Florida Dems: AG should probe money in state races
Congressional Democrats are calling for U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the source of funding for political committees that mailed ads to residents of three Florida Senate districts, including one in Central Florida and another in Miami where the state attorney’s office has filed charges against an independent candidate and a former state senator accused of bribing him to run.
Political committees used money from a dark money group to pay for the ads that touted independent candidates, which included language that mimicked Democrats’ platforms and seemed designed to confuse voters, Florida’s House Democrats wrote to Garland in a letter sent Thursday.
While the same mysterious group paid for ads promoting independent candidates in three races, including Seminole and Volusia County’s District 9, the formal investigations of those groups has been limited, the lawmakers said.
Frank Artiles, a former Republican state senator, and Alexis Pedro Rodriguez of Delray Beach, who received more than 6,300 votes in last November’s general election
While Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle told reporters last week her office is not done probing the matter, Seminole-Brevard prosecutor Phil Archer said his office does not “conduct any criminal investigations of any type,” adding he doesn’t have the staff or a public-corruption unit like his counterpart in South Florida does.
but did no campaigning, were charged last week with breaking state campaign contribution laws and making false statements in connection with voting or elections.
In that race, the independent candidate received enough votes that he could’ ve swung the election. Though Alexis Rodriguez did not campaign, more than 6,000 voters cast ballots for him, while Democrat José Javier Rodríguez lost to Republican Ileana Garcia by 32 votes.
In the Seminole-Volusia race, Jason Brodeur, a former state representative, defeated attorney Patricia Sigman, by more than 7,600 votes to win his first term in the Florida Senate. Independent candidate Jestine Iannotti, who did not campaign and declined interview requests, received less than 6,000 votes.
An attendee of Brodeur’s post-election party at a Lake Mary bar told the Miami Herald that Artiles loudly bragged about his involvement in Garcia’s victory that night, saying, “That was me. I did that.”
While Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle told reporters last week her office is not done probing the matter, Seminole-Brevard prosecutor Phil Archer said his office does not “conduct any criminal investigations of any type,” adding he doesn’t have the staff or a public-corruption unit like his counterpart in South Florida does.
The lawmakers cc’d Fernandez-Rundle and Archer in their letter to Garland.
The House Democrats said in the letter that a “cloud of corruption” hangs over the 2020 election, and Garland should investigate. The machinations that led to the South Florida charges could not have happened without support from the two political action committees that mailed ads to voters in all three districts, they wrote.
An Atlanta-based group called Proclivity contributed $550,000 to two committees that mailed ads to voters in the three districts. The committees paid all of that money to a Clermont-based printing shop on Oct. 5, state elections records show. Some of the ads voters received in the Central Florida and South Florida races are nearly identical.
After the election, the name of the contributor listed on the committees’ records was changed without explanation to Denver-based Grow United.
Questions about the source of this money remain unanswered, the Democratic lawmakers wrote to Garland, suggesting the group could be in violation of federal campaign finance laws or Internal Revenue Service codes.
“Based on the suspicious practices outlined in this letter, including the likelihood of several potential illegal interstate transfers of funds, we strongly believe that much greater scrutiny of this matter at the federal level is warranted,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter was signed by Florida’s entire Democratic delegation to Congress. The Department of Justice didn’t respond to requests for comment on Thursday.