'Dark money donors' funded mysterious Florida Senate candidates who pulled votes away from Democrats: report

A new report released by Florida's Local 10 lays out evidence to suggest three political candidates in three Florida Senate district races were nothing more than decoy candidates added to the race with one purpose: to pull votes from Democratic candidates.

Investigative findings also determined most of the candidates appear to have ties to the "same dark money donors."

One of the races has resulted in a runoff due to the close call between the Democratic and Republican candidates. It has been reported that there was only a difference of 31 votes, with more than 6300 voters cast ballots for the third-party candidate. The third-party candidate in that race is Alexis Rodriguez, who happens to have the same last name as the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez (D-Fla.).

Alexis Rodriguez reportedly provided a false address when he completed his campaign filing forms back in June. Another oddity about his campaign is that he did not even have a candidate headshot. When reporters arrived at his place of business to confront him about the mysterious campaign, he lied about his business affiliation and posed as a partner for the company. He was asked about his seemingly abrupt decision to enter in District 37 race, but no direct answer was given.

The other candidates' platforms were eerily similar to Rodriguez's. All of the campaigns list one contribution: "$2000 self-loans, presumably to pay the filing fee."

Even their email addresses were created with the same name and number sequence: "first initial, last name and district number and 2020," according to the publication. The candidates are also all affiliated with the same political action committee (PAC) known as Proclivity.