Florida GOP operatives face federal complaint over 'ghost candidate' scheme

On Thursday, the Miami Heraldreported that a watchdog group is demanding a Federal Election Commission investigation into the illegal 2020 scheme where Florida Republicans put "ghost" candidates on the ballot with the same last name as incumbent Democrats to trick voters into spoiling the election.

"Citing reports published in the Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times and the Orlando Sentinel, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said that the operatives pitched clients on a funding structure with the intent 'to illegally hide the identities of the true source or sources of contributions,'" reported Mary Ellen Klas. "By routing contributions through nonprofit entities they controlled to super PACs, they were able to steer hundreds of thousands of dollars into election-related activities without the public knowing who was behind it, the complaint said."

Operatives working with Florida Power & Light were found to have been part of the scheme, which influenced three state legislative races and unseated a Democrat in a Miami race.

"Such a so-called 'dark money' scheme violates the Federal Election Campaign Act, which requires the true source of political contributions to be disclosed and bars contributions in the name of another," said the report. "'When political contributions are made through dark money groups, the public is denied their right to know who is influencing their elections,' said CREW President Noah Bookbinder in a statement. 'Campaign finance laws are meant to ensure transparency in elections so that voters can make an informed decision based on all the facts.'"

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Such a finding of violations at the FEC could theoretically lead to a criminal referral to the Justice Department, although in recent years the bipartisan agency has routinely deadlocked along equally divided partisan lines, leading to non-enforcement in many cases.

"The complaint lists five nonprofits, tracks contributions totaling $1.27 million to federally registered super PACs in 2020 and names seven individuals," said the report. "Among the nonprofits cited in the complaint is Grow United, a political committee at the center of the so-called “ghost” candidate scandal which funded mailers promoting no-party candidates as part of a 2020 scheme to siphon votes from Democratic candidates in three state Senate races ... Grow United was chaired by Richard Alexander, the Alabama-based operative and associate of Jeff Pitts, a political consultant to FPL who ran Canopy Partners and previously led Matrix, an Alabama-based consulting firm."

The "ghost" candidate scheme has already led to criminal prosecutions at the state level. One of the candidates, along with a GOP political consultant and the former chairman of the Seminole County Republican Party, have been charged fraud, perjury, and straw donations in connection with the scheme.