Group behind attack ad in Osceola sheriff race tied to López campaign
Manager, donor email addresses, PAC linked
An ad that has sparked controversy in the previously smear-free Osceola County sheriff race was produced by a committee with direct ties to candidate Marco López’s campaign manager and created by a man who donated to his campaign.
Citizens For A Safe Osceola, a political committee formed this month, in an ad posted on Facebook last week attacked López opponent Tony Fernández’s tenure as a cop in Puerto Rico, vaguely tying him to murders and gang violence on the island.
El Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel’s Spanish-language newspaper, first reported on the ad — called “The Choice Is Clear” — noting that it made waves among Puerto Ricans who believe the video stereotypes the island’s people as criminals.
López’s campaign denied being involved, saying
in a statement Friday he condemns the ad and is “outraged by the content of the video.”
“I’m very proud of my Puerto Rican roots,” López said in the
statement. “I greatly appreciate the support of my people and I will serve everyone equally. God bless our Isla del Encanto.”
López’s campaign manager, Julius Meléndez, confirmed to the Sentinel that the campaign knew in advance the committee — created by López supporter and boxing promoter Ruben De Jesus — was being formed in part to run ads attacking Fernández. Meléndez said the campaign decided not to support the effort.
“Marco didn’t want to go negative,” said Meléndez, a real estate broker who is running for a seat on the Osceola school board. “He said to Ruben, ‘You do whatever you want to do, and I don’t want to know about it.’”
But Fernández, in a lengthy social media post Monday, posted screenshots of the source code for the committee’s website, which included email addresses belonging to López and Meléndez.
“I refuse to hide behind a ‘PAC’ or fake accounts or to engage in dirty small minded politics,” Fernández said. He declined to discuss the issue further on Tuesday, saying he is committed to running a “clean campaign” but will defend himself if he’s attacked.
The website, which was taken down Tuesday, had a template identical to López’s campaign page and passages almost identical to of the candidate’s platform.
Meléndez, who designed López’s campaign website, confirmed he also designed the committee’s site.
He said the page that appeared online until Tuesday was meant to be a placeholder, not the final version. It likely won’t be completed before the election, he said.
The committee was listed as being headquartered in office space belonging to St. Cloud-based Melentree Realty, which was founded by Meléndez. The campaign manager said multiple candidates, including López, have used that Florida Avenue address when filing to run for office.
“That was the extent of the campaign’s coordination with the committee, if you can even call it that,” Meléndez said, calling the work “legal and ethical.”
López has since changed the address on his website to a house in Harmony “so people won’t insinuate anything,” Meléndez added.
“If Tony would’ve just asked me about it, I would’ve told him,” he said. “He didn’t do it because it wouldn’t help his campaign.”
De Jesus, the Citizens For A Safe Osceola chairman, said he never visited López’s campaign website and was unaware of its similarities to his committee’s page. De Jesus donated $125 to López’s campaign last year.
“The content of the video and all the verbiage was by me,” De Jesus said. “The only thing we have in common in terms of the website is we have the same vendor [Meléndez].”
López and Fernández have not attacked each other directly throughout the campaign, saying repeatedly they are on friendly terms with each other and prefer instead to highlight their own resumes and ideas.
They are running on similar platforms, which include proposals to create citizen review boards to oversee the Sheriff’s Office’s budgetary and disciplinary decisions. They also pledge to emphasize hiring more deputies of color at a majority-white agency that polices a community that’s 61% Black and Hispanic. Either man would be the county’s first Latino sheriff.
López recently defeated current Sheriff Russ Gibson in the Democratic primary by 620 votes while spending only about $28,500 on his campaign up to that point. Fernández is running as a no-party-affiliation candidate.
The election is Nov. 3.