South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
FPL was given plan to try to oust foe
Primary opponent was sought for state senator
Operatives working with Florida Power & Light sent the utility a $3-million-plus plan to discreetly recruit a primary challenger in hopes of ousting one of the utility’s biggest foes from the state Senate in 2020 — in the same race that later became central to Florida’s “ghost” candidate scandal.
Dan Newman, who had previously worked for the Florida Democrats’ legislative campaign arm, wrote the proposal, which called for recruiting a Florida House member to run against Sen. José Javier Rodríguez, who then was a prominent Democratic lawmaker from Miami.
Newman drafted the plan at the behest of operatives at Matrix LLC, an Alabama-based political consulting firm that worked for FPL. The firm’s operatives would later orchestrate an expensive advertising blitz in 2020 promoting an independent “ghost” candidate with the same last name as Rodríguez who filed to run in his race but did not campaign for the position.
Newman’s memo surfaced during an ongoing investigation by the Orlando Sentinel and Floodlight into Matrix’s work for FPL. It shows that an FPL vice president was kept apprised of efforts by a network of operatives to oust Rodríguez, who ultimately lost his race by 32 votes while the independent candidate, Alex Rodriguez, drew more than 6,000.
Alex Rodriguez has since confessed to having been bribed to enter the race by Frank Artiles, a former state lawmaker who was also charged by public corruption prosecutors in Miami and has pleaded not guilty. Newman has been informed by prosecutors that he’s a target of the same investigation.
FPL has acknowledged it wanted the veteran senator out of office. He had advocated for environmentally conscious policies the utility opposed and fought plans to expand the Turkey Point nuclear plant in South Florida. The company denies any role in the spoiler
candidate scheme.
Newman’s June 2019 proposal, addressed to then-Matrix CEO Jeff Pitts, estimated recruiting and promoting a primary challenger for Rodríguez would cost upwards of $3.8 million, with $3 million paid by an unnamed “client.”
“This will be an extraordinarily expensive program,” Newman wrote.
Nobody apparently acted on Newman’s plan and no other Democrat challenged Rodríguez, who ultimately was defeated in the general election by Republican Ileana Garcia.
Newman, who said he was a subcontractor for Matrix from 2017 to
2020, claimed last week the memo’s purpose was to dissuade Pitts and his colleagues from trying to recruit a primary challenger against Rodríguez.
“Sometimes clients come to a consultant with ideas that are unfeasible or unwise,” Newman wrote in a statement to the Sentinel, in response to questions about the memo. “In those circumstances, I aim to satisfy the request while making every effort to dissuade the client by emphasizing the excessive costs, both financial and political, and low likelihood of success.”
While Newman’s memo did warn that a campaign against Rodríguez would come with a high price tag, he also highlighted the former senator’s vulnerabilities, noting that many lobbyists do not like him and might be willing to give money to a challenger.
In a statement, FPL spokesperson David Reuter acknowledged that the utility’s vice president of state legislative affairs, Danny Martell, had requested and received the plan.
“While we requested to see the original memo from Matrix once we heard about it, it was not prepared at our request,” Reuter said. “Matrix represents many different companies, local, state and federal candidates and other individuals so we cannot speak to whom Mr. Newman is referring to as the ‘client’ in his memo.”
Newman said this week he did not know which Matrix client, if any, had requested the memo.
Joe Perkins, the founder of Matrix, confirmed the authenticity of the memo. Perkins is in a legal battle with Pitts, who he claims along with other “rogue” employees acted without his knowledge while meddling in Florida elections. Pitts, who left the firm in December 2020, says his former boss is selectively leaking documents to smear him.
Martell was sent Newman’s memo by Ryan Tyson, a former vice president for big-business lobbying group Associated Industries of Florida, who subject-lined his October 2019 email to the FPL executive “Items you requested.”
Tyson runs a dark money nonprofit organization called “Let’s Preserve the American Dream,” which in 2020 provided the funding that was used to pay for the ads promoting “ghost” candidates in Rodriguez’s Senate District 37 race and two others. Like Newman, Let’s Preserve the American Dream has been named as a target in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office’s investigation into Artiles.
“Attached is our original proposal into SD 37 as well as the general election model you requested,” Tyson wrote to Martell. “It’s bleak for an R to win in SD
37, plain and simple.” FPL opposed Rodríguez’s re-election campaign and supported his Republican challenger during the general election, but was not involved in the recruitment or direct funding of any of his opponents, Reuter wrote in a statement. Newman’s memo warned that beating the veteran lawmaker would be difficult, writing that “the seriousness of this challenge should not be underestimated.”
With eight years of experience in the House and Senate, José Javier Rodríguez “looms large” among the five Miami Democrats Newman said he expected to win election to the Senate in 2020. And Senate District 37, which includes downtown Miami and some outlying areas, is “ground zero for Democratic growth,” he wrote.
Newman drew extensively upon his experience working as a fundraiser for House Victory, the Democrats’ legislative campaign arm, in the memo. Democratic operatives had been “executing a decade-long plan to reshape MiamiDade politics,” he wrote, adding, “I know this because I worked alongside them in the Florida House from 2013 to 2017.”
“The prospect of a primary challenge should be kept hidden until (at least) late Spring 2020,” Newman wrote. “Because of the need to recruit an opponent, it will be hard to keep it entirely under wraps, but we must try.”
The detailed, nine-page memo names state Rep. Nick Duran, a Democrat from Miami, as “the ONLY plausible primary challenger,” for Rodriguez. Newman described Duran as “more transactional and business-friendly,” than the incumbent. Duran told the Sentinel that nobody approached him about challenging Rodríguez two years ago.
Newman’s proposal also floated the idea of recruiting a third candidate to join the race, though he cautioned he was not certain such a candidate would siphon votes from Rodríguez.
Newman said last week he did not help recruit Alex Rodriguez to run against José Javier Rodríguez and said he counseled Matrix against using spoiler candidates. “I have never been a part of any conversation or plan to recruit or fund” an independent candidate against a Democrat in any campaign, Newman wrote.
It’s not clear if that part of the proposal was the origin of the “ghost” candidate scheme that has rocked Florida state politics during the past two years.
In addition to Artiles and Alex Rodriguez, three Central Florida residents have been charged in connection with the scheme.
Jestine Iannotti, who filed to run as an independent in the state Senate District 9 race, and political consultant Eric Foglesong have been charged with incorrectly reporting campaign donations. Ben Paris, who is the chair of the Seminole County GOP, has been charged with making a contribution to Iannotti’s campaign in his cousin’s name.
Iannotti, whose candidacy was promoted in mailers nearly identical to the ones that championed Alex Rodriguez, ultimately received more than 5,000 votes. Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur won the election to represent Senate District 9, which includes all of Seminole and part of Volusia County, defeating Democrat Patricia Sigman by more than 7,000 votes.
Following the 2020 elections, Newman joined Pitts and another ex-Matrix employee to form a new consulting firm, Tallahassee-based Canopy Partners, with FPL among its clients. The utility has said it has since ended its relationship with the firm.