MIAMI – A day after former State Senator Frank Artiles was found guilty of campaign finance and voter registration violations, the candidate who was the target of the scheme is speaking about it all.
Jose Javier Rodriguez is now the Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Labor Department.
“It is really important to get a measure of justice in this case,” he said.
Rodriguez was the incumbent Miami state senator targeted in 2020 when Artiles paid off a man named Alex Rodriguez to be a fake candidate -- with the same last name and phony flyer campaign -- to siphon votes from Jose Javier Rodriguez.
But why was he a target of a shill scheme funded by a powerful maze of dark money, powerbrokers up the Tallahassee food chain and Florida’s largest electricity monopoly, Florida Power & Light?
The then-senator was an environmental champion who wore rubber boots in the Capitol to call attention to sea level rise and worked to advance cleaner state energy policy.
“The same utilities that wanted to stop the clean energy work we were doing, as well as the work we were doing to try to make sure Florida was turning and squarely facing climate change,” said Jose Javier Rodriguez.
The illegal payments made Artiles a criminal.
The reporting and political consultant’s documents preceded the sudden resignation of FPL CEO Eric Silagy last year, though no one else up that shill scheme chain has been charged.
“The prosecutors and the jury shined a light on the corrupt practices,” Jose Javier Rodriguez said.