You can't make this stuff up.
The Miami Herald blog reports:
Now things are really heating up! Raul Martinez and state Democrats at a Miami press conference today looked to tie Lincoln Diaz-Balart to Puerto Rican senator Jorge de Castro Font, who was arrested by the FBI.
Dems charge that de Castro Font has "implicated" Diaz-Balart by alleging to "have traveled to Miami with Congressman Luis Fortuño of Puerto Rico to deliver a suitcase full of cash for Diaz-Balart's re-election campaign." The money was allegedly from a prominent PR family.
Man, campaign-finance scandals don't get much more fun than this. Real suitcases full of cash, just like in the movies!
Lincoln Diaz-Balart is in the toughest race, by far, of his long political career, squaring off against the popular if controversial former mayor of Hialeah, Raul Martinez. Any kind of scandal, especially one as exciting as this one (suitcases full of cash!), is going to be exceptionally bad PR for him going into the election.
Our man de Castro Font apparently has a background of similar sleaze (31 counts' worth anyway).
De Castro Font in an interview with a PR TV station, said the alleged trip took place in 2005 -- long before Diaz-Balart's challenge from Martinez. De Castro Font has been indicted by a federal grand jury on 31 criminal counts including bribery, wire fraud and money laundering. He's also peeved that Fortuño has tried to distance himself from him since the scandal broke, and even tried to remove him from the November ballot. Fortuño is running for governor, and de Castro Font seeks reelection.
The Florida Democratic Party has some juicy quotes from de Castro Font, which were made on PR radio:
In an interview with WAPA TV in Puerto Rico, De Castro Font stated:
"I am not going to remain quiet. I am here talking with you. If I was quiet . . . just the other day I said that ...to ask him ... Luis Fortuño said the other day that he was never with me that he has not seen me in four years. Ask him if he went with me to deliver money to Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Miami . We sat together in first class."
Diaz-Balart denies ever receiving major donations (including a suitcase full of cash) from Fortuno or de Castro Font, and denies having done anything illegal. Unfortunately, Diaz-Balart's track record on campaign-finance issues is not good at all; he has twice been fined heavily for campaign-finance violations before, to the tune of $35,500 total.
He has demonstrated a most cavalier attitude towards campaign finance law before, in fact:
The FEC audit of the Diaz-Balart campaign, however, reveals an operation with little regard for federal election laws. The report describes a stunning array of campaign finance violations and stupid mistakes, all discovered largely without the help of an evasive and uncooperative Diaz-Balart staff. Auditors cite dozens of illegal campaign contributions, missing cash, bookkeeping errors amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and failure to report a variety of monetary receipts and expenditures. To top it off, aides never produced all the records and documentation requested by auditors.
One wonders how much the good Congressman can be trusted this time, when he claims that he never received a suitcase full of cash from an indicted Senator.
On the web:
Raul Martinez for Congress