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Artiles worked closely with GOP consulting firm during ‘ghost’ candidate scheme, documents indicate


On June 11 of last year, authorities say Frank Artiles met Alex Rodriguez in the parking lot of a Miami bank, where Artiles gave Rodriguez $2,000 in cash so his friend could open a campaign account and run as a sham candidate in an important state Senate election in South Florida.


Then, they say, Artiles told Rodriguez he had to rush to the airport so he could fly to Tallahassee and hand-deliver Rodriguez’s elections paperwork.


A month later, records show that Artiles billed Data Targeting Inc. — the political consulting firm that was at the same time being paid millions of dollars by state Republican leaders to run Senate campaigns — for the cost of a plane ticket that he’d purchased on June 11.


Artiles, a former Republican state senator who became a lobbyist and political consultant, is now awaiting trial on charges related to the sham-candidate scheme, in which authorities say Artiles bribed Rodriguez to put his name on the ballot as an independent candidate. A dark-money group then featured Rodriguez’s candidacy in advertisements prosecutors say were designed to siphon support from the Democratic candidate in the race — which the Republican candidate won by just 32 votes out of more than 210,000 cast.


Within days of submitting Rodriguez’s paperwork, Artiles was being paid $15,000 a month plus expenses by Data Targeting to work on South Florida Senate races, according to documents obtained by investigators in the case, which have been released in the past week as public records. The Gainesville-based firm oversaw Republican state Senate campaigns last year and worked directly with Senate President Wilton Simpson, one of the most powerful people in the state.


Two other Senate races — one in Central Florida and another in South Florida — also featured independent candidates who did no campaigning but were supported by nearly identical advertisements funded by the same dark-money group. The Republican candidate ultimately won in both of those races, too, helping the party retain its majority in the 40-member state Senate.


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