One ledger shows more than $150,000 in spending related to “South Miami” in January and February 2018. And a third political committee, “Justice for Florida,” sent out ads promoting Stoddard’s opponent.Īll three of those committees were financed by separate dark-money nonprofits controlled by people working at the time at an Alabama-based political and consulting firm called Matrix LLC, according to the records obtained by the Sentinel.
One mailer, paid for by a committee called “SM First,” ridiculed Stoddard as “King Phil” and accused him of spending public money for “personal vendettas.” Another depicted an edited image of Stoddard alongside infamous sex offenders Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.Īt the same time, another political committee called “A Better Miami Dade” produced ads that quoted a South Miami commissioner claiming Stoddard had assaulted her and robocalls that featured a recorded message from the commissioner. FPL has denied its employees had any role in the ghost candidate scheme.Īs the mayor of South Miami, Phil Stoddard presided over a city of just 12,000 people when, in early 2018, his reelection campaign drew a blizzard of vicious dark-money attacks worthy of a governor’s race. Many details of the tactics - and the financial connections that link those using them - were exposed in late November, when the Orlando Sentinel was anonymously delivered a cache of checks, bank statements, emails, text messages, invoices, ledgers and more, covering the work of political consultants to FPL over a roughly four-year period between 20. The strategies have been revealed through a criminal investigation by prosecutors in Miami-Dade County - and by a bitter falling-out between political operatives who had been working for some of Florida’s largest companies, including FPL, sugar-grower Florida Crystals and phosphate-miner Mosaic Co. Their work often involves many of the same deceptive methods used in last year’s Senate races - passing money through daisy chains of dark-money groups, paying friends and family members to help cover their tracks, setting up sham grassroots groups and even intimidating opponents. A months-long investigation by the Orlando Sentinel has found that some of the architects of Florida’s ghost candidate scheme have guided behind-the-scenes campaigns to tilt elections and influence public policy all across the state.
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