Unlimited dark money donations allowed
The investigation into a straw candidate in a Miami state Senate race has already resulted in the arrest of former state Sen. Frank Artiles, whose trial is set for Aug. 30. Artiles allegedly paid more than $40,000 to an independent candidate with the same last name as Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez, who lost to Republican Ileana Garcia by 32 votes. That paid-off third-party candidate, Alex Rodriguez, received more than 6,000 votes.
But where did all that money come from? It’s not as though Artiles just had it sitting in his freezer.
An answer may lie with investigators, who seized the bank records of Let’s Preserve the American Dream, a darkmoney nonprofit with ties to Associated Industries of Florida, the top conservative business trade group in Florida with the possible exception of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. AIF’s headquarters is an impressive mansion on the road between the state Capitol and the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee.
Even with the bank records, it may be hard for investigators to determine precisely the source of the money that financed a crooked election. That’s because Florida’s campaign finance laws have essentially legalized money laundering.
Donors can only give up to $3,000 to candidates for statewide office in Florida, and $1,000 for legislative races. But they can give as much as they want to political committees or PCs. And these PCs can donate unlimited amounts to each other.
So let’s say you’re a corporation that wants to rain down mudslinging ads on a candidate or cause, but you want to keep your hands clean. You’ll just donate $10,000 each to a dozen different political committees, which in turn move that money around to still other political committees (the donations now coming from those committees rather than the original corporation), until the money winds up at a committee that pays for attack ads that land in voters’ mailboxes.
Your corporation didn’t pay for those mailers, of course. That was the Committee for Florida’s Amazing Future, or the Committee for the Protection of Puppies and Babies, or whatever other innocent-sounding name you can come up with. And when reporters look into who donated the money to those committees, they find only the names of more committees.
And that’s just for political committees that have to disclose donors. In the case of what’s known as a 501(c)(4) such as Let’s Preserve the American Dream, the law says they don’t even need to do that, though investigators should have their hands on the names of those donors now — donors that likely consist of a web of PCs and nonprofits.
Don’t expect these abuses to disappear anytime soon, because Democrats and Republicans both benefit from Florida’s absurd, intelligence-insulting campaign finance laws. Candidates themselves, while being limited in accepting donations to their campaigns, can form their own PCs, which can accept unlimited donations.
These PCs, under the sole control of a single legislator, are a cancer on Florida’s political system. These open sewers of special interest money can accept donations in any amount, which allows elected officials to evade the caps on individual contributions.
To make matters worse, these committees are a lot like cockroaches. You can’t eliminate them. Long after lawmakers leave office, they’re still living off their PCs, spending money on candidates, consultants, lawyers, meals and other expenses.
Former House Speaker Richard Corcoran left the Legislature in 2018 and became Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education commissioner. But Corcoran’s Watchdog PAC is still kicking. The committee raised $7 million, much of it as Corcoran neared the peak of his power as incoming speaker and considered a 2018 run for governor.
Corcoran was replaced in 2017 as Watchdog PAC’s chair by James Blair, a former advisor, but the political universe knew the money machine belonged to Corcoran.
Last month, the committee moved $10,000 to Lake County Conservatives, a central Florida PC. In February, it sent $50,000 to Building a Better Economy, a Jacksonville PC controlled by Daniel Davis, a former GOP House member.
A former legislator has no business controlling a personal slush fund of special interest money while setting education policy for Floridians. It should be required that the PCs be closed and the money disposed of on the day they leave office.
Another case is former Republican Sen. Jack Latvala’s Florida Leadership Committee. The fund raised $9.8 million and spent $9 million, and Latvala keeps writing checks more than three-and-ahalf years after he resigned his Tampa Bay Senate seat in a sexual harassment scandal.
Records show Latvala sends $3,000 a month to Steve Andrews, a Tallahassee lawyer who represented him during his legal troubles, and $4,000 a month to Golden Jaguar Consulting, a company managed by the ex-senator’s son, Rep. Chris Latvala.
Some other legislators, such as former Senate President Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, shut down their committees after they left office.
On occasion, politicians in Tallahassee do attack the amount of money in the system, but only when it’s in their self-interest. In the recent session, they imposed a $3,000 cap on donations to committees working to get constitutional amendments on the ballot.
The Legislature only gives a damn about this cesspool when people are trying to enact a minimum wage increase, medical marijuana or some other idea whose time has long since come but on which lawmakers refuse to act.
That new law will likely be overturned by the courts.
The Legislature should pass a new one that limits all political committees equally, but don’t hold your breath. They’ll watch you suffocate long before they act.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@ sun-sentinel.com.