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      G.O.P. Group Warns Donors Not to Opt Out of Monthly Donations

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      The National Republican Congressional Committee says to donors who opt out of recurring monthly donations: “We will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”The political arm of House Republicans is deploying a prechecked box to enroll donors into repeating monthly donations — and using ominous language to warn them of the consequences if they opt out: “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”The language appears to be an effort by the National Republican Congressional Committee to increase its volume of recurring donations, which are highly lucrative, while invoking former President Donald J. Trump’s popularity with the conservative base. Those donors who do not proactively uncheck the box will have their credit cards billed or bank accounts deducted for donations every month.The prechecked recurring box on the N.R.C.C.’s WinRed donation pageThe prechecked box is the same tactic and tool that resulted in a surge of refunds and credit card complaints when used by Mr. Trump’s campaign last year, according to an investigation published by The New York Times over the weekend. The Trump operation made the language inside its prechecked boxes increasingly opaque as the election neared. Consumer advocates and user-interface designers said the prechecked boxes were a “dark pattern” intended to deceive Mr. Trump’s supporters.The Trump operation issued more than $122 million in refunds in the 2020 cycle, which was 10.7 percent of what Mr. Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts raised. Refunds increased as the campaign began prechecking the boxes, which at one point withdrew donations every week as well as introduced a “money bomb” that doubled a contribution.After the Times investigation, the R.N.C., the party’s central organization, adjusted the language on its own donation portal, which is linked to in its fund-raising emails and from its home page, to make it clearer that repeat donations would be withdrawn.“Keep this box checked to make this a monthly recurring donation,” says the new language in bold.The box remains prechecked, and the R.N.C. declined to comment on the change.The new disclosure language in the Republican National Committee’s prechecked recurring donation box.Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the N.R.C.C., said the committee “employs the same standards that are accepted and utilized by Democrats and Republicans across the digital fund-raising ecosystem.”The prechecked box is a tool provided by WinRed, the for-profit Republican donation platform founded in 2019. The Democratic platform, ActBlue, also allows some groups to precheck recurring donation boxes, including the political arm of House Democrats, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.The D.C.C.C. noted that it has a pop-up window telling donors who made a recurring donation that they did so immediately after the contribution is processed. “Unlike the N.R.C.C., we use clear language and confirm with our grass-roots supporters that they would like to set up a recurring monthly donation,” said Helen Kalla, a D.C.C.C. spokeswoman.The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative news site, first reported a different version of a prechecked box that the N.R.C.C. was using on Wednesday, which said: “Check this box if you want Trump to run again. Uncheck this box if you do NOT stand with Trump.”Political parties and campaigns typically test multiple language options to see which net the most donors. The “DEFECTOR” warning appears on the donation page linked from the N.R.C.C.’s home page.It seems highly unlikely any such list of defectors would ever actually be presented to Mr. Trump. Last month, Mr. Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to the N.R.C.C. and other Republican Party committees warning them not to use his name or likeness to raise money.The language on the N.R.C.C.’s donation portal appears relatively new, although the prechecked box has been there before, according to records preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.In March, the recurring box read, “Trump said he’ll run for President if we win back the House! If every Patriot makes their donation monthly, Republicans WIN.”Mr. Trump has not said that. More

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      How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations

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      Online donors were guided into weekly recurring contributions. Demands for refunds spiked. Complaints to banks and credit card companies soared. But the money helped keep Donald Trump’s struggling campaign afloat.Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500.It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr. Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell, for help.What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud.“It felt,” Russell said, “like it was a scam.”But what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors, for every week until the election.Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.“Bandits!” said Victor Amelino, a 78-year-old Californian, who made a $990 online donation to Mr. Trump in early September via WinRed. It recurred seven more times — adding up to almost $8,000. “I’m retired. I can’t afford to pay all that damn money.”The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final two and a half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.The recurring donations swelled Mr. Trump’s treasury in September and October, just as his finances were deteriorating. He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.In effect, the money that Mr. Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.Russell Blatt’s brother, Stacy, who was a supporter of Mr. Trump, died of cancer in February. Katie Currid for The New York TimesMarketers have long used ruses like prechecked boxes to steer American consumers into unwanted purchases, like magazine subscriptions. But consumer advocates said deploying the practice on voters in the heat of a presidential campaign — at such volume and with withdrawals every week — had much more serious ramifications.“It’s unfair, it’s unethical and it’s inappropriate,” said Ira Rheingold, the executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.Harry Brignull, a user-experience designer in London who coined the term “dark patterns” for manipulative digital marketing practices, said the Trump team’s techniques were a classic of the “deceptive design” genre.“It should be in textbooks of what you shouldn’t do,” he said.Political strategists, digital operatives and campaign finance experts said they could not recall ever seeing refunds at such a scale. Mr. Trump, the R.N.C. and their shared accounts refunded far more money to online donors in the last election cycle than every federal Democratic candidate and committee in the country combined.Over all, the Trump operation refunded 10.7 percent of the money it raised on WinRed in 2020; the Biden operation’s refund rate on ActBlue, the parallel Democratic online donation-processing platform, was 2.2 percent, federal records show.How Refunds to Trump Donors Soared in 2020Refunds are shown as the percentage of money received by each operation to date via WinRed and ActBlue. More

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      Here's How Democrats' Voting Rights Law Would Work

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      The expansive measure would set a nationwide floor on ballot access, nullify many voting restrictions, change the way political districts are drawn and rein in campaign donations.The far-reaching voting rights measure that Democrats are pressing to enact, known as the For the People Act, was more a political statement than serious legislation when lawmakers first proposed it in 2019.The bill, clocking in at 818 pages, includes a laundry list of Democratic priorities like expanded ballot access, tighter controls on political money and support for District of Columbia statehood. It had no chance of becoming law when Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House.But with Democrats in power, the wish list has become a potentially historic law and the most pervasive overhaul of federal election rules in recent memory. Republicans have assailed it as a Democratic effort to rig the political system in their favor, even as some privately acknowledge that the bill’s broad aims are overwhelmingly popular, even among conservatives.President Biden and Democrats portray the bill as the civil rights imperative of modern times and call it essential to shoring up a shaky democracy. But many of them privately concede that some of its provisions, like restrictions on political money, have opponents in their own ranks.Here is a summary of some of the central elements of the measure:The bill would set a national floor for ballot access.Should it become law, the legislation would effectively set a national floor on ballot access, requiring all federal elections to start with an identical set of rules. States and other federal jurisdictions could tweak them to provide more access, but not less. Some states like Colorado and Minnesota have rules that are more generous that the bill mandates; others, like Texas and Tennessee, make it much harder to register and vote than the bill envisions.Jurisdictions could ignore the rules for state and local elections, but as a practical matter, the new requirements would most likely apply to all voting.Some Republicans charge that the bill would rig the voting rules in favor of Democrats. But Republican officials have been working for the past decade to restrict ballot access in ways that make it harder to vote for minority groups that traditionally favor Democrats.Beyond the civic benefits of greater participation in elections, it is clear that expanding voting to more people would benefit both parties. Indeed, as Republicans have increasingly appealed to lower-income and less-educated voters, some experts say the restrictions that they have imposed may actually be cutting into turnout by the party’s loyalists.Many Republican states have had one or more of the voting provisions for years with no indication that they disproportionately favor one party.The measure makes it much easier to register to vote.All voters would be able to register, designate party affiliations, change addresses and de-register online; 40 states and the District of Columbia offer some or all of those options. Voters would also be automatically registered when visiting state or federal agencies unless they explicitly decline, similar to what has been required of most states — but not always carried out — by the federal “motor-voter law” that passed in 1993. Voters could also register when they cast a ballot, either on Election Day or during early voting, as is already the case in 21 states.Early voting would be expanded nationwide, with all jurisdictions offering it for 15 days, for 10 hours daily, at easily accessible polling places. All but a handful of states allow early voting; the average early-ballot period is 19 days, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The bill would also require jurisdictions to provide at least one secure ballot drop box for every 20,000 voters.Mail voting would be extended nationwide, and states would have to prepay postage and electronically track ballots so voters know when their ballots arrive and whether they have mistakes that need to be fixed.It would defang many voting restrictions imposed by Republicans.Republicans have won enactment of voter-ID laws in most states by arguing that they are needed to combat fraud, even though the sort of in-person fraud that such rules would discourage is all but nonexistent. The bill would effectively nullify such laws, allowing voters to sign affidavits swearing to their identities rather than showing ID.The measure would also require that voters be notified at least a week before an election if their polling places have changed, and order steps to reduce long lines. Voting rights activists and specialists argue that turnout falls when polling locations are closed or changed.The legislation also tries to beat back rules adopted by some states, including Texas and New Hampshire, that make it more difficult for college students to vote. It would designate universities as voter-registration agencies and offer nonpartisan assistance to students who cast absentee ballots.Under the bill, states would be barred from taking voters off the rolls because they had not participated in recent elections, a practice that the Supreme Court upheld in 2018. Critics argue that the practice is aimed at reducing turnout.It would also restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences, cementing into law a practice that states have increasingly adopted but some, such as Florida, have resisted.Partisan gerrymandering would end.Among other redistricting changes, the bill would mandate that political maps be drawn by nonpartisan commissions, not by state legislatures. If a legislature refused to approve a map, a three-judge federal panel would take over drafting.A number of states have established such commissions in recent years, including Ohio and Colorado, but removing politics from political maps has proved difficult. Critics say Arizona’s Republican governor has stacked the selection process for that state’s commission, and the composition of Colorado’s new commission also has come under fire. The legislation lays out detailed instructions for choosing panel members.Political contributions would be reined in.The legislation tries to stop the flow of money to campaigns from abroad by requiring political committees to report foreign contacts, outlawing the use of shell companies to launder foreign contributions and barring foreigners from advising PACs on contributions and other political efforts. These moves and other requirements are direct responses to Russian efforts to support Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign.The most contentious provisions would pull back the veil over so-called dark political money, whose donors are secret, and regulate independent political expenditures — mostly spending that is not expressly coordinated with a candidate — by corporations.Those provisions would counter the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that independent expenditures are a form of free speech protected by the Constitution. The ruling effectively allowed nonprofit groups to spend unlimited amounts of money — $750 million in 2020, according to the advocacy group OpenSecrets — to support or oppose candidates or causes while keeping donors anonymous.Public corporations would require approval by boards of directors and shareholders for independent expenditures and some other political spending over $50,000.The bill would also require nonprofit groups spending money on elections or judicial nominations to disclose the donor of any contribution over $10,000 and ban shifting money between groups to disguise a donor’s identity. It would also address the growing use of political advertising on the internet, requiring for the first time that ads disclose their sponsors and that online companies keep a public list of political advertising buyers.Finally, the measure would set up new funds to match small donations to Senate and presidential candidates. The money, raised through fines on corporate lawbreakers and tax cheats, would be available only to candidates who reject political donations of more than $1,000. More

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      5 Takeaways From the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

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      As Andrew Yang appears to be solidifying his role as the front-runner in the contest, his Democratic rivals have begun to focus their lines of attack on him.Since even before he officially entered the New York City mayoral contest, Andrew Yang has attracted more criticism from his rivals than any other contender in the sprawling field, a reflection of both missteps he has made and, as the race has unfolded, his standing as the leading candidate.Last week, the criticisms became even sharper, signaling the beginning of a more intense phase of the campaign.Here are the race’s latest developments:The candidates take direct aim at YangPart of Mr. Yang’s appeal to his supporters is his willingness to shed the conventions of political caution and speak frankly — a trait that sometimes gets him in trouble.The most recent example came last week, when Mr. Yang, in an interview with Politico, criticized the United Federation of Teachers, suggesting that the union was “a significant reason why our schools have been slow” to open amid the pandemic.The remarks drew pointed criticism from Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, as well as more muted criticism from other candidates, as they defended the work teachers have done under challenging circumstances. They are all also aware that the union’s coveted endorsement is still up for grabs.Mr. Stringer — who trails Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams in the little public polling available — laced into Mr. Yang in perhaps his most direct and sustained attack to date, seeking to cast his rival as an unserious candidate at a moment of significant challenges for the city — and appearing to make a barely veiled comparison to former President Donald J. Trump.“Whether it’s an illegal casino on Governors Island, housing for TikTok stars or being baffled by parents who live and work in two-bedroom apartments, kids in virtual school, we don’t need another leader who tweets first and thinks later,” he said in a Friday morning speech. He also noted that Mr. Yang had spent much of the pandemic outside the city before deciding to run for mayor.Mr. Stringer, Mr. Adams and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, have also been critical of the details around Mr. Yang’s proposal for basic income — and on Twitter, exchanges between strategists for Mr. Yang and Mr. Stringer in particular have become even more contentious.“Andrew Yang is going to keep talking to New Yorkers about his plans to get the city safely reopen and people back to work as fast as we can,” said Chris Coffey, Mr. Yang’s co-campaign manager, about the mounting attacks. “We’ll leave the tired, 1990s negative campaigning to others.”Candidates reluctant to decriminalize all drugsThis year, Oregon became the first state in the nation to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of all drugs. If the next mayor of New York City has his or her way, the city may finally open sites to allow for the safer injection of drugs. But based on responses at a recent forum, mayoral candidates do not favor following Oregon’s lead on full-scale decriminalization.“I do have concerns about the devastation I’ve seen with highly, highly addictive and deadly drugs, where even small amounts can have life-altering consequences and even cause death,” said Shaun Donovan, a former cabinet member in the Obama administration, citing fentanyl as an example.Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, echoed Mr. Donovan’s concerns and expressed particular unease with cocaine, saying, “Back in the day, when it was super- popular in the ’80s, we had young basketball players who died of heart attacks after their first use.”Maya Wiley, the former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, avoided directly addressing the issue. Mr. Adams was forthright in his opposition, though he said he supports legalizing marijuana.“You guys know I’m ex-po-po,” said Mr. Adams, the former head of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, using an expression to describe a police officer.The candidates’ responses seemed to elicit some frustration from one of the moderators, Alyssa Aguilera, co-executive director of VOCAL-NY, which hosted the forum.“Drugs have always been illegal, and the devastation and the overdoses are continuing to happen,” she said. “Clearly 40 years of that hasn’t worked, and we’re hopeful that the next mayor will take a different approach.”The only candidates to offer more support for the idea were Mr. Yang — who favors the legalization of psilocybin mushrooms — and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive running to the far left in the Democratic primary.“We need to move towards that, in response to the war on drugs,” Ms. Morales said, referring to the decriminalization of all personal drug possession.Friends with moneyNorman Lear, the creator of the television show “All in the Family,” was among a few Hollywood-related donors to Maya Wiley’s campaign. David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesThe latest campaign filing revealed that Ms. Wiley has many friends in Hollywood.The former MSNBC analyst received donations recently from the director Steven Spielberg; Norman Lear, the creator of the television show “All in the Family”; Alan Horn, the former head of Walt Disney Studios; and Christopher Guest, the director of beloved mockumentaries like “Best in Show.”Mr. Yang received a $2,000 donation from Jessica Seinfeld, wife of the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and had support from two snack magnates: Siggi Hilmarsson, the founder of Siggi’s yogurt, and Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of KIND bars.Mr. Adams has the most money on hand — more than $7.5 million — but Ms. Morales has the most individual donors in New York City. Ms. Morales has received smaller donations from more than 9,000 New Yorkers, and said she expects to qualify for public matching funds — a major boost for her campaign.Several candidates in the Democratic field have pledged not to take money from the real estate industry, but Mr. Adams is not one of them. He received donations from Brett Herschenfeld and Harrison Sitomer, two leaders of SL Green, the powerful commercial real estate company. A PAC affiliated with Madison Square Garden also donated $2,000 to his campaign.In the Republican field, Sara Tirschwell, a former Wall Street executive, has raised about $320,000, while Fernando Mateo, a restaurant operator, raised nearly $200,000. They are far behind the Democratic candidates.Donovan vs. The Wall Street JournalEvery election cycle, candidates perform the campaign ritual of visiting prominent newspapers’ editorial boards to discuss their ideas. The meetings are normally closed-door affairs, but Mr. Donovan has made his interview with The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board a public part of his campaign.Mr. Donovan’s campaign distributed a news release and video of his remarks to The Journal, criticizing the editorial board for “turning a blind eye to the racist and un-American” remarks by Mr. Trump that he suggested may have contributed to the shootings in Atlanta where eight people, including six women of Asian descent, were killed.The board, Mr. Donovan said, had shown a “willful disregard” for Mr. Trump’s “racist and hateful remarks about immigrants, about Asian-Americans, calling this virus the ‘Kung Flu,’ and the contribution that has to the hate crimes we have seen, even yesterday in Atlanta.”Mr. Donovan, speaking out against violence against Asian-Americans at the headquarters of the National Action Network in Harlem last week, mentioned his visit to The Journal’s editorial board and his criticism of how the board had normalized Mr. Trump’s racist remarks.“We need to stop explaining away the hate behind these crimes, these crimes that we’re living with because of what we’ve seen in the White House and across the country these last four years, and call them what they really are, acts of terror,” Mr. Donovan said.Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal, strongly disagreed with Mr. Donovan’s remarks. The board had been critical of Mr. Trump around immigration and his response to a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where Heather D. Heyer, 32, was killed after a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, he said.“I can point you to any number of pieces where we took his falsehoods on, and I can point you to any number of pieces where Donald Trump, tweets and everything else, was most unhappy with our coverage,” Mr. Gigot said before moving the conversation back to the topic at hand.The story behind Yang’s omnipresent scarfMr. McGuire is a proud self-described “sneakerhead” who can sometimes be spotted in red-soled Air Jordans — the 11 Retro (Bred) edition that can retail for a few hundred dollars.Ms. Wiley often favors the color purple.But few candidates seem as attached to any item of clothing as Mr. Yang is to his scarves — a gift from his wife, Evelyn.The three identical orange and blue Paul Smith scarves, which she bought on sale for $95 each from countryattire.us (a store she found via Google), evoke the colors of both the New York Mets and New York City’s flag.“She said, ‘Hey, this is going to be your new scarf,’ and I said, ‘Fantastic,’” Mr. Yang recalled.The scarf has fast become Mr. Yang’s signature fashion accessory, along with a black mask emblazoned with “Yang for New York” in white letters across the mouth.Ms. Yang wanted Mr. Yang to have a “splash of color,” he said, one that was “going to be identifiable and preferably somewhat New York-related.” More

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      How a Sham Candidate Helped Flip a Florida Election

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      The candidate and the man who prosecutors say recruited him to play spoiler in a Florida Senate race last year were both arrested this week.MIAMI — The recruitment of the sham candidate began with a Facebook message at around 4 a.m. on May 15, 2020. “Call me,” a Florida legislator turned lobbyist wrote to an old friend. “I have a question for you.”Later that day, former State Senator Frank Artiles, a Republican, asked Alexis Pedro Rodriguez by phone whether he still owned a home in the suburban Miami village of Palmetto Bay. Because in that case, Mr. Artiles wanted something else: to put his friend’s property and last name to use in the upcoming election.The incumbent Democrat, State Senator José Javier Rodríguez, was on the ballot. And Mr. Artiles, a crafty political operator with a dubious reputation, had a plan: to plant his friend as a candidate and siphon off votes that could defeat Senator Rodríguez.The plan worked, setting off one of Florida’s most brazen electoral scandals in years — even by the heady standards of a state that has long been fertile ground for political scammers. What is still uncertain is how broad the scandal is, whether it had touched other races and whether it was part of an organized effort by Republicans or an interest group to sway legislative races.Mr. Rodriguez, a machine-parts dealer who had been struggling financially, agreed to help Mr. Artiles, who promised him $50,000 in return. He switched from Republican to no party affiliation and qualified for the ballot as Alex Rodriguez. He did not disclose that he actually lived far from the district, in Boca Raton, or that the money for his candidacy came from Mr. Artiles.In November, Senator Rodríguez, an effective legislator who had crusaded for Florida to face the climate change crisis, lost to the Republican challenger, Ileana Garcia, by a mere 32 votes out of more than 215,000 that had been cast. Alex Rodriguez had received 6,382 votes and played the spoiler.It was a devastating loss for Florida Democrats in a year of Republican successes in the state. It was also the result of criminal behavior, prosecutors say.On Thursday, Mr. Artiles, 47, and Mr. Rodriguez, 55, turned themselves in for arrest. They were each charged with three third-degree felony charges related to violating campaign finance law, including for conspiracy to make campaign contributions in excess of legal limits, making those excess contributions and false swearing in connection to an election.Mr. Artiles declined to comment to a scrum of reporters who chased him out of jail on Thursday once he posted a $5,000 bond. “This will be decided in the courts, thank you,” he said.His lawyer, Greg Chonillo, said in a statement on Friday that his client, whose home was raided by investigators on Wednesday, had been cooperative with prosecutors “throughout the course of this investigation.”“We will be investigating this matter fully and zealously, representing our client in court against these charges,” Mr. Chonillo said.Mr. Artiles planned to use Alex Rodriguez as a candidate that would siphon votes away from State Senator José Javier Rodríguez, causing him to lose.Steve Cannon/Associated PressThe story of how Mr. Artiles plotted the scheme, according to the arrest documents, is a classic South Florida racket complete with the sale of a nonexistent Range Rover and wads of cash stored in a home safe.But it leaves unanswered the questions of where the money for the scheme came from — the Republican Senate president said the party had nothing to do with it — and whether the funds were tied to secretive dark money that oozed through two other State Senate races last year. Republicans have controlled the state government for more than two decades.On Friday, Democrats called for campaign finance reform — and for the resignation of Ms. Garcia so that a new election could be held. “Her victory is clearly tainted,” said Manny Diaz, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party.Prosecutors said they had found no ties between her and the scheme by Mr. Artiles and Mr. Rodriguez. On Friday, State Senator Wilton Simpson, the state’s Senate president, issued a joint statement with Ms. Garcia saying that they “support the ongoing efforts of law enforcement.”“Senator Garcia has the full support of President Simpson as she continues to serve her constituents,” the statement said.South Florida has an ignominious history of political and electoral shenanigans, both high profile — fraud that was so rampant in a Miami mayoral election in 1997 that a judge threw out the results — and low rent, such as small-time brokers getting caught unlawfully harvesting absentee ballots.In 2012, former Representative David Rivera, a Republican, was involved in a shadow campaign to try to hurt the electoral chances of his Democratic rival, Joe Garcia. The recruited candidate and Mr. Rivera’s ex-girlfriend, who acted as a go-between, wound up in jail. Mr. Rivera, who was never charged, last month was ordered to pay the Federal Election Commission a $456,000 fine.On Thursday, Katherine Fernández Rundle, the state attorney for Miami-Dade County, a Democrat, noted that recruiting a sham candidate to deliberately influence an election was not illegal, unless the candidate was also secretly financed.“Is it an attack on our democracy? Is it a dirty political trick?” she said. “Absolutely.”At the center of the latest scandal is Mr. Artiles (pronounced are-TEE-less), who before his arrest this week was perhaps best known in Tallahassee, the state’s capital, for resigning from the Senate in 2017, after he cursed at and used a racist slur before a group of Black lawmakers. His political committee had spent money on “consultants” who were models from Hooters and Playboy without any campaign experience. He once denied punching a college student at a bar near the Capitol.His involvement in recruiting the sham candidate for the Senate District 37 race last year became public in December, when The Miami Herald reported that Mr. Artiles had boasted about planting Mr. Rodriguez on the ballot to a crowd at an election night party held at an Irish pub in Seminole County. “That is me, that was all me,” The Herald quoted Mr. Artiles as saying, citing an anonymous source who was present.Employees and campaign observers working on a manual recount for Florida’s Senate District 37 election between Ileana Garcia and José Javier Rodríguez, at the Miami-Dade Elections Department in November.David Santiago/Miami Herald, via Associated PressThe furor around Mr. Rodriguez’s suspicious candidacy had begun after Election Day, when the results separating Senator Rodríguez and Ms. Garcia, a founder of the group Latinas for Trump, were so tight that they led to a manual recount.Local reporters in Tallahassee, Orlando and Miami found that Mr. Rodriguez along with two mysterious under-the-radar candidates in two other Senate races, one in the Miami area and one in Seminole County, were all likely plants. (Results in the other races were not close.)Politico Florida tied the three candidates to dark money from two political committees that had sent hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of attack fliers to voters during the campaign. The only donor reported was an entity that listed a UPS box in Atlanta as its mailing address. The committees amended their financial reports after Election Day, changing the source of the money to a different donor, this time in Colorado.Investigators with Miami-Dade County’s public corruption investigations unit began sniffing around on Nov. 11, eight days after the election.“It was suspicious that Rodriguez did not appear to have actively campaigned,” Detective Eutimio Cepero of the Miami Police Department wrote in one of the arrest documents. “Additionally, it was learned that political committees were spending money in support of Rodriguez’s candidacy, even though Rodriguez did not actively campaign.”Investigators found that Mr. Artiles ultimately paid $44,708 to Mr. Rodriguez in violation of the state’s $1,000 campaign contribution limit for legislative races. The payments came in various forms, including payments of $3,000 and then $5,000 that Mr. Artiles had stored in his home safe and recorded in a ledger on his desk as well as $2,400 that Mr. Artiles had wired to Mr. Rodriguez’s landlord.There was much distrust between Mr. Artiles and Mr. Rodriguez, who told investigators he thought Mr. Artiles would not come through with the money he had promised him. At one point, when Mr. Artiles was looking for a used Range Rover to buy his daughter, Mr. Rodriguez concocted a story about finding one in Jacksonville for $10,900. Mr. Artiles paid Mr. Rodriguez for the car, even though it did not exist. (That money was not considered by prosecutors as part of Mr. Artiles’s payments to Mr. Rodriguez for his candidacy.)But where Mr. Artiles got so much cash is still unknown.“Frank Artiles is not a lone wolf,” said William R. Barzee, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez. “Over half a million dollars was spent by political operatives working in the shadows to prop up ghost candidates in three separate Senate races, all in one cycle. This was a well-thought-out, calculated and coordinated plan to steal Senate seats throughout Florida.”The “greatest beneficiary of these actions,” Mr. Barzee added, “is the Republican Party of Florida.”Mr. Simpson, the Senate president who ran the Republican Senate campaigns in 2020, has said that he had nothing to do with the effort. “I think we don’t have all the facts,” he told reporters in Tallahassee on Thursday. “We’re learning what you’re learning as you report it.”“I hope this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said former State Representative Juan-Carlos Planas, known as J.C., who was Senator Rodríguez’s lawyer during the recount and who himself once fought a candidate who had been planted against him: his second cousin, who appeared on the Republican primary ballot as Juan E. “J.P.” Planas.Senator Rodríguez, 42, lamented that weak enforcement mechanisms continue to allow questionable candidates to make it on the ballot.“It’s a shame that it has to reach this level of criminality for there to be any kind of consequence, because this is not the first time these types of schemes have been put together,” he said. “But this is the Wild West here in Florida.” More

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      A Father’s Gift to a Mayoral Candidate: A $1 Million Super PAC

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      Super PACs for two candidates raised millions of dollars to help their chances in the New York City mayor’s race. One, for Shaun Donovan, was bankrolled by his father.With New York City’s mayoral primary a little more than three months away and a deadline to qualify for the city’s generous matching-funds program having just passed, pleas for donations have been in overdrive in recent days.But in the background, another spigot of money has quietly opened for two Democratic mayoral candidates who are trailing in early polls: Raymond J. McGuire and Shaun Donovan.An independent expenditure committee for Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, has garnered more than $3 million since Feb. 1, with more than 70 donations from business magnates, including Kenneth Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot; the art world philanthropist Agnes Gund; and the real estate developer Aby J. Rosen.A new super PAC for Mr. Donovan, a former cabinet member in the Obama administration, in contrast, has drawn $1.02 million from just two donors — the primary benefactor being his father, Michael Donovan, an executive in the ad tech industry who donated $1 million.In an interview, Mr. Donovan, the candidate’s father, said he was trying to “level the playing field,” particularly since some candidates began raising money before they even declared they were running for mayor.“I can’t give very much to Shaun directly, and seeing the amount of money McGuire had raised and all these other people, I felt he needed enough to go out and compete and get the message across,” Mr. Donovan said.The two super PACs are among several seeking to influence the race for mayor, the most important election in recent city history.Business-friendly organizations, motivated by the leftward tilt of some candidates in the Democratic field, have already raised millions of dollars. The billionaire developer Stephen M. Ross is rallying fellow business leaders to commit tens of millions of dollars in an effort to push moderate Democrats to vote in the June 22 mayoral primary and “change the future course of the city.”Progressive groups are also involved, creating their own super PACs to supplement their on-the-ground efforts and social media campaigns.The super PACs supporting Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan hauled in more than their respective campaigns raised during the most recent city filing period, which began in January. Mr. Donovan, who ran Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s housing agency before joining President Barack Obama’s cabinet as budget director and housing secretary, is participating in the city’s public funding program. Mr. McGuire, a former vice chairman at Citi and one of the highest-ranking African-Americans on Wall Street, is not.The super PAC supporting Mr. McGuire, New York for Ray, plans to spend its bounty on advertising — television, digital and print — “in an effort to cut through the clutter and introduce a larger number of voters to Ray McGuire, his story and inclusive plans to revitalize and rebuild New York City,’’ said Quentin Fulks, the group’s executive director.Kenneth I. Chenault, the former chairman and C.E.O. of American Express, who, with his wife, Kathryn, donated $250,000 to the super PAC for Mr. McGuire, said he had known Mr. McGuire since they attended Harvard University together and that he wanted to help him get his name out.“We’re convinced that he can be a strong leader,” Mr. Chenault said, adding that it was “important for people to understand Ray’s story and to hear Ray’s story. We think it’s compelling and that’s why we’re doing it.”Brittany Wise, the treasurer for the super PAC supporting Mr. Donovan, New Start N.Y.C., did not specify how the funds would be spent, saying only that the group would promote Mr. Donovan as having “the experience to tackle Covid, racial equity, and affordable housing and move New York City forward.”Perhaps inevitably in the small world of political professionals, both super PACs are staffed and funded by people whose circles overlap with the campaigns.Ms. Wise worked on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2013 campaign with Bill Hyers, who served as Mr. de Blasio’s campaign manager and is now advising Mr. Donovan’s campaign.Kimberly Peeler-Allen, who is helping to run Mr. McGuire’s super PAC, co-founded Higher Heights for America, an organization that aims to elevate Black women in politics. L. Joy Williams, who is working on Mr. McGuire’s campaign, is the chairwoman of Higher Heights’s PAC.Campaigns are not allowed to coordinate with super PACs, or independent expenditure committees, as they are known in New York State.But Seth Agata, a former counsel in the governor’s office who helped write New York’s independent expenditure regulations, said there was often a “wink and a nod” that characterized interactions between campaigns and super PACs.“You know what’s going to help the candidate,” Mr. Agata said. “You’re out there because you know what the candidate needs and you say the right things.”Both campaigns said they had not coordinated with their respective super PACs.“I know nothing about it,” said Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire’s campaign, referring to New York for Ray.Yuridia Peña, a spokeswoman for Mr. Donovan’s campaign, said that Mr. Donovan had likewise not coordinated with his father on his super PAC.“We take the prohibition of coordination with any outside entities as a hard line, and any efforts to support Shaun are completely independent of our campaign,” Ms. Peña said.New York City’s strict donor limits make it difficult for big spenders to make their presence felt through direct contributions to candidates. But the Supreme Court, in its Citizens United decision, paved the way for barely regulated money to pour into super PACs, giving donors another way of exerting influence.“The Supreme Court that decided Citizens United and related cases got it wrong,” said Chisun Lee, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Election Reform Program. “Any reasonable voter knows that huge donors with unlimited influence have a detrimental effect on representative democracy.” More

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      N.Y.C. Mayor Candidates Court Unions and Latino Voters

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?5 TakeawaysCandidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the RaceAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCourting Unions and Latino Voters: 5 Takeaways From the N.Y.C. Mayor’s RaceEric Adams won three big labor union endorsements, confirming his status as a top contender, and Loree Sutton dropped out of the race.Eric Adams is lining up coveted labor union endorsements.Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesEmma G. Fitzsimmons, Dana Rubinstein, Andy Newman and March 15, 2021Updated 10:56 a.m. ETLabor leaders are throwing their weight behind Eric Adams in the New York City mayoral race.Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has won three major labor endorsements in the past two weeks, cementing his status as one of the top candidates in the crowded Democratic primary field.As Mr. Adams rose, Loree Sutton, one of the first women to join the race, dropped out, and the campaigns pushed to qualify for public matching funds. Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, announced over the weekend that he had raised an impressive fund-raising haul.Here is what you need to know:Adams wins key labor endorsements.Mr. Adams is making the case that he is the candidate for working-class New Yorkers.“We are building a blue-collar coalition that will deliver results for the New Yorkers who need them the most,” Mr. Adams said last week.He has received support from three unions: Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 85,000 building workers in New York; the Hotel Trades Council, which has nearly 40,000 members in the hotel and gaming industry; and the District Council 37 Executive Board, the city’s largest public employees union, representing 150,000 members and 50,000 retirees.The string of endorsements shows that some Democrats believe Mr. Adams has the best chance of beating Mr. Yang, who has been leading the field in recent polls.While Mr. Adams has secured some of the city’s most coveted labor endorsements, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was recently endorsed by another major union, Local 1199 of the S.E.I.U. The powerful United Federation of Teachers has not yet picked a candidate.Scott Stringer, the New York City comptroller, had been a contender for the 32BJ endorsement, according to the union president, Kyle Bragg.“But this is more than just about friendships,” Mr. Bragg said, adding that the union had to consider who had “the strongest path to victory.”Sutton’s long-shot bid comes to an end.Loree Sutton, left, has left the mayoral race.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesFor Loree Sutton, the retired Army brigadier general who withdrew from the mayor’s race on Wednesday, the turning point came in late February when a state judge rejected a lawsuit seeking to limit in-person petition-gathering during the coronavirus pandemic.Candidates must gather a certain number of signatures in person in order to get their names on the ballot.“I just would not go out and do in-person petition-gathering under these circumstances,” Ms. Sutton said. It was, she said, a matter of “public health principle.”Her mayoral bid was always a long shot. The former commissioner for the city’s Department of Veterans’ Services, she had little in the way of political experience or name recognition. She was running as a law-and-order moderate in a Democratic primary that tilts left.Some advisers had encouraged her to run as a Republican, but doing so would have felt inauthentic, she said. Centrism, she argues, remains an essential part of the Democratic Party.But early on there were signs that her brand of moderation would be unwelcome.She was excluded from an early Democratic forum because she had argued that protesters should be required to obtain city permits.She campaigned on the importance of public safety and rejected calls to defund the police, a posture that seemed out of step with many of her competitors.“Some of the worst atrocities in human history have taken place under the misconception that somehow we can create a utopian society,” she said.In the end, Ms. Sutton pulled out of the race, having raised only $200,000.She has yet to decide whom she will endorse, but she was complimentary of Kathryn Garcia, the former Sanitation Department commissioner, who is running as a pragmatist. And she has not ruled out running for office again someday.“It’s the journey of a lifetime,” she said.Candidates debate how to fix public housing.Kathryn Garcia argues that private management of some buildings in the city’s public housing system can be effective.Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersAt a mayoral forum on housing on Thursday, a tenant leader at a city public-housing complex, Damaris Reyes, challenged the candidates: “I want to know if you will commit to preservation of public housing, and how you will repair trust and empower resident decision making.”The 175,000 apartments in the city’s public housing system have been sliding into disrepair for decades, with the price tag for replacing leaky roofs, old heating systems, broken elevators and other problems now estimated at $30 billion to $40 billion.But the city’s proposal to fund the repairs by using a program that would hand over management of tens of thousands of apartments to private developers has been greeted with skepticism. Many New York City Housing Authority residents fear their apartments would be privatized, leading to rent increases and evictions.At the housing forum, hosted by the local news channel NY1, two candidates with experience running housing systems said the city’s plans provided a realistic platform.Ms. Garcia, who served as interim commissioner of NYCHA in 2019, said the blueprint would let the city leverage federal money that was already available. She said she could win over skeptics by taking them on tours of the Ocean Bay complex in Queens, where a private landlord has been making repairs. “You know who the best spokespeople are?” she asked. “The people who have actually had their apartments renovated.”Shaun Donovan, who ran the city’s department of housing preservation under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and who served as President Barack Obama’s commissioner of housing and urban development, said that partnering with the federal government provided “the only pathway where we can truly get to scale.”Mr. Donovan’s plan also calls for the city to kick in $2 billion a year and includes job-training programs for NYCHA residents who would be hired to do much of the work, he said. Mr. Yang has promoted his own $48 billion — and entirely federally funded — “green new deal” for NYCHA. To combat NYCHA residents’ “massive trust deficit,” the city should “make NYCHA residents the majority of the board of NYCHA itself,” he has said.Public money comes rolling in.Andrew Yang has been a potent fund-raiser.Credit…Mark Lennihan/Associated PressSix candidates now say they have qualified for public matching funds, and a seventh may qualify soon.At the latest donation deadline last week, Mr. Yang proved that he is a strong fund-raiser. He reported that he had met the matching-funds threshold by raising more than $2.1 million from 15,600 individual donors in the 57 days that he has been in the race. Mr. Yang’s campaign said it expects to have raised $6.5 million once public dollars are received.“With 100 days left, we have built the foundation and energy to win,” Mr. Yang’s campaign managers said in a statement.To qualify for public matching funds, a candidate must raise $250,000 from at least 1,000 New York City residents. Those donations are matched at either an $8 to $1 rate or $6 to $1 rate, depending on which plan the campaign chose for a maximum of $1,400 to $2,000 per contributor.Mr. Donovan reported meeting the threshold, which would bring his total raised to $4 million. Ms. Garcia reported meeting the threshold by raising over $300,000 in matchable contributions. Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said Monday she had qualified for matching funds as well, raising about $320,000 in matchable contributions.The fund-raising leaders have also continued to rake in public dollars. Mr. Adams and Mr. Stringer, the only two candidates who have received matching funds so far, reported having raised a total of more than $9 million each once matching funds were factored in. Ms. Wiley, who announced that she had met the threshold last period before an audit from the Campaign Finance Board determined that she had not, declined to release fund-raising figures. Her campaign was waiting on a ruling Monday from the board.Raymond J. McGuire, a former banking executive who shook up the race when he raised $5 million in three months, is not participating in the public funds program. His campaign said he had raised another $2.6 million since the last filing period.According to campaign finance rules, if a nonparticipating candidate raises or spends more than half of the $7.3 million spending limit, the spending cap could be increased by 50 percent. Matthew Sollars, a spokesman for the board, said a determination on an increased spending cap would be made late next month.A candidate looks for the Latino vote.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, has a Puerto Rican stepfather.Credit…Richard Drew/Associated PressLittle known fact about Scott Stringer, who is white and Jewish: His stepfather moved to New York from Puerto Rico as a toddler, his stepfamily is Latino and, partly on that basis, he hopes to win over Latino voters in the mayoral election.“Buenos días a todos,” Mr. Stringer said on Sunday in Upper Manhattan, as he formally kicked off his “Latino agenda,” not far from the Washington Heights neighborhood where he grew up. His stepfamily joined him and lauded his record, character and intelligence. “Scott is simpático,” said Carlos Cuevas, Mr. Stringer’s stepbrother, a lawyer.Mr. Stringer’s effort to highlight his family to identify with a particular constituency is not a novel one. Mr. de Blasio relied heavily on his African-American wife and biracial children in his 2013 run for mayor. At a forum about Jewish issues, Ms. Wiley, whose father was African-American and mother was white, made a point of noting that her partner is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors.The Latino vote — which is far from monolithic — is coveted, representing about 20 percent of the New York City electorate.The mayor’s race has several candidates of Latino descent: Ms. Morales and Carlos Menchaca, a councilman from Brooklyn, both of whom are Democrats, and Fernando Mateo, a Republican. None responded to requests for comment on Mr. Stringer’s Latino voter push.The same day Mr. Stringer was rolling out his agenda, his competitor Mr. Yang made his pitch to Spanish-language viewers of Telemundo.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Inside Stephen Ross' Plan to Influence New York’s Mayoral Race

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?5 TakeawaysCandidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the RaceAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyInside a Billionaire’s Plan to Influence New York’s Mayoral RaceStephen Ross, the head of the Related Companies, is organizing a meeting of business leaders to “help us get this mayoral election right.”Stephen Ross said he hopes to boost voter turnout among “moderate thinking, pro-growth, and pro-jobs Democrats who typically do not vote in primaries.”Credit…Peter Foley/EPA, via ShutterstockMarch 9, 2021Updated 8:37 p.m. ETThe billionaire developer Stephen M. Ross is rallying fellow business leaders to commit tens of millions of dollars in an effort to push moderate Democrats to vote in the June mayoral primary in New York and “change the future course of the city.”Mr. Ross has scheduled a meeting for Monday to detail his plans to launch the super PAC to “help us get this mayoral election right,” according to an email he sent to colleagues that was reviewed by The New York Times.The campaign would not initially support a specific candidate, but Mr. Ross, the chairman and founder of Related Companies, stressed that the “winner of the Democratic primary for mayor in June will decide if NYC will rebound or languish.”The effort is the starkest example of business leaders using their money and influence to elect a pro-business mayor who would steer New York’s recovery from the pandemic, and to hurt the chances of progressive-leaning candidates whose positions — like slashing the Police Department budget and raising taxes on the rich — alarm many business leaders.“This is truly the most important election of our lifetime and in NYC’s history,” Mr. Ross wrote in the email. “Fortunately, we can do something to change the future course of the city we love.”Candidates considered more palatable to the business sector include Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate; Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner; Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive; and Shaun Donovan, a former Obama administration cabinet member.Mr. Yang is the early front-runner, followed by Mr. Adams, according to a recent poll by Emerson College. Mr. McGuire, thought to be a favorite of some in the business community, was in eighth place in the poll.Via a spokesman, Mr. Ross did not rule out backing a particular candidate, when the time comes.But when asked who that candidate might be, Mr. Ross was circumspect.“The one who is best and can help all New Yorkers,” he said. More