Witness poised to testify against Artiles
Man accused of taking bribe to run for Senate
The man accused of accepting a bribe from ex-lawmaker Frank Artiles in exchange for putting his name on the ballot in a South Florida legislative race last year plans to accept a plea deal and testify as a witness against Artiles, prosecutors said Thursday during a hearing.
Prosecutors allege Artiles, a former state senator, paid Alex Rodriguez nearly $45,000 to file to run as an independent candidate in a hotly contested Miamiarea state Senate race in an attempt to confuse voters and siphon votes from the Democratic incumbent.
Rodriguez, who is scheduled to enter his plea agreement Tuesday, is expected to serve as a witness for the state during Artiles’ trial, said Tim VanderGiesen, a public-corruption prosecutor in the MiamiDade State Attorney’s Office.
The trial, which was slated to begin Aug. 30, has been postponed. Circuit Judge Andrea Wolfson granted a 60-day continuance on Thursday.
Despite doing no campaigning, Rodriguez received more than 6,000 votes in the Florida Senate District 37 race, which Republican Ileana Garcia won by just 32 votes. Rodriguez had the same last name as the Democratic incumbent, José Javier Rodríguez.
Rodriguez was one of three so-called “ghost” candidates who filed to run in key Florida Senate races last year, including one in Central Florida. Though none of them actively campaigned, all were supported by ads worded to appeal to left-leaning voters, which were funded by the same dark-money donor.
Prosecutors allege that Artiles not only paid Rodriguez to run,
but also urged his friend to change his registration to no-party affiliation, helped him fill out the necessary paperwork and hand-delivered the documents to the Division of Elections office in Tallahassee.
Only Artiles and Rodriguez have been charged in the case. But emails, text messages, interviews and other records collected as evidence by the State Attorney’s Office revealed Artiles’ ties to other figures linked to the scandal and powerful players in Florida Republican politics.
Records released last month also show Artiles had a business relationship with Alex Alvarado, the Republican political consultant who was behind two political committees, funded by a dark-money nonprofit, that together spent $550,000 last year promoting the mysterious independent candidates.
Artiles also had a $15,000-per-month contract with Data Targeting, a Gainesville-based political consulting firm, to work on “certain contested Florida Senate Districts in Miami-Dade County” — at the same time the firm was being paid millions by state Republican leaders to run Senate campaigns.
The contract does not spell out the precise work that Artiles was expected to perform for the prominent GOP shop. But it did include a clause forbidding Artiles from providing political services to anyone else in those Senate districts without Data Targeting’s written consent.
Records show Artiles billed Data Targeting Inc. for the cost of a plane ticket that he’d purchased June 11, the same day prosecutors say he flew to Tallahassee to deliver Rodriguez’s election paperwork.’
When investigators raided Artiles’ home in March, they found a manila envelope containing paperwork for the campaign treasurer of Celso Alfonso, who filed to run as an independent in a second Miami-Dade state Senate race, court records show.
Like Rodriguez, Alfonso reported a $2,000 loan to himself on his first campaign finance report and did no real campaigning himself but was featured in advertisements paid for by the same darkmoney group.
Alfonso told the Miami Herald that Artiles recruited him at a barbershop.
The same dark-money organization that paid for ads promoting Rodriguez and Alfonso also funded mailers trumpeting Jestine Iannotti, who filed to run for Senate District 9, which includes all of Seminole County and part of Volusia.
The ads touted Iannotti as a candidate who would “fight climate change,” “hold the police accountable” and “guarantee a living wage.” Iannotti did no campaigning, declined press interviews and spent several weeks during the summer before the 2020 election in Sweden, where she moved earlier this year.
Republican Jason Brodeur of Sanford defeated Democrat Patricia Sigman in the general election last November by 7,644 votes. Iannotti received 5,787 votes.
Iannotti reported raising just $700 from four individuals, including one who told the Orlando Sentinel earlier this year he wasn’t registered to vote and had never made any political contributions. Another Iannotti donor was Eric Foglesong, a controversial political consultant who also likely wrote the check that paid for her filing fee.
Seminole-Brevard State Attorney Phil Archer has declined to probe the Central Florida race, saying his office does not investigate crimes, only prosecutes them.