Dems nervous that Scott’s ally runs county elections

LAUDERHILL – It sure looks like a fox is guarding the henhouse of democracy in Broward. No wonder Democrats are worried.

Pete Antonacci is a lawyer and Mr. Fix-It for former Gov. Rick Scott, who hired him by executive order to run Broward elections as the replacement for Brenda Snipes after the 2018 recount meltdown. Scott won a U.S. Senate seat in a squeaker he owes in part to Snipes’ confusing Broward ballot design, but that’s another story.

Antonacci is elected by no one and he won’t have to face voters in a year when President Trump is seeking a second term. Antonacci also is a white male Republican appointee in the biggest Democratic county in the southeast U.S., a majority minority community. It just doesn’t look right.

“Skepticism is good,” Antonacci told me. “It’s up to me to perform.”

In the past decade, Antonacci has been acting Palm Beach County state attorney, Scott’s general counsel, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District and CEO of Enterprise Florida. For many years before, he was deputy attorney general under Bob Butterworth, a Democratic elder statesman long synonymous with Broward politics. Antonacci became a Republican in 2012.

So after seven months, how is Antonacci doing?

“It’s hard to tell,” says County Commissioner Steve Geller. “We haven’t seen what he’s going to do in terms of partisan elections.”

Hauled into federal court with several other counties over the new financial restrictions that limit some ex-felons from voting, Antonacci hired his former law partner, George Meros, as his lawyer. Meros has done extensive work on election law issues for Republicans.

Meros is now at Holland & Knight, a law firm that employs the wife of U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who had been assigned the case and has issued several strongly-worded opinions against the state in other voting cases. The judge recused himself from the felons’ case because of his wife, and called Meros’ hiring “deeply troubling.”

Antonacci’s choice looks exactly like what a savvy Republican operative would do to get rid of an unfriendly judge. His spokesman, Steve Vancore, said Meros was chosen solely for his legal expertise and “no other reason.”

At the county voting equipment center in Lauderhill, Antonacci showed me thousands of voting machines and rows of units that manage vote-by-mail requests. Shelves are packed with cardboard boxes of ballots from past elections that must be kept for 22 months, and there’s a tabulation room where the 2018 recounts went haywire.

Antonacci is making some smart moves. He says he’ll give raises to thousands of poll workers he’s recruiting for the 2020 elections. He’s buying modems and anti-virus tools to bolster cyber-security. He promises to keep paying for stamps on mail ballots and to make sure that high school students who help are paid directly, rather than their schools getting the money.

With voter suppression a perennial Democratic battle cry, Antonacci will be expected to open at least 22 early voting sites for a full complement of 14 days in the presidential preference primary next March, the August primary and the November general election.

He has kept Snipes’ key staffers, such as chief deputy Mary Hall, whose experience spans decades. Like most election supervisors, he’s combing the voter roll for people who haven’t voted and who by law can be listed as inactive if they don’t answer mailed notices. He promises to give them one more chance to remain active in 2020.

Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen, a Democrat, calls Antonacci a “straight shooter” and likes what he sees so far. “He seems sincere,” Bogen said.

Antonacci is a political player who avoids publicity. At the voting center, he insisted that he not be photographed. That won’t surprise Snipes’ former counsel, Burnadette Norris-Weeks, who said Antonacci is “invisible” and that his only known public appearance in Broward was at a GOP women’s club that was private.

“He doesn’t go anywhere. There’s no outreach. There’s no presence in the community,” Norris-Weeks said. “Dr. Snipes was everywhere.”

The county elections website said its staff regularly holds voter registration drives and sends a mobile unit all over the county to look for new voters. If Antonacci is doing his job, the size of the Broward electorate will keep growing.

An election supervisor can find a hundred subtle ways to suppress turnout, from shifting locations of polling places to short-changing outreach in minority neighborhoods.

“I have no idea how much his allegiance to Gov. Scott will affect his actions,” Geller said. “If he decides to put his thumb on the scale, what are you going to do to him?”