer of curiosity as to how he could afford the $2,000 that he loaned to himself to cover the cost of appearing on the ballot.
Rodriguez received no political contributions, reported $15,000 in credit-card debt and had no money in the bank, campaign-finance records show. He paid the $1,187.88 qualifying fee with a City National Bank check, but his financialdisclosure forms show no bank account or liabilities tied to that bank.
When asked by the Herald last November about his involvement in the no-party candidate’s presence in the race, Artiles did not respond. Sources with direct knowledge, however, have indicated that Artiles’ involvement in launching Rodriguez’s bid was extensive.
Juan Carlos Planas, an election attorney and former Republican state lawmaker who represented the incumbent senator during the Senate District 37 recount, suspects the case might come down to money.
“At the heart of this is the misrepresentation of funds and the possibility of Alex Rodriguez being paid to run,” he said.
ELECTION NIGHT BOASTING
Miami Republican Ileana Garcia won the race after a three-day recount by just 32 votes out of more than 215,000 cast. She beat Democratic incumbent Sen. José Javier Rodríguez, helping cement the GOP majority in the Florida Senate for years to come. Alex Rodriguez, the no-party candidate, received more than 6,000 votes.
Over drinks at an election-night party in Central Florida for another
candidate, Artiles publicly bragged about planting Alex Rodriguez, a longtime acquaintance and Facebook friend, to run in the race.
“That is me, that was all me,” Artiles told a crowd at Liam Fitzpatrick’s restaurant in Lake Mary, where state Sen. Jason Brodeur was holding his election-night party, according to a person who was there and who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
Artiles has been a scandal-plagued politician for years. He resigned from the state Senate in disgrace in 2017 amid two parallel scandals. The first was an alcoholfueled rant in which he called two Black lawmakers a racist slur in a Tallahassee bar. The second involved the hiring of a former
Hooters “calendar girl” and a Playboy model with no political experience as
“consultants” using funds from his political committee.
Erin Isaac, a spokeswoman for the political committee that ran Republican campaigns in the Senate, in December said she was not aware of Artiles’ involvement in the race, and she said Senate President Wilton Simpson, who heads the political committee, was also unaware of any role that Artiles might have played.
As news of the raid broke on Wednesday, Isaac reiterated that neither the committee nor Simpson were aware of Artiles’ involvement.
In an interview on Wednesday, Sen. Garcia said she did not know who Artiles was until the Herald reported his ties to her race.
“I never met Frank Artiles,” she said. “I didn’t know of him until this happened. And I hope he doesn’t get offended if he ever sees this because I just really didn’t.”
Garcia said MiamiDade prosecutors have “never” reached out to her, either, and said news about Artiles “has been cumbersome in the aspect where you are on pins and needles and you don’t know why.” She added that she didn’t speak about it publicly before because she is not involved.
“I can’t attest, I can’t say and I can’t answer for someone I don’t know and for something that I haven’t done. I am not the focal point of this,” Garcia said, noting that she just wants to focus on the 2021 legislative session, which is underway.
DARK MONEY IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Alex Rodriguez was one of three no-party Senate candidates who did no independent campaigning yet were featured in political-mail advertisements, paid by dark money. The ads promoted the candidates and progressive ideals in an apparent attempt to reach Democratic voters and divert some votes from the Democratic candidates in those races.
The mailers did not feature photos of any of the candidates and, in one case, misled voters using stock images of a Black woman when the no-party candidate was white. The identity of the mystery donor behind the $550,000 dark-money campaign remains unknown, and its name changed in campaign-finance reports after the November election.
Artiles has not been linked to the dark-money effort, only to one of the candidates who was promoted by the mailers.
The Miami-Dade-Fort Lauderdale region was just rated among the most dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists. Truth be told, that’s nothing new. We have long been a car-centric region. Vehicles are kings of the road here, pedestrian and bicyclists second-class, and endangered, citizens.
But in the year of the pandemic, during which many of us have acquired a fondness for long walks and bicycle rides — and just as Phase I of The Underline, a long-awaited park below the elevated Metrorail tracks stretching from Brickell to the South Miami area opened its first leg last month — it’s concerning to learn that the battle among pedestrians, bicyclists and vehicles continues in high gear. As the pandemic recedes, that’s one “normal” to which we should not return.
“During COVID, we learned how connecting with nature improves mental and physical health … and without us driving everywhere, nature flourished globally,” Meg Daly, founder, president and CEO with the Friends of The Underline, told the Editorial Board.
Daly says The Underline is not just a place, it’s the birth of a new way of life for locals.
“Phase 1 is the beginning of a movement to build a city with a better quality of life, with mobility and access to public green spaces,” Daly said. Perfect timing for such an overhaul, we think.
As she describes it: “When done, the entire project will be a 120-acre pollinator park, an urban reforestation initiate, a platform for health and wellness programs, a destination for public art, a place to connect with your neighborhood,” usually as you walk or bike.
Unfortunately, Florida retained its No. 1 spot in the country as the place where a pedestrian is most likely to be struck and killed by a driver, according to the 2021 “Dangerous By Design” report from Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition.
Nine of the 15 most hazardous U.S. cities for pedestrians are in Florida, with Orlando ranked as least safe and the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolis ranked No. 13 in the recently released biennial study.
Action is being taken to address the high fatality rate. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has said she wants to improve pedestrian and cyclists safety. To
ward that goal, Miami-Dade Police is conducting a safety campaign. Working with the University of North Florida, the department will be able to access data that pinpoints which locations throughout the county are plagued by frequent pedestrian and cyclist accidents. That’s a good step.
The department said it will be sending officers to those locations during the days and times when most accidents occur to enforce traffic laws for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists alike. After all, this is a three-way effort.
Daly, herself, has experienced the dangers at high-traffic intersections while biking along
The Underline. “We are working to vastly improve the crosswalks along U.S. 1 to allow for more capacity, longer cross time and design that makes it much after to walk and bike,” she said.
The bottom line is that we must strive for safer streets for all. This requires better infrastructure that allows people to walk, bike, take mass transit and drive safely.
Motorists must respect pedestrians and cyclists, not bully them off the road.
More than ever, and after the year we’ve been through, we should learn to co-exist on our roadways.