Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Spoiler candidate case study continues
Prosecutor: Investigation ‘still ongoing’ months after Artiles was arrested
The investigation that led to Frank Artiles’ arrest in an alleged spoiler candidate scheme is “still ongoing,” a prosecutor in Miami said Tuesday, prompting a judge to grant a 60-day pause in the former state lawmaker’s criminal prosecution.
Tim VanderGiesen, a public-corruption prosecutor in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, said he hopes to turn over a report from the lead agent on the case to Artiles’ defense team this week, seven months after Artiles, a former state senator, was jailed in March.
The reason for the delay, VanderGiesen told Circuit Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan during a morning court hearing, is a “parallel investigation into some other matters.”
“At the same time we’re finishing reports, more investigation is ongoing, so we’re going to get some drafts up to a certain date hopefully by the end of this week and then, as more work gets done, we will supplement it with other reports,” he said. “It just was a little more complicated because the investigation did not end with the first arrest and it’s still ongoing today.”
Fajardo Orshan set Artiles’ next court date for Dec. 21.
Artiles is accused of bribing a friend, Alex Rodriguez, to run for office as an independent in the state Senate District 37 election last year. Rodriguez, who has the same last name as then-Democratic incumbent José Javier Rodríguez, didn’t actively campaign but still drew more than 6,000 votes in the race, which Republican Ileana Garcia won by just 32 votes.
Prosecutors allege that Alex Rodriguez’s candidacy was intended to confuse voters and siphon votes from the incumbent. The independent has pleaded guilty and plans to testify against Artiles.
While Miami prosecutors haven’t publicly revealed the nature of the parallel investigation, Rodriguez was one of three no-party candidates in key Senate races — including District 9 in Central Florida — who didn’t campaign but were boosted by $550,000 in spending by a pair of political committees funded by a dark-money nonprofit.
Records from the Artiles probe show that prosecutors have examined the committees, which were run by a then-Republican political consultant but fronted by women who said they were paid for their names to be used in paperwork filed to the state elections division.
Prosecutors have also subpoenaed documents from Data Targeting Inc., a Gainesville-based political consulting firm that runs campaigns for Senate Republican leadership, as well as a dark-money nonprofit with ties to the big business lobbying group Associated Industries of Florida.
No one but Artiles and Rodriguez has been charged in connection with the alleged spoiler candidate scheme.
However, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement recently confirmed it had opened a “preliminary investigation” into the District 9 race, in which mysterious independent candidate Jestine Iannotti, who has since moved to Sweden, drew several thousand votes.
Like the other two elections that featured so-called “ghost” candidates, the race to represent Seminole County and part of Volusia was won by a Republican, Jason Brodeur of Sanford, at whose election night party Artiles reportedly boasted of his role in propping up Rodriguez’ campaign.