Follow dark money in ghost candidate scandal

Watergate taught us to follow the money in politics. No wonder so many of its practitioners take elaborate steps to cover their tracks.

A horrific example is the laundering of $550,000 that promoted three “ghost” candidates in last year’s races for the Florida Senate and manipulated the results in one. It’s fairly well-known who handled the dirty-trick dark money but not who originally gave it — or whose interests were served.

Campaign filings and documents unearthed by Miami-Dade prosecutors and reported by the Orlando Sentinel and Miami Herald reveal footprints leading ominously to the doorsteps of several powerful entities:

* Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, and the Republican Party of Florida.

* Florida Power & Light, one of the state’s most politically influential companies.

* Data Targeting, a Gainesville political firm that advised the GOP and employed a key figure in the sham candidate scandal.

* Associated Industries of Florida, a statewide lobbying player supported by major utility companies.

Common threads

These entities have not been charged with complicity in the scandal in which former state Sen. Frank Artiles of Miami awaits trial on felony charges.

But there are common threads, including a shared address. Enough leads have emerged to warrant a deeper investigation by the Department of Justice, as Florida

Democrats in Congress requested months ago. There has been no public response, but the DOJ rarely acknowledges its investigations.

As reported, Artiles is accused of recruiting a friend, Alex Rodriguez, a former Republican, by offering him $50,000 to run as a sham independent candidate in Senate District 37 in Miami. Court documents say Artiles actually paid Rodriguez $44,708.03 and fronted his $2,000 filing fee, which alone was twice the legal limit for a contribution to a legislative campaign. Prosecutors said they didn’t know the source of that money.

Artiles personally flew Rodriguez’s paperwork to Tallahassee. Rodriguez did no campaigning but got 6,382 votes while Jose Javier Rodriguez, the incumbent Democrat, lost by 32 votes to Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia. Name confusion obviously influenced some voters.

Ghost candidates surfaced in two more Senate races that Republicans won but they didn’t get enough votes to influenced the outcomes.

Artiles had a $15,000 monthly contract with Data Targeting to work on Senate races in South Florida. He billed the firm for a plane ticket, bought the same day he rushed Alex Rodriquez’s papers to Tallahassee.

Data Targeting’s millions

Data Targeting oversaw Republican Senate campaigns as a major consultant to the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, led at the time by Simpson, who would become Senate president if his party retained power in the election, which it did. Defeating Jose Javier Rodriguez was a big part of that.

Simpson’s committee paid Data Targeting more than $7 million in the 2020 cycle, raising the possibility that some of the money could have funded Artiles’ schemes. Associated Industries and its affiliates contributed more than $2.5 million to Senate GOP campaigns.

Meanwhile, two political committees spent $550,000 to distribute nearly identical campaign flyers, touting Alex Rodriguez and the other ghost candidates to Democratic and independent voters.

Tax and bank records show the committees had the same street address as Associated Industries. Their election records reported all the money was from Grow United, a non-profit group based in Denver that does not disclose its donors.

Alex Alvarado, a Republican consultant who ran the two committees, told the Sentinel he doesn’t work for Associated Industries but simply uses it as his mailing address on bank records. “It’s easy to pick up stuff there because they have a receptionist,” he said. “I work out of my house.”

Associated Industries said it had “no involvement” in either committee but implied they may have been among “numerous tenants … all of which receive mail at our address.”

Dark money from Denver

One of Alvarado’s committees, named “The Truth,” listed as its chairman and treasurer a 26-year-old Pinellas County woman who said Alvarado paid her to use her name. He told the Sentinel he paid a second woman to front for the other committee, “Our Florida,” an ironic name for anything funded by dark money from Denver.

Grow United, the source of the $550,000, was identified as a “social welfare” organization under section 501(c) (4) of the federal tax code. That’s a glaring campaign finance loophole that the IRS should close.

As for FPL, the footsteps lead from “The Truth” and “Our Florida” to consultants who worked for Matrix LLC, a political firm in Alabama. They left Matrix, which in a lawsuit now accuses them of conspiring with a particular client, identified only as a publicly traded company based in Juno Beach, Florida, to cheat Matrix out of fees.

Securities and Exchange Commission records list one publicly traded company in Juno Beach: NextEra Energy, parent company of Florida Power & Light. Campaign reports show FPL gave nearly $425,000 to Simpson’s Republican Senate campaign committee. An FPL spokesman refused to say whether the company was involved with the ghost candidates.

If these rabbit trails are confusing, they’re meant to be. State and federal laws must be changed to compel full disclosure of the source of every dime spent electing or defeating candidates for office. Until then, secret money will distort elections, deceive voters and defile democracy.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney 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.