Basking in the glory of Donald Trump’s solid victory and the state GOP’s dominating performance down-ballot, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis immediately declared the 2020 election a political and administrative triumph, free of fraud, third-party interference, or other administrative problems that plagued the 2018 election. Celebrating his own victory, however, didn’t comport with the tone of the rest of the Republican Party, which quickly adopted the sore loser denial and deranged conspiracy theories being pushed by Donald Trump and his cultists.
He made a deft pivot. DeSantis maintained that Florida’s election was all clean, but warned that voter fraud presented a very real threat going forward. Having already disenfranchised 700,000 eligible voters before the election, DeSantis happily joined other Republicans in weaponizing Big Lie conspiracy theories to pass unabashedly racist voter suppression laws under the guise of “election security” — live on Fox News.
Ironically, it turned out that Florida’s election hadn’t been entirely without fraud or subversion. In the 2020 election, three Democratic state lawmakers lost tight re-election races to Republicans in large part due to the presence of three “ghost” candidates that did little campaigning but were backed with massive outlays by a mysterious political action committee called Grow United.
Voters were bombarded with ads and flyers touting the supposed strong progressive credentials of the spoiler candidates, at least one of whom had been bribed into playing the patsy by a former Republican lawmaker named Frank Artiles. That candidate, an auto parts salesman named Alex Rodriguez, siphoned off 6,000 votes in a race that the Democratic incumbent, state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, lost by just 32 votes.
Alex Rodriguez pled guilty to fraud charges in August, admitting to accepting over $44,000 for his part in the scheme. Artiles also recruited at least one of the other ghost candidates, as well.
Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez was known for his environmental activism — he wore rain boots to the Capitol in 2018 in an effort to draw attention to rising sea levels and flooding in his South Florida district — and was a vocal proponent of clean energy. So it made sense that he was one of the three Democrats targeted by Grow United, which has deep financial and political ties to Florida Power & Light.
According to an investigation just released by the Orlando Sentinel, FPL helped finance the founding of Grow United and sent millions of dollars to the consultants that run the organization. Grow United’s consultants also communicated with FPL lobbyists about the three elections in which it was supporting the ghost spoiler candidates; in one text message, FPL’s Vice President of State Government Affairs wrote “We are going to charge full speed ahead in all those seats,” which is one of the most unambiguous admissions of guilt that I have ever seen.
Meanwhile, DeSantis, seeking to lead the way in Big Lie boosterism and further burnish his strongman credentials, proposed in November the creation of a special law enforcement agency dedicated to investigating alleged election fraud. Late last month, in the proposed budget he presented to lawmakers, DeSantis earmarked nearly $6 million to staff up his private conspiracy Gestapo, which would include 20 law enforcement officials.
Given his clear disdain for voter fraud, one might think that DeSantis would be all over the ghost candidate scheme and seek to make an example out of cheaters. Election laws are lax in Florida, but in October, the state’s Election Commission still recommended a $20,000 fine and censure for Alex Rodriguez. Yet three months later, DeSantis has yet to act or even comment on the recommendation. It’s a far cry from the live signing ceremony for the voter suppression bill, which he handed to Fox News to carry as an exclusive event.
So why hasn't DeSantis said a word about the Florida Election Commission’s recommendations or any other aspect of the ghost candidate scandal? Acknowledging the crime would invite further questions and scrutiny of the morass of dark money and favor-trading corruption in Florida politics, especially his own deep relationship with Florida Power & Light.
Dirty Money, Dirty Energy
Back in 2018, DeSantis, then a member of Congress, was running neck-and-neck with former Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum in the Florida gubernatorial race. In the final few weeks of the campaign, right-wing dark money groups unleashed a torrent of negative, misleading, and often racist advertisements against Gillum, who is Black. One of the more shady campaigns was funded in part by Florida Power & Light, the single biggest political donor in the entire state.
Florida’s very lax laws around campaign donations and PACs make it impossible to know how much money FPL really sank into pushing DeSantis and other Republicans over the finish line in 2018 and 2020. Given the multitude of favors that DeSantis and the GOP-controlled legislature have done for the company, it’s likely to have been a very hefty sum.
“DeSantis accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars from political committees connected with Associated Industries of Florida, an organization funded by FPL,” State Rep. Anna Eskamani, who has been a leading critic of FPL, told me. “Not only does he engage in dark money politics but he signs every bill FPL has sent to his desk, too.”
Eskamani and several other lawmakers have requested that FPL undergo an audit to make sure that taxpayer money did not go toward the ghost candidates. DeSantis’s relationship with the company suggests that will not happen.
In April, DeSantis signed legislation that banned local governments from forbidding utility companies from using dirty fuel sources to generate electricity. It was a clear giveaway to FPL, which relies on natural gas to deliver energy across a state being ravaged by climate change. With the market cornered and municipalities at their mercy, FPL then proposed a massive rate hike. In October, the Public Service Commission, a body overseen by DeSantis, authorized the $1.5 billion rate increase on Floridians over the next five years.
On January 1st, the average Florida family’s monthly energy bill shot up by $20, a terrific burden in a state ranked 49th in the state for income equality. And if DeSantis gets his way, those families won’t be allowed to try to mitigate those costs with renewable energy — the legislature, which starts up again on Monday, is expected to pass a ban on residents with rooftop solar panels selling energy back to their energy company.
FPL is obviously behind that legislation, though it resents being called out in public. Last week, the company launched a website attacking the Miami Herald and its Tallahassee bureau chief for having the temerity to report on its involvement in the proposed home solar panel sales ban.
Don’t expect DeSantis to stand up for the state’s largest newspaper or the First Amendment — he’s busy preparing to silence teachers with a bill that would allow people to sue educators for teaching kids about racism. His proposal is based on the Texas anti-abortion law, so you can thank the Supreme Court for providing him the assist on that one.
P.S. This is from a story in my newsletter, Progressives Everywhere, which aims to counterbalance the corporate media that focuses on gossip and uneducated hot takes instead of calling out corrupt politicians, reporting on the issues that really matter, and working to explain how power really works.
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