PAC activity in ’20 Senate race similiar to ’18 tactics
Election in Gainesville area mirrors District 9
When state Sen. Jason Brodeur won election last year in Central Florida’s Senate District 9, the Republican from Sanford had help from a pair of political committees that flooded voters with ads aimed at undermining his strongest rival by boosting lesser-known opponents.
The two short-lived committees spent more than $400,000 combined promoting other candidates in the hotly contested race — one encouraged Democratic primary voters to nominate a candidate widely perceived as a weaker potential challenger to Brodeur, while the other promoted a little-known independent candidate with ads worded to appeal to left-leaning voters. It was a familiar playbook.
Two years earlier, voters in Senate District 8 in the Gainesville area saw nearly identical tactics — involving some of the same strategists — which longtime followers of Florida elections say have become commonplace across the state, particularly in high-stakes elections.
“This is a very well-orchestrated effort and it’s not just 2020, not just 2018,” said Daniel Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Florida.
Smith said it’s “perfectly legitimate,” for independent candidates to run for office, even if they’re unlikely to win. But he also said the process can be “perverted and distorted.”
“The question is, when does it get flagged? The answer is, ‘not usually,’ unless it’s pivotal in the campaign,” he added.
That’s what happened last year in MiamiDade County, where authorities have charged former Republican state Sen. Frank Artiles with bribing a financially struggling friend to run as an independent candidate in a Senate race in which a Republican challenger ended up defeating the Democratic incumbent by just 32 votes. Authorities say it was part of a plot to siphon off Democratic votes and tilt the race to the GOP.
Records show Artiles also helped arrange the candidacy of an independent candidate in a second South Florida Senate race. Those two candidates — plus the independent who ran in Brodeur’s Senate race in Central Florida — were all promoted by
political committees that raised their money from the same dark-money donor.
“We’ve got to stop this in Florida,” said Kayser Enneking, the Democrat who lost to Republican state Sen. Keith Perry of Gainesville in Senate District 8 in 2018. “It’s making a mockery of our democracy.”
PAC tactics similar
There were many parallels between Perry’s victory in 2018 and Brodeur’s win last year.
Perry, a roofing contractor who served three terms in the state House before winning election to the state Senate in 2016, was running for reelection. But he was facing a strong Democratic challenger in Enneking, a Gainesville physician and chair of the University of Florida anesthesiology department.
But Enneking had to win the Democratic nomination first. And just before the primary election, a newly formed political committee, “Liberation Ocala African American Council Inc.,” put its name on $100,000 worth of advertisements attacking Enneking as an “out of touch millionaire” and “an establishment sell-out,” while promoting a lesser-known candidate in the Democratic primary.
Enneking won anyway and the group disbanded two weeks after the primary. But shortly before the general election, another new group, “Friends of Charles Goston,” spent more than $135,000 promoting Goston, a former local Democratic elected official who, with support from some Republicans in Tallahassee, was running in the race as an independent.
Perry ended up defeating Enneking by about 2,000 votes. Goston received more than 4,300 votes.
Two years later, when Brodeur was running in Central Florida’s Senate District 9, a new group called “Floridians for Equality and Justice” formed a few weeks before the primary and spent just under $250,000 slamming Patricia Sigman, widely considered the Democratic frontrunner, as a “suburban multimillionaire who’s afraid to get her fingers dirty” and promoting a lesser-known Democrat.
After Sigman won the primary, another group called “The Truth” formed and spent $180,000 promoting Jestine Iannotti, an independent candidate who did no campaigning herself and has since moved to Sweden. Brodeur ended up defeating Sigman by more than 7,600 voters; Iannotti received about 5,800.
The independent candidates in the two races differed in profile and behavior: Goston had previously served as a city commissioner in Gainesville and reportedly campaigned in the 2018 race, at least after Friends of Charles Goston got involved. Iannotti, a political newcomer, never took an active role in the 2020 Senate District 9 election, even as The Truth blanketed voters with ads.
But Enneking argues the tactics used against Sigman last year, particularly the language that appeared in attack ads during the primary season, were “eerily” similar to those deployed against her in 2018.
“I ran for office because I’m a physician, and I wanted to help people,” Enneking said recently. “I was completely naive to the buzz saw that I was running into, and I think most people in Florida are completely naive to the high degree by which their life is orchestrated by the Republican Party in the state of Florida.”
Goston, Perry and Brodeur did not respond to requests for comment.
Tracing the dark money
In both races, the money behind the short-lived committees was virtually untraceable.
Liberation Ocala African American Council Inc. received all of its funding from a nonprofit called “Mothers for Moderation” that did not disclose its own donors. Friends of Charles Goston got all of its funding from another dark-money nonprofit dubbed “Broken Promises.”
Meanwhile, Floridians for Equality and Justice said it began with a $250,000 “starting balance,” a possible violation of state election law. And The Truth said it got all of its money from yet another dark-money nonprofit: “Grow United.” But there are some clues. For instance, investigators in the Artiles case obtained records that show Grow United’s chairman is Richard Alexander of Cullman, Ala. Alexander has a sister, April Odom, who is a political strategist who used to work with an Alabamabased consulting firm called Matrix LLC with ties to another dark money group registered to Alexander.
Alexander and Odom also have another sister: Stephanie Egan, who IRS records show runs Mothers for Moderation. The Sentinel has been unable to reach Egan.
In addition, Mothers for Moderation donated $230,000 in August 2018 to the Florida Democratic Party. On its campaign finance reports, the party listed Mothers for Moderation’s address as Richard Alexander’s home address in Cullman, Ala.
Meanwhile, tax, corporate and court records show that Broken Promises is run by Sean Jason Anderson of Birmingham, Ala. And Alabama lobbying records from 2011 show there is a Jason Anderson who used to work in Matrix LLC’s Birmingham office.
Neither Alexander nor Anderson could be reached for comment. Both Odom and Jeff Pitts, the former Matrix CEO who now co-owns Canopy Partners, a Florida-based firm where Odom also works, declined to comment through a spokesman. Matrix LLC earlier this year filed suit against several of its former employees, including Pitts and Odom, and Canopy Partners, accusing them of conspiring with certain clients to divert fees owed to Matrix to their own businesses; a lawyer for Pitts’ new firm has said Canopy Partners has always acted lawfully.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, filed a complaint against Broken Promises to the IRS last year, alleging the nonprofit broke federal law because virtually all of its 2018 spending was on political causes, including boosting Goston’s candidacy. The outcome of the complaint has not been made public, but Broken Promises has since terminated, according to IRS records.
There are other examples of overlap. For instance, one of the architects of both Perry’s win in 2018 and the Senate Republicans’ victories in 2020 was Data Targeting Inc., a Republican political consulting firm in Gainesville that has been paid millions of dollars in recent years by Senate Republican leaders in Tallahassee.
IRS records show that Friends of Charles Goston is related to a pair of nonprofits run by Stafford Jones, a former Republican Party chairman in Alachua County who does work with Data Targeting.
That firm was also linked to an ethics complaint Goston filed against Enneking late in the 2018 campaign. Goston accused his opponent of using her University of Florida email account for campaign work, citing emails that had originally been obtained and paid for by a Data Targeting researcher through a public records request, according to The Gainesville Sun. The complaint was later dismissed.
Records obtained by South Florida investigators show Data Targeting also paid Artiles $15,000 a month in the months leading up to last year’s election to be a consultant on “certain contested Florida Senate Districts in MiamiDade County.”
Less is known about Floridians for Equality and Justice, the group that attacked Sigman during the Senate District 9 primary last year and which claimed its money came from a $249,925 “starting balance.” The group, which was created and dissolved in less than a month last summer, listed a box in a Miami UPS store as its address and said its chairman, treasurer and registered agent was someone named Stephen Jones.
But when Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo of Miami filed a civil suit seeking to find out the source of the group’s money, the suit could not be served because employees at the UPS store said they had no box agreement with Floridians for Equality or Justice or anyone named Stephen Jones, records show.
Taddeo then asked prosecutors in Miami-Dade County to investigate. Records show they sent the complaint to Phil Archer, the state attorney for Seminole and Brevard counties, because it involved an election in his jurisdiction. Archer opted not to investigate and instead passed the complaint on Florida Elections Commission, according to emails, and the elections commission has yet to take any public action.