‘Ghost’ candidate pleads guilty in election scheme
The man accused of accepting nearly $45,000 in bribes from former state Sen. Frank Artiles in exchange for putting his name on the ballot in a South Florida legislative race in an apparent attempt to siphon votes from his Democratic opponent pleaded guilty during a hearing Tuesday.
Alex Rodriguez agreed to three years of probation, including one year of house arrest with a GPS monitor. He also promised to testify in Artiles’ trial. If tried and convicted of the charges, Rodriguez could have faced 20 years in prison.
As part of the deal, Rodriguez must make himself available to attorneys or law enforcement officers, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Andrea Wolfson said.
Rodriguez, 55, was struggling financially when Artiles approached him last year and offered him
$50,000 to file to run as an independent, or no party affiliate, candidate in the competitive Florida Senate District 37 race, according to charging documents from the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. The scheme was intended to confuse voters and siphon votes away from the Democratic incumbent, José Javier Rodríguez, and help Republican Ileana Garcia, who won by 32 votes.
Alex Rodriguez received more than 6,000 votes, despite doing no campaigning. He spoke briefly during Tuesday’s hearing, saying he was “deeply sorry” for his role in the scheme.
“I would like to publicly offer a sincere apology to the residents of Florida Senate District 37, including former Senator José Javier Rodríguez, to the people of Miami-Dade County, the state of Florida and anyone else that was affected by my actions,” Rodriguez said Tuesday.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathleen Fernandez Rundle, whose office filed the charges against Rodriguez and Artiles, said Tuesday in a statement that Rodriguez’ plea marks an “important step in the effort to restore honesty to Florida’s election process which has been tarnished too long by almost invisible, independent and write-in candidates.”
“Mr. Rodriguez’ critical testimony will shed light on the dirty election tricks used to steal our democracy and is the price he is paying for helping rob our community of its right to honest representation,” Fernandez Rundle said.
Rodriguez was one of three so-called “ghost” candidates who filed to run in key Florida Senate races last year, including one in Central Florida. Though none of them actively campaigned, all were supported by ads worded to appeal to left-leaning voters, which were funded by the same dark-money donor.
Only Artiles and Rodriguez have been charged in connection with the schemes. But emails, text messages, interviews and other records collected as evidence by the State Attorney’s Office revealed Artiles’ ties to other figures linked to the scandal and powerful players in Florida Republican politics, and suggest he had a hand in helping at least one other candidate, as well.
Maricela Cardenas told investigators in a sworn interview that Artiles “guided” her and her husband, Celso Alfonso, who filed to run as an independent candidate in neighboring Senate District 39, through his campaign.
Cardenas said Alfonso wasn’t paid to put his name on the ballot and that running for office had been a lifelong dream for her 81-year-old husband. But Artiles filed some of Alfonso’s campaign finance reports for him and personally delivered Alfonso’s $1,187.88 qualifying check to the state Division of Elections in Tallahassee.
Records released last month show Artiles had a $15,000-per-month contract with Data Targeting, a Gainesville-based political consulting firm, to work on “certain contested Florida Senate Districts in Miami Dade County” — at the same time the firm was being paid millions by state Republican leaders to run Senate campaigns.
Artiles also had a business relationship with Alex Alvarado, the Republican political consultant who was behind two political committees, funded by a dark-money nonprofit. Together, the committees spent $550,000 last year promoting Rodriguez, Alfonso and a third candidate, Jestine Iannotti, who filed to run in Senate District 9, which includes all of Seminole County and part of Volusia.
A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Monday it was starting a “preliminary investigation” into the Central Florida race, though she would not say which specific allegations were under investigation.