Operative linked to Orange property appraiser election

A political consultant who was recently identified as a target of Miami prosecutors investigating Florida’s “ghost” candidate scandal was also involved in a major ad campaign to oust then-Orange County Property Appraiser Rick Singh in 2020.

Longtime Democratic fundraiser Dan Newman is being investigated for “possible violations of Florida elections laws and campaign finance laws,” according to the MiamiDade State Attorney’s Office.

The South Florida investigation concerns a trio of independent candidates who filed to run in 2020 Florida Senate races and were promoted by a flood of ads paid for by Grow United, a dark-money nonprofit into which Newman raised nearly $1 million that year.

During the same election cycle, Newman used another dark money nonprofit, A Better MiamiDade, to raise funds into other groups. That organization reported directing more than $970,000 to a group called South Florida Anti-Corruption Task Force, which paid for attack ads against Singh.

A political committee called Florida Public Corruption Task Force, which received all of its funding prior to the 2020 election from the South Florida Anti-Corruption Task Force, spent nearly $600,000 on mailers, TV

advertising time and text messages in July and August 2020.

Singh went on to lose his election in a landslide to Amy Mercado.

Though the ads in the Orange property appraiser race differed from those that promoted the “ghost” candidates, both blitzes were fueled by dark money groups linked to a network of operatives who an ongoing Sentinel investigation has shown influenced elections large and small across Florida in recent years.

Newman and Rick Yabor, a Miami attorney who is the registered agent for the South Florida Anti-Corruption Task Force, didn’t respond to emailed questions from the Sentinel about the funding for the anti-Singh ads. Yabor also didn’t respond to a request for a copy of the nonprofit’s 2020 990 form, a public document that would detail contributions and contracts awarded to other groups. He told a South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter who visited his office last November he didn’t have a copy of the document.

Yabor also serves as the chairman for the Florida Public Corruption Task Force, according to state election records.

Many of the ads in the Orange race highlighted findings from a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation that recommended Singh be charged with 10 counts of official misconduct after investigators concluded Singh “knowingly and intentionally” ordered employees to alter documents.

After the FDLE’s investigation into Singh, prosecutors declined to press charges, saying they couldn’t prove he ordered employees to alter the documents and questioned the credibility of his accusers. Those former employees also filed a whistle-blower lawsuit that alleged Singh manipulated appraisals for friends and spent taxpayer money on personal travel and his campaign.

The ads also championed Mercado, a former Florida House member, as a “results-oriented legislator” who has “managed budgets, led teams and worked in public policy.”

Reached this week, Mercado said she didn’t know who provided the money for the ads.

“I do not have any information regarding any of those entities,” Mercado wrote in an email.

Singh referred questions about the ads to his attorney, Tucker Byrd, who said he and his client have wondered who paid for the ads and “don’t believe it was someone acting out of civic interests.”

“We never believed it was somebody acting out of their civic duties or political beliefs,” Byrd said this week. “The suspicion has been there has been some economic driver behind it all.”

Singh filed a lawsuit in November 2020 against the Florida Public Corruption Task Force alleging the ads contained “vitriolic, false, and maliciously defamatory statements” about him. A judge dismissed the suit last year, saying he had failed to meet the higher legal burden public figures face when making defamation claims. Singh is appealing the decision.

During the 2020 campaign, Singh’s campaign blamed the ad blitz on “big business and special interest groups” that he had legal fights with over the years, with the candidate specifically accusing Disney of being behind the attacks on him.

Singh had a contentious relationship with Disney, one of the state’s largest political contributors, which repeatedly challenged the Orange County Property Appraiser’s assessments during his eight-year tenure.

After Singh lost the 2020 election to Mercado, the property appraiser’s office settled a 2015 legal dispute over the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and a dozen other theme park properties with The Walt Disney Co., agreeing to pay millions of dollars in refunds to the company.

Yabor at the time said neither Disney nor any other tourism interests had funded his group’s ad campaign, though he wouldn’t say who did. Disney did not respond this week when asked if it paid for the ads.

Newman in December was one of three operatives who received “prior to” letters from the MiamiDade State Attorney’s office, which indicated they were the subject of a probe that emerged from a criminal investigation into former state Sen. Frank Artiles, who is accused of bribing his friend Alex Rodriguez to run as an independent candidate in a South Florida Senate race in 2020.

Newman has acknowledged directing contributions to Grow United, which provided all of the funding for two political committees that sent ads promoting Rodriguez and independent candidates in two other competitive Florida Senate races in 2020 with language that appeared designed to appeal to progressive voters.

Richard Alexander, the chairman for Grow United, also received a “prior to” letter, as did Let’s Preserve the American Dream, a dark-money group with close ties to the big-business lobbying firm Associated Industries of Florida, which counts Disney, Florida Power & Light and other heavyweights among its biggest contributors.

Alex Alvarado, who commissioned the “ghost” candidate ads using a pair of committees addressed at AIF’s Tallahassee headquarters, also was informed by Miami prosecutors that he is a target.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the scheme was designed to swing the Miami-area race in favor of Republican Ileana Garcia, who ultimately defeated Democrat Jose Javier Rodríguez by 32 votes. Though he did no campaigning, Alex Rodriguez received more than 6,000 votes.

Rodriguez has pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Artiles. No one else has been charged in the spoiler candidate scandal.