Group gave $1.15M to dark-money entity

An organization closely linked to one of Florida’s biggest business-lobbying groups gave more than $1 million last year to the dark-money nonprofit at the center of Florida’s “ghost” candidate scandal, according to records obtained Thursday by the Orlando Sentinel.

In a tax return filed this week with the Internal Revenue Service, the Tallahassee-based nonprofit called “Let’s Preserve the American Dream Inc.” reported that it gave $1.15 million in 2020 to “Grow United Inc.,” another nonprofit that in turn provided more than a half-million dollars used by Republican strategists to promote obscure independent candidates in three key Senate races — including the Orlando-area race won by Sen. Jason Brodeur of Sanford.

Both groups are dark-money nonprofits that do not reveal their donors. But Let’s Preserve the American Dream has extensive ties to Associated Industries of Florida, the corporate-lobbying group whose biggest donors include utility giant Florida Power & Light, sugar growers Florida Crystals and U.S. Sugar, theme-park operator Walt Disney World and for-profit hospital chain HCA Healthcare.

Let’s Preserve the American Dream is run by Ryan Tyson, a longtime political adviser to AIF, and operates out of AIF’s 15,000-squarefoot mansion in Tallahassee.

Tyson, a former AIF vice president, did not respond to requests for comment Thursday, though he previously said AIF is not involved in Let’s Preserve the American Dream’s activities. Tyson and AIF have not been accused of wrongdoing.

“AIF and its employees are not involved in this matter,” said Sarah Bascom, a spokesperson for AIF, in an emailed statement. “We have numerous tenants in our building and, as we have said before, we do not get involved in their business.”

The newly disclosed grant makes Let’s Preserve the American Dream the largest known donor to Grow United, which was the source of $550,000 spent on mailers that touted the independents in the three Senate races as progressive alternatives, apparently to siphon votes from Democratic candidates.

All three elections, for District 9 in Seminole and Volusia counties and the Miami-area districts 37 and 39, were won by Republicans and helped the GOP retain its majority in the 40-member Florida Senate.

The apparent use of spoiler candidates set off a sprawling criminal investigation out of Miami that has so far led to the arrests of two people, including one of the independent candidates who ran in South Florida and the man authorities say bribed him to do so: former Republican state Sen. Frank Artiles.

AIF is run by Tom Feeney, the former Republican congressman from Central Florida who was voted out of office following a lobbying scandal; AIF announced in August

that Feeney will step down as CEO at the end of the year.

Key figure in scandal

Led by prosecutors in Miami-Dade County, the investigation into the ghost candidate scandal has rocked Florida politics this year — and Tyson, who has long been considered one of the state’s top pollsters and political strategists, has emerged as a key figure.

For instance, records show that Artiles, who helped arrange the candidacies of both independents who ran in the South Florida Senate races, was being paid $5,000 a month at the time by Let’s Preserve the American Dream under a consulting deal that began in 2017, shortly after Artiles resigned in disgrace from the Florida Senate after using a racial slur against some of his colleagues.

Tyson has said Let’s Preserve the American Dream canceled its contact with Artiles after his arrest.

In addition, the money for the mailers promoting the independent candidates was routed through a pair of political committees that were set up by Alex Alvarado, a Tallahassee operative who, records show, works with Tyson and Let’s Preserve the American Dream.

Both of those political committees were also operated out of AIF’s headquarters, records show.

Those mailers were designed by another Tallahassee consultant named Ryan Smith, who told Miami investigators in June that he was recruited by Tyson.

“Last year, Mr. Tyson asked Mr. Smith if he was interested in working on a special project with Mr. Alex Alvarado involving no-party-affiliation (NPA) mailers for Districts 9, 37 and 39,” according to a 35-page investigative report released by Miami prosecutors this week.

And of the $550,000 spent on the spoiler candidate campaign, $26,500 was paid to one of Tyson’s businesses as a “referral fee,” according to testimony in the investigation.

$5 million from a single donor

Let’s Preserve the American Dream’s tax return shows that it raised just under $8.6 million in 2020 from 18 donations. More than half of its money, $5 million, came from a single donor.

And while it does not disclose its donors, there are some clues about the businesses that have been involved with related entities in the past.

For instance, between 2014 and 2016, a political committee with the same name, run by the same person and using the same address was organized at the state level and did disclose its donors. Those donors included Florida Power & Light and Mosaic Co., the phosphate-mining giant.

In addition, tax records show that in 2017 a utility industry-backed group known as “Consumers for Smart Solar” that had been created in support of an unsuccessful constitutional amendment transferred its leftover money — more than $420,000 — to Let’s Preserve the American Dream.

Let’s Preserve the American Dream isn’t the only known donor to Grow United.

Three other dark-money nonprofits controlled by Democratic operatives have also said they contributed roughly $840,000 combined to Grow United in 2020. Though dark-money nonprofits don’t have to reveal their donors, they do have to disclose transfers they make to other nonprofits.

All three of those donations were arranged by Dan Newman, a longtime Florida Democratic Party fundraiser and former lobbyist who has worked with groups supporting the utility industry.

Newman did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

He previously said that the money he raised into Grow United was spent helping Democratic Senate candidates in Florida — the same ones Grow United also worked to undermine by promoting the ghost candidates. Newman has said he did not know about the ghost candidate scheme.

Newman said he was referred to Grow United by Jeff Pitts, another consultant who runs a Tallahassee-based firm whose clients have included Florida Crystals and a business that matches the description of Florida Power & Light’s parent company.