Strategist’s son may be behind mystery group

Expert matches signature on election filings in effort to identify leader of individuals behind ads in key Senate race

Last summer, in the months ahead of a highstakes Senate election, a group with links to Republicans and financed by secret donors sent mail to voters in Seminole and Volusia counties attacking the frontrunner in the Democratic primary.

When Democrats tried to sue the group, called “Floridians for Equality and Justice,” the lawsuit stalled because process servers couldn’t find its chairperson — someone named Stephen Jones who, according to state election records, had not previously chaired a political committee in Florida.

But court records in Alachua County show there is a 24-year-old Stephen Stafford Jones in Gainesville whose signature an expert said matches the Stephen Jones signature on Floridians for Equality and Justice’s election filings.

That Stephen Jones is the son of William Stafford Jones, a prominent political consultant in Gainesville who has done work with Data Targeting Inc. — the Gainesville-based firm that oversaw strategy for Republican Senate campaigns across Florida last year, including the Central Florida Senate District 9 race where Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur of Sanford ultimately defeated Democrat Patricia Sigman.

Reached by phone, Stephen Jones declined to comment.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how to answer any questions,” he said.

William Jones, who goes by Stafford, also declined to answer when asked if he had anything to do with

Floridians for Equality and Justice or whether his son had served as chairperson of the group.

The Orlando Sentinel asked Thomas Vastrick, a Central Florida-based forensic document examiner, to review the Stephen Jones signatures. The records included three election-related documents filed on behalf of Floridians for Equality and Justice in July 2020 and a traffic-court document signed in November 2017, when Stephen Jones elected to enroll in a driver improvement course after he’d been issued a traffic ticket.

“The evidence supports that the signature on the driver improvement form is written by the same person who wrote the other signatures,” said Vastrick, who has more than 40 years of experience working in law enforcement crime labs and private practice. “There is a very limited sampling and, as such, this qualifies the conclusion as to the level of confidence but it is still high.”

The home address Stephen Jones provided in the traffic court was for a home Alachua County property records show is owned by Stafford Jones and his wife.

State Sen. Annette Taddeo, the South Florida Democrat who sued the group, accused Floridians for Equality and Justice of flouting state election laws. According to state campaign finance reports, the group spent about $250,000 on advertisements in the Senate District 9 race — attacking Sigman and promoting a lesser-known Democrat during the primary — but never disclosed any of its original donors.

Instead, the group said it began with money already in the bank as a “starting balance.”

Floridians for Equality and Justice listed its address as a box in a Miami UPS Store. But store employees said they had no box-holder agreement with Stephen Jones or Floridians for Equality and Justice, according to the failed civil lawsuit Democrats filed to force the organization to disclose its donors.

Campaign finance records show the group spent much of its money through a business with a Democrat-sounding name: “Victory Blue Group LLC.” Corporate records show Victory Blue Group was created one day before Floridians for Justice and Equality reported its first payment to the company by a Republican attorney in Tallahassee who has also represented executives at Data Targeting.

Michael Barfield, the director of public access at the Florida Center for Government Accountability, which helps media organizations obtain and review public records, said voters should be concerned when political groups go to great lengths to hide the people and money behind them.

The longstanding mystery of Floridians for Equality and Justice’s origins “shows the lengths that we have to go through to discover the identity of somebody with significant money affecting the outcome of an election,” he said.

Floridians for Equality and Justice wasn’t the only source of controversy in the Senate District 9 race, in which Brodeur ultimately defeated Sigman by about 7,600 votes out of about 281,000 cast. The victory helped Republicans retain control of the 40-member Florida Senate.