FPL’s bullying tactics have 175-year-old precedent

What happens when some upstart provokes a ruthless and powerful monopoly?

This happens: “I want you to make his life a living hell … seriously.”

The directive was included in a 2019 email from Eric Silagy, CEO of Florida Power & Light — speaking of ruthless and powerful monopolies — as he sicced his attack dogs on a Miami state senator with ambitions for rooftop solar.

FPL insists the subsequent sabotage of this irksome senator’s career was mere coincidence; not the company’s doing. As if Silagy is Florida’s less elegant version of Henry II: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” (Henry also feigned bewilderment after his knights sailed from Normandy to England and murdered Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.)

FPL’s descent into monopolistic thuggery is not without historic precedent in Florida.

John Gorrie was destroyed back in 1851 after he patented a new technology that could ruin America’s first great monopoly.

The company made his life a living hell. Seriously.

Gorrie, whose marble likeness was chosen to represent Florida in Washington’s National Statuary Hall (along with the recently installed statue of Mary Bethune) riled the bullyboy response by patenting the first icemaker.

Frederic Tudor was not pleased. Tudor, a.k.a. the Ice King, had become fabulously wealthy cutting blocks of ice out of New England’s frozen lakes and shipping them to sweltering ports in the American South, the Caribbean, Europe, even India.

Gorrie, a physician, had been cooling malaria wards in Apalachicola with blocks of ice. But imported ice wasn’t available in the summer. So, Gorrie tinkered with pumps, pipes and compressors until he created a room refrigeration machine. (A replica is on display at the John Gorrie Museum in Apalachicola.) Not only could it cool a room, Goorie discovered that his machine could also freeze water. He famously dazzled guests at a July 1847 soiree with champagne on ice.

Tudor, who had crushed his competitors in the “natural ice” business, attacked the new technology. He orchestrated a smear campaign against Gorrie’s “fake ice.” The press, probably influenced by Tudor’s cash gratuities, savaged Gorrie. The New York Globe called him “a crank that thinks he can make ice by his machine as good as God Almighty.” Machine-made ice was said to be contaminated with bacteria.

It worked. Florida’s most honored inventor, credited with the air conditioner and the icemaker, was ruined. Investors disappeared. Broke and depressed, he died in 1855.

The Ice King’s perfidy created the template for monopolies hereabouts: Use big money and shady tactics to stifle threatening innovations. Make the lives of anyone who gets in the way a living hell. Seriously.

Of course, FPL is supposed to be different and prioritize public interest. A utility awarded the exclusive right to sell electric power to 12 million customers shouldn’t mimic the business practices of 19th century robber barons.

But after years of larding the Legislature with political contributions, FPL has shrugged off the no-account public disgust, even as the Orlando Sentinel and Floodlight, a non-profit journalism cooperative, implicated the company in a cascade of lowdown schemes.

Reporters discovered a trove of startling documents linked to Matrix, LLC, an Alabama-based consultancy firm that specializes in fixing political problems for power companies. Especially FPL. Matrix operatives — the company blames rogue employees or ex-employees for the more disgraceful ploys — raised sleazy tactics to an artform.

Yet, we are to believe that it was only a peculiar coincidence that José Javier Rodríguez, the very senator who was the object of Silagy’s “living hell” email, also happened to be one of the three state Senate candidates targeted in an illicit ghost candidate scheme. Spoilers, financed by dark money of undisclosed provenance and controlled by former Matrix operatives, were added to the ballots in three 2020 state Senate elections. A hired fake candidate with the same last name as Rodríguez diverted enough votes to scuttle his re-election.

Other Matrix-linked coincidences include spying on Florida Times-Union columnist Nate Monroe, a persistent FPL critic, even while he was away on vacation.

Matrix also used dark money to finance attacks on politicians who advocate for green energy alternatives. A South Miami mayor who had championed rooftop solar was slimed as a sex offender. I’m sure that it’s mere coincidence that FPL execs are preoccupied with suppressing solar energy generated outside the company’s purview.

In 2019, money funneled through Matrix secretly paid for editorial control over a Tallahassee-based political news site, which subsequently featured attacks on other journalists who report on FPL transgressions.

It was as if some mysterious entity — surely not our oh-so-public-minded electric power monopoly — decided to make their lives hell. Seriously.