Early in the evening of Nov. 26, 2019, the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, a political consultant working for utility giant Florida Power & Light sent a pair of confidential documents to an email address created under the name “Theodore Hayes.”
“Attached is an updated funding memo along with a separate legal memo on federal elections support,” Jeff Pitts wrote. “Call if you have some time to discuss. [I’m] around all week and not doing anything.”
The memos laid out a proposal, written with help from one of Florida’s top law firms, for how FPL money could be filtered through a network of companies and nonprofits that would then make campaign contributions to politicians in Florida and around the country. One of the chief goals was secrecy — as one memo phrased it, to “minimize all public reporting of entities and activities.”
Even the email address to which Pitts sent the plan was crafted to obscure. “Theodore Hayes” was a pseudonym for the memos’ real recipient — Eric Silagy, FPL’s president and CEO.
It’s not clear if Pitts, then the CEO of Alabama-based political and communications firm Matrix LLC, put the plan into action. But experts say the complex and intentionally opaque spending plan — sent via an alias account to a senior executive at the biggest utility company in the country — is a vivid illustration of the lengths that political strategists and dark-money operatives go to cover their tracks and mask the sources of money being spent to influence elections and shape public policy.
Campaign finance records show entities linked to Matrix ultimately made at least $3 million in campaign contributions in 2020 — including providing $550,000 that was used by Republican strategists to promote independent “ghost” candidates in three battleground state Senate races.
Silagy did not respond to requests for comment. But FPL spokesperson David Reuter confirmed the pseudonym email account belonged to the executive. Reuter said the account was set up by Matrix and Silagy eventually decided it was unnecessary and stopped using it.
Reuter also said FPL found no evidence the company used Matrix’s proposed funding structure in 2020 — though emails show Silagy coordinated with Matrix on campaign contributions made through nonprofits in past elections.
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