MIAMI — Frank Artiles, a Republican political operative suspected of secretly arranging a sham candidate to run in a key 2020 Florida state Senate race, surrendered to a Miami-Dade County jail Thursday to face felony campaign finance charges.
Artiles, himself a former state senator, was seen arriving at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, along with his lawyer.
His surrender came one day after the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office Public Corruption Task Force executed a search warrant at his Palmetto Bay house. Authorities are expected to announce details of the charges at a press conference later Thursday.
Artiles is facing several charges, including felony charges for making illegal contributions and false swearing in connection to the election, according to a copy of the arrest warrant. Prosecutors say Artiles offered Alexis "Alex" Pedro Rodriguez $50,000 to run in the race to "siphon votes from the incumbent," Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez. Half was to be paid during the election and the rest after the election, Alex Rodriguez told prosecutors.
The warrant states that the actual amount paid by Artiles to Alex Rodriguez before and after the election totaled $44,708.03.
The probe focused on Artiles' involvement with Alex Rodriguez, a longtime acquaintance and auto-parts dealer who last year entered a state Senate race to represent District 37, a large swath that includes downtown Miami, Coral Gables and Pinecrest. Alex Rodriguez is also facing criminal charges.
The race pitted former TV personality Ileana Garcia, a Republican, against incumbent Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democrat. Alex Rodriguez ran as an independent, did zero campaigning and took no calls from the media before the Nov. 3 election. But his candidacy was bolstered by deceptive political mail advertisements paid for by a dark money group whose address is a UPS store in Atlanta.
Jose Javier Rodriguez lost by just 32 votes after a three-day recount, and Alex Rodriguez's presence on the ballot was widely seen as a political ploy to confuse voters because of their shared last names and the dark money-sponsored political mailers.
Alex Rodriguez's candidacy immediately came under scrutiny by the Miami Herald and WPLG-TV.
Reporters found Alex Rodriguez had never before been a political candidate, and was a registered Republican just days before he filed to run with no party affiliation. He also listed a Palmetto Bay house as his address on his sworn candidate oath, even though he lived in a rented house in Boca Raton at that time.
In December, the Herald revealed that after the election, Artiles — over drinks at an Orlando-area Irish pub — loudly boasted about being behind the sham candidate. Sources have also told the Herald that he was extensively involved in arranging the so-called "siphoning strategy" to divert votes from the incumbent Democrat to a third candidate in the race.
The arrest Thursday is but the latest ignominy for Artiles. He resigned from the Senate in disgrace in 2017 amid two parallel scandals.
The first was an alcohol-fueled rant in which he called two Black lawmakers a racist slur in a Tallahassee bar. The second involved the hiring of a former Hooters "calendar girl" and a Playboy model with no political experience as "consultants" using funds from his political committee. Artiles is now a lobbyist.
