Last September, prosecutors in Miami received a complaint about a mysterious political group that appeared to break state election laws while meddling in an important Central Florida state Senate election.
The group was based in Miami, but it had tried to sway Democratic primary voters in a Seminole County-centered race eventually won by Republican Jason Brodeur of Sanford. So the Miami prosecutors sent the complaint to the office of Phil Archer, the elected State Attorney for Seminole and Brevard counties.
But Archer’s office chose not to investigate, according to emails obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, opting instead to forward the complaint on to an elections agency in Tallahassee.
“They seem to not want to be involved at all, even though it’s their jurisdiction that is directly impacted,” Tim VanderGiesen, a public-corruption prosecutor in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, wrote in an email to a colleague after learning Archer’s office planned to hand off the case.
Two months later, Miami prosecutors would launch their own investigation into further allegations of voter fraud in Senate elections — a probe that has since reached the highest levels of state politics and lead to two arrests, including former Republican state Sen. Frank Artiles.
Mark Herron, a Tallahassee attorney who specializes in election laws, said the issues raised in the complaint appeared to have merit, particularly the committee’s lack of disclosure about the source of its funds. The group listed just one contribution of $249,925 on July 18, 2020, described as a “starting balance.”
“In my view, it is a violation of state campaign finance laws,” he said.
Archer, a Republican who has been the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney since 2012, declined to answer questions about how his office handled the September 2020 complaint. He has said in the past he does not think prosecutors should lead investigations themselves and that his office also lacks the resources to conduct its own probes.
Todd Brown, a spokesperson for Archer, said the office could not comment on a specific complaint because of confidentiality laws. But Brown said generally that any election complaint submitted to Archer’s office would be passed on to either the Florida Elections Commission or the state’s Division of Elections, which can conduct their own probes and refer any potential criminal violations to state or local prosecutors.
“They are the experts in this field and understand the nuances of elections law,” Brown said.
But others accuse Archer, who was reelected last year without any opposition, of shirking responsibility by failing to aggressively scrutinize allegations of public corruption in everything from local elections to the office of former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg.
“This is a wrongdoing that has occurred against the voters,” said Patricia Sigman, the Democratic candidate who ended up losing to Brodeur in the Senate District 9 race, which helped Republicans retain their majority in the 40-member Florida Senate.
“It’s not just about me or any one race. It’s an overall problem that really needs to be addressed,” Sigman added. “And when state attorneys won’t address it, it’s concerning. Because who else is going to do it?”
‘The authorities have to come in’
The September 2020 complaint involved a group known as “Floridians for Equality and Justice” that formed a few weeks before a Democratic primary election in which Sigman was facing four other Democrats for the chance to take on Brodeur.
Sigman was widely viewed as the strongest potential challenger to Brodeur. But Floridians for Equality and Justice paid for mailers attacking her and encouraging votes to support one of the other Democratic candidates instead. That other Democratic candidate, Rick Ashby, said at the time that he had no involvement with the group and that they were using images of him from social media without his permission.
Sigman won the primary anyway, and Floridians for Equality and Justice shut down less than one month after it was created. But some legal experts say it almost certainly broke election laws.
For instance, the group claimed to have started with nearly $250,000 in its account without ever disclosing the original source of that money, contrary to state laws that require committees to report contributions.
Herron also said political committees are required to file documents with the Division of Elections within 10 days of organizing. Records show Floridians for Equality and Justice was already operating for nearly a month before it registered with the state as a political committee.
Floridians for Equality and Justice listed its chairman, treasurer and registered agent as someone named Stephen Jones and its address as a box at a UPS store in Miami. Yet when a Democratic legislator attempted to file a civil action against the group, the UPS store told court servers that it had no box agreement with Jones.
“I don’t think that person exists. I think it’s just a made-up name,” said state Sen. Annette Taddeo, of Miami. She added that the UPS store would not reveal whose name was actually on the box agreement. “That’s where the authorities have to come in and they have to figure it out.”
Registering a political committee under a pseudonym also would violate state election laws, Herron said.
Unclear if anyone investigated group
A staffer for the Florida Democratic Party filed a complaint to the Florida Elections Commission. But the agency might dismiss the complaint if it cannot find the subject in order to serve them with notice.
That’s partly why Taddeo decided to submit the September 2020 complaint to Democratic Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and ask for a criminal investigation instead.
Emails show prosecutors in Fernandez Rundle’s office did a preliminary review themselves but then decided to send it on to Archer’s office. “The money was spent on a senate race in that jurisdiction so we felt it was more appropriately handled there,” VanderGiesen, the Miami-Dade public corruption prosecutor, wrote in an internal email.
The emails show that, after being alerted to the complaint, an attorney in Archer’s office initially planned to pass it on to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. But Archer’s office later decided to send it to the state Division of Elections instead. Archer’s office declined to say why it chose not to send the complaint to FDLE, too.
At this point, it’s not clear whether anyone has investigated the group’s activities, or plans to do so. A spokesperson for FDLE says it hasn’t received any complaint about Floridians for Equality and Justice and a spokesperson for the Division of Elections says that agency lacks the authority to conduct investigations.
A spokesperson for the Elections Commission said the agency can’t comment on any pending complaints, but neither Taddeo, Sigman nor the Florida Democratic Party staffer who filed the complaint said they had heard anything from the agency.
Brown, the spokesperson for Archer’s office, said his agency hasn’t received any referrals from the elections commission.
Brodeur did not respond to a request for comment, though he has previously said he has nothing to do with the group.
But Floridians for Equality and Justice may not be entirely in the clear. That’s because it could get swept up into a separate investigation Miami-Dade prosecutors are conducting into the use of a no-party spoiler candidate to help Republicans win a Miami-area Senate race. Two people have been charged in that case: Artiles, the former Republican lawmaker, and a friend that prosecutors say he bribed to run as a no-party candidate.
Brodeur’s race and another in South Florida featured similar no-party candidates. In all three races, the independents did not actively campaign but were backed by a dark money group that paid for nearly identical ads seemingly tailored to siphon votes away from Democratic candidates.
Election records show that Floridians for Equality and Justice paid money to a business set up by a Tallahassee attorney named David Healy, a Republican who has worked Data Targeting Inc., one of the state’s top GOP political consulting firms. And court records in the Rodriguez and Artiles case show that prosecutors have subpoenaed records from Data Targeting.
Healy did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said he could not comment.
jgarcia@orlandosentinel.com; anmartin@orlandosentinel.com
