Trial in Florida ‘ghost candidate’ case set to begin

A criminal case that opened a window to a plot to help Republicans win important 2020 Florida Senate races by propping up fake progressive Senate candidates with shadowy money is headed to trial, with a South Florida political operative fighting the charges.

State prosecutors are expected to claim in court this week that former Miami state Sen. Frank Artiles, a Republican, masterminded a scheme to tilt the results of a tight race in Miami by recruiting and paying a straw candidate to siphon votes away from the Democratic incumbent. They’ll say Artiles puppeteered a machine parts salesman who never campaigned but still shaped the outcome of the race — garnering more than 6,000 votes as an independent thanks to anonymous financial support and his last name, which he shared with the incumbent.

After a recount, Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez lost his seat to Republican Ileana Garcia by 32 votes.

Artiles has pleaded not guilty to felony campaign finance violations and to submitting and swearing to false voter information. The man accused of accepting a bribe from Artiles in exchange for putting his name on the ballot has been fined $20,000 and formally reprimanded by Gov. Ron DeSantis for violating campaign finance laws in a separate ethics case.

Jury selection begins Monday. During expected opening statements, state prosecutors will lay out a timeline explaining how they say Artiles convinced Alexis Pedro Rodriguez to run for the legislative seat by promising him $50,000, most of which was secretly funneled to him in cash, gifts and purchases. They’ll say the former Marine and state senator coached the candidate on how to file his paperwork and change his party affiliation, and even used a credit card to cover tuition costs for the candidate’s daughter and bought him machine parts at a Caterpillar store.

But it was Artiles who was the stooge, his attorneys will argue. They intend to paint Alexis Rodriguez as the architect of a plot to bleed Artiles of tens of thousands of dollars and make the case that Rodriguez engineered a plan to profit from the sales of thousands of much-needed gloves and masks that Artiles managed to acquire when people were desperate during the early days of the pandemic.

Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Tim VanderGiesen, who will prosecute the case, chose not to comment for this story. Artiles’ defense attorney Jose Quiñon also declined to comment.

Whatever Artiles’ fate, his long-awaited tribunal is sure to titillate political observers: The alleged scheme, backed by hundreds of thousands of dollars from political sources, has connections to Senate Republicans’ top campaign consultant and is one of several ongoing criminal cases involving so-called “ghost candidates” recruited to run in the 2020 election and sold to voters under false premises.

Over the years, the public corruption investigation has roped prominent players in Florida politics into the spotlight as prosecutors at one point appeared to be targeting Republican and Democratic operatives for potential criminal charges. Artiles, however, remains the only operative facing pending criminal charges. A longtime politico avoided a trial in a similar case in Central Florida by pleading no contest to campaign fiance-related charges earlier this year.

The downfall and the ringer

In some ways, the origins of Artiles’ case trace back to his final days as a Florida senator in 2017, when he resigned after using racial slurs and sexist language in a heated discussion with two Black senators over drinks at the members-only Governors Club in Tallahassee.

Artiles, now 51, publicly apologized on the Senate floor, wanting to keep his seat. He ultimately stepped down under pressure as the Miami Herald prepared to publish a story that Artiles’ political committee had paid thousands of dollars in consulting fees to a Hooters waitress and a Playboy model with little to no political experience.

“It’s clear there are consequences to every action, and in this area, I will need time for personal reflection and growth,” Artiles wrote in his letter of resignation to Senate President Joe Negron.

Artiles spent the next three years working in property management and insurance and has continued as a lobbyist, mostly in Tallahassee. He openly talked for a time about a comeback but denied assertions from some of his former colleagues that he was still involved in politics.

Court records show he was.

Documents released as part of Artiles’ case show that in 2017, the year he resigned, Artiles’ Atlas Consulting received the first of a total of $125,000 in payments made over the following three years for “South Florida research services” from Data Targeting, a political organization led by a top Florida GOP consultant. Those payments continued until just after the election concluded. Court documents also show that he successfully shopped a contract in May 2020 with Florida Senate Republicans’ top campaign strategist, and pitched him on a plan to hurt Democrats by recruiting third-party candidates into key races.

“Knock yourself out,” the consultant, Pat Bainter, remembered telling Artiles.

Documents laid out in Artiles’ case show that on May 15, he sent a 4 a.m. Facebook message to Alexis Rodriguez, an old acquaintance with whom he hadn’t spoken in more than a year: “Call me after 12 noon …. I have a question for you?”

Rodriguez, who agreed to testify against Artiles as part of a plea deal in his own case, says the former lawmaker offered him $50,000 during a meeting at his home to run as an independent in Senate District 37, a large swath that runs through the southern heart of Miami-Dade County. Rodriguez says he was strapped for cash, so he agreed.

Artiles’ 25-page arrest affidavit claims he told Rodriguez he wouldn’t have to do any campaigning, and that Artiles coached Rodriguez on how to fill out the paperwork needed to become a candidate — even instructing him to lie about his address and say he was still living in a Palmetto Bay home that he had, in fact, sold years earlier.

In the process, they say Artiles made illegal campaign contributions and encouraged Rodriguez to commit perjury by falsifying paperwork, prosecutors say. Artiles even flew to Tallahassee to deposit Rodriguez’s qualifying check.

Over the next few months, according to prosecutors, Artiles made repeated payments to Alexis Rodriguez of between $3,000 and $5,000, documenting the transactions. In total, prosecutors allege, Artiles funneled $44,708.03 to Rodriguez in cash and gifts, using his credit card to purchase machinery and, once, to cover $6,798.39 in tuition fees for Rodriguez’s daughter. Yet another time, prosecutors say, Artiles’ brother-in-law took Alexis Rodriguez to his bank, where he withdrew $9,000 and gave it to him to help pay legal fees.

The relationship was fraught, according to Artiles’ indictment. Rodriguez believed Artiles was holding back money he was owed, so he began finding ways to squeeze more money out of the former state senator. At one point, prosecutors say Rodriguez got Artiles to cut a $10,900 check to his business by telling him he had found a Range Rover for Artiles’ daughter, though the vehicle didn’t exist. In another, Rodriguez charged Artiles’ credit card for purchases for his company without permission.

Meanwhile, though Rodriguez didn’t actively campaign, he was promoted to voters in mail advertisements as a progressive Democrat, which prosecutors say was part of a scheme to tilt the race and confuse voters about which Rodriguez they wanted to support.

Bigger picture

Artiles’ effort to recruit no-party-affiliated candidates into competitive races wasn’t limited to just the Senate District 37 race, nor was it done in complete secrecy.

He also helped the owner of the spa where he was a regular customer receiving facials and back waxings to run as an independent candidate in Senate District 39, representing southwest Miami-Dade. A search warrant shows that investigators found campaign paperwork for candidate Celso Alfonso at Artiles’ home, and Alfonso’s wife said during a deposition that Artiles coached them through the process of changing his voter registration from Republican and filing to launch a campaign.

Alfonso, who garnered a few thousand votes in a race won handily by the Republican candidate, has not been accused of wrongdoing, nor has Artiles been charged with any crimes in relation to Alfonso’s candidacy.

Late last year, Alfonso was fined $250 for a financial disclosure violation in connection to the 2020 election.

In Seminole County, a third “ghost candidate,” Jestine Iannotti, was charged along with two other defendants in relation to her own 2020 senate campaign in Senate District 9. She testified in the 2022 trial of Seminole County operative Ben Paris, whom she said recruited her to run and connected her with a handler. Paris was found guilty of making a straw donation to her campaign. Iannotti has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges.

All three candidates — Alfonso, Iannotti and Rodriguez — were promoted by a political committee that, according to court records released as part of Artiles’ prosecution, received $550,000 from a network of dark-money groups tied to senior GOP consultants and big business. Several consultants received “target letters” informing them that they were under scrutiny of investigators in 2021, but have not been charged with any crimes. The judge presiding over Artiles’ case shot down an effort to make public the donors to the groups funding the campaigns.

“This prosecution represents more than just the prosecution of the alleged theft of a South Florida Senate seat in 2020,” said South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez, the losing Democrat in the Senate District 39 race. Fernandez, now mayor in South Miami, said a guilty verdict would send a message to GOP operatives, leaders and financiers “that there are consequences to cheating.”

Artiles’ case, however, may not go beyond Artiles’ work in the Senate District 37 campaign, or delve into whether anyone above Artiles’ head shoulders any criminal responsibility for schemes to tilt different elections — even though Artiles was being paid in 2020 to work for Republicans on Senate campaigns.

“Paying money to fake candidates is one of the worst types of election fraud on the voters,” said Juan-Carlos Planas, the attorney who represented Jose Javier Rodriguez during the 2020 recount in his Senate race. “Actions like this hurt our democracy and should never be tolerated.”

Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.