The general counsel for the Federal Elections Commission found “reason to believe” campaign laws were broken during Florida’s 2020 “ghost” candidate scandal, but Republicans on the elections panel blocked the probe from continuing, newly released documents reveal.
The probe responded to a complaint filed in 2022 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, alleging that dark-money groups seeking to boost the Florida GOP may have violated campaign laws in order to conceal political spending.
As reported by the Orlando Sentinel and other Florida news outlets, the groups’ apparent scheme involved funding phony progressive candidates to siphon votes away from Democrats and help elect Republicans, including Sen. Jason Brodeur of Sanford.
CREW’S complaint alleged those actions violated the Federal Election Campaign Act, which prohibits contributions made “in the name of another,” typically by funneling money intended to support a cause or candidate through other entities to conceal its true origins.
The review by the independent election commission, which is tasked with administering and enforcing campaign finance law, was based largely on the Florida news outlets’ reporting. The Sentinel’s reports showed the key dark-money group, Grow United, was part of a network of nonprofits active in Florida politics with ties to a political consulting firm in Alabama.
That firm, Matrix LLC, was involved at all levels of Florida politics, from influencing local mayoral and county commission elections to fighting attempts to reshape the state constitution and even gaining control of a Tallahassee-based political news website.
Much of Matrix’s work advanced the interests of Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest utility. FPL has denied any wrongdoing in its political activities.
The Sentinel linked Matrix’s operatives to Grow United, which in 2020 funded mailers promoting independent candidates in three competitive Florida Senate races.
The candidates didn’t campaign but the ads, orchestrated by GOP operatives, billed them as progressives who then competed for votes with Democrats. Republicans — Brodeur, along with Senators Ileana Garcia and Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez of Miami — won all three seats.
While the three Democratic members of the six-member Federal Elections Commission wanted to pursue the complaint further, the three Republicans did not. In order to open an investigation, four members need to find “reason to believe” the complaint has merit.
The general counsel for the commission wrote in 2023 that it found reason to believe that several of the organizations named in the complaint had indeed served as conduits and made contributions “in the name of another.”
However, while the agency’s counsel said the commission should investigate the dark money groups further, it said commissioners should take no action at this time against FPL and several other organizations and individuals named in the complaint.
In explaining their reasons for not wanting to press forward, the Republican members of the panel, Chairman Sean Cooksey and commissioners Allen Dickerson and James Trainor III, wrote that “the evidence for the wide-ranging conspiracy the complaint alleges is exceedingly thin.”
“We are forbidden from invoking the powers of the federal government based on drive-by analysis or mere insinuation,” the Republican members wrote.
Furthermore, the Republicans wrote, the complaint did not determine the original source of the money that funded the ads supporting the independent candidates. The subjects of the complaint, they added, categorically denied the allegations.
But the Democrats on the panel said the commission should proceed with the probe. Two of them, Vice Chair Ellen Weintraub and Commissioner Shana Broussard, signed a memo praising the Sentinel’s work and adding that the agency exists because of legislation prompted by investigative reporting into the Watergate scandal. Refusing to consider information gathered through reporting would be “ironic, ahistorical, and a serious departure from precedent and practice,” they wrote.
“The Sentinel’s reporting on this scheme was detailed and well-sourced, with the paper having internal emails and memoranda from the political consultants discussing the scheme in its possession,” Weintraub and Broussard wrote. “The Sentinel’s reporting provided a credible allegation of a significant violation that the conduit corporations made contributions in the name of another, warranting further investigation into the true source of the funds.”
Still, the refusal by the Republicans on the panel to dig further into the allegations was not surprising, said Stuart McPhail, the director of campaign finance litigation for CREW, adding that the commission frequently is gridlocked, preventing complaints from moving forward.
“The general counsel recognized the allegations were serious and credible,” McPhail said, adding, “Unfortunately as is almost always the case, it met a deadlock.”
anmartin@orlandosentinel.com
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