Finance
Former state Senator Artiles found guilty of campaign finance and registration violations
Former Florida Sen. Frank Artiles, an ex-Marine who more recently has shaped political campaigns as a lobbyist and consultant, was found guilty Monday of campaign finance and voter registration violations in a trial that showed the underbelly of Florida politics.
It took a Miami-Dade jury just over six hours to reach a unanimous verdict in a case built around political operatives and a “ghost candidate” who likely tipped a tight election. Sparked by a scheme to help Senate Republicans flip a seat in 2020, the two-week trial engrossed Florida’s political establishment from Miami to Tallahassee.
Artiles and his attorneys stood stoic as the verdict was read, their hands clasped in front of them, family members and friends standing along rows of benches behind. The former senator was fingerprinted but not handcuffed — his family surrounding him blocking the view — before being released by Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Miguel M. de la O.
Artiles wouldn’t comment as the group made its way out of the courtroom. Defense attorney Frank Quintero thanked the jurors, then promised an appeal. As he addressed the media, Quintero said he found it helpful that jurors listed all the instances they considered excessive contributions from Artiles to Alexis Rodriguez, an independent candidate whose only purpose in the race was to hurt the Democratic incumbent.
“They were actually business transactions that he [Rodriguez] screwed Mr. Artiles for,” said Quintero. “It’s going to be a long fight. This fight is not over.”
Artiles, 51, married with two daughters, was found guilty of excessive campaign contributions, conspiracy to commit excessive contributions and falsely swearing an oath, all felonies that could carry five-year sentences. He was cleared of a fourth charge, aiding a false registration.
His convictions could land him in prison for as many as 15 years, though that long a term is unlikely.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle applauded the jury for understanding the case’s complexities and realizing that Artiles was the “mastermind” of the “ghost candidate scandal.”
“These felony convictions show that the jurors agreed that we can not tolerate the violation of our laws to gain a political advantage,” she said in a prepared statement.
Judge de la O is expected to sentence Artiles some time after Oct. 21.
READ MORE: Lobbyist said she heard Artiles brag about election win.
During the two-week trial, it was explained how a long-time Republican party operative reached out to Artiles for help in the 2020 race for the District 37 Senate seat, which at the time covered a large swath of Miami-Dade County from Miami Beach south and through Palmetto Bay and Cutler Bay.
Lead prosecutor Tim VanderGiesen explained to jurors how the former state senator — after working out a contract agreement with the owner of a Gainesville-area Republican political research and marketing firm — engineered a plan to run and promote a machine parts salesman as a third-party candidate in the race in order to siphon votes from the Democratic front-runner.
The plan worked.
Ileana Garcia, a former Spanish radio host and founder of Latinas for Trump, defeated Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez by a mere 32 votes after a recount. VanderGiesen told jurors that Alexis Rodriguez — the ghost candidate running as an independent — was promised $50,000 by Artiles. In a race decided by less than three-dozen votes after a runoff, more than 6,000 residents voted for Alexis Rodriguez.
The payoffs came in different forms, prosecutors said. Besides four payments totaling $22,000 in cash, Alexis Rodriguez was given another $22,000 through tuition payments for his daughter, money alleged to be going to the purchase of a truck for Artiles’ daughter and reimbursements. In total, the state said Alexis Rodriguez collected $44,708.03 in cash and gifts.
Artiles was paid $90,000 to help win Miami races by Data Targeting founder Patrick Bainter, a top consultant for Florida’s Senate Republicans. Bainter placed another $100,000 in a political action committee associated with Artiles.
READ MORE: ‘Knock yourself out.’ Top Florida GOP operative blessed Artiles’ ‘ghost candidate’ pitch
SENATE SEAT UNRAVELED QUICKLY
Artiles served three terms in the Florida House before winning a Senate seat in 2016. His senate term unraveled quickly. He resigned less than a year after being elected and after using racial slurs and uttering profanities while talking to a group of Black elected leaders in Tallahassee.
Then, just over a year after Garcia’s unexpected 2020 victory, Artiles was charged with the four felonies. Alexis Rodriguez was charged with the same four felonies, but avoided conviction in exchange for his testimony against Artiles.
During closing arguments Monday morning, defense attorney Jose Quiñon told jurors the plot to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez began with the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the main campaign vehicle for Florida’s Senate Republicans. The committee contacted Bainter, and Bainter, looking for information on the ground in Miami, reached out to some folks he knew in West Palm Beach. They recommended Artiles.
Aritles, who knew Alexis Rodriguez through a family member, promised him he would be coached and wouldn’t have to campaign.
Under Florida law, none of that is illegal. Directly giving a candidate more than $1,000, however, is.
And Monday, on the verdict form, jurors wrote out exactly which acts they believe Artiles committed that were illegal. They listed six instances when the lobbyist gave the candidate money or gifts totaling $26,812.92. Among the payments: $2,000 to cover the registration fee to become a candidate, $6,784.39 to cover tuition for the candidate’s daughter’s private high school, a $2,400 rent payment and $9,000 from Artiles’ brother-in-law.
During the trial, Alexis Rodriguez said the only reason he agreed to change his party affiliation and run in the race was because he was broke and just divorced. He told jurors he was ashamed and said the only reason he agreed to the plan was because he needed money.
Garcia, the unexpected victor, has always been controversial. She once said she believed people could outgrow being gay, but later apologized. She also authored a bill to spend $5 million on former President Donald Trump’s legal bills. The bill didn’t pass. Jose Javier Rodriguez now works as an assistant secretary for the Labor Department in Washington D.C.
The seven-week military conflict in the Middle East will redefine Hong Kong’s role as a global financial centre, positioning the city as a safe harbour for capital and investments.
Anecdotal evidence suggested that more banks had turned to Hong Kong to protect their businesses and committed themselves to expanding their presence in the city. At the same time, inquiries about adding allocations of mainland Chinese assets among global investors had recently increased, potentially enlarging the customer base for the city’s asset-management industry and family offices and driving demand for offshore yuan-linked financial products.
For years, Hong Kong’s status as a financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region has been challenged by Dubai, which has risen to prominence as a gateway linking Asia and Europe in capital flows, transport and logistics. With the war destabilising the Middle East – at one point forcing the closure of the Dubai International Airport and sending stocks in the Gulf region plunging – Hong Kong has re-emerged due to its geographical location, a pegged exchange rate, free capital flows and support from China’s economic strength.
“In that context, China and Hong Kong are attracting renewed attention,” said Gary Dugan, CEO of The Global CIO Office in Dubai, which advises family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals globally. “There is growing interest among some clients in increasing exposure to China and Hong Kong. It is less a simple flight to safety and more a reassessment of where investors see relative value, policy consistency and long-term strategic opportunity.”
Dubai now relies on trade, tourism and finance as the pillars of its economy, reflecting the success of its four-decade diversification away from oil for sustained growth. The United Arab Emirates city is home to Jebel Ali Free Zone, the biggest free-trade zone in the Middle East, and the second-largest stock market in the region, with combined market values of US$1.01 trillion. The city, also a global hub for gold trading, has a population of 4 million, about 80 per cent of which are foreign expatriates. Dubai’s economy grew by 4.7 per cent in the January-to-September period last year.
Before seeking a new referendum MPS needs to rebuild trust in the community through completing state audits, putting in place controls to prevent overspending and routine reports to the public.
For MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, who just wrapped up her first year leading Milwaukee’s public school system, her tenure has been punctuated by some very big numbers.
The first is $252 million. That is the amount of new spending voters narrowly approved in an April 2024 referendum to support operations in Wisconsin’s largest school district. Just months later, MPS was rocked by revelations the district was months behind in filing key financial reports to the state, which led to former Superintendent Keith Posley’s resignation.
The second is $1 billion. MPS faces a deferred maintenance backlog exceeding $1 billion. The district’s enrollment has declined 30% over the last 30 years, leaving many schools at less than 50% full. That, in part, is driving a plan to close some schools and to improve others to help lower costs.
The final is $46 million, the deficit MPS was running for the 2024-25 school year, an unexpected shortfall which has led to hundreds of staff layoffs.
Getting the district’s accounting, budgeting and financial reporting back on track has dominated Cassellius’s first year at MPS. In an April 15 interview with the Journal Sentinel’s editorial board, she talked in detail about the challenges putting that into order and progress she sees in restoring transparency into its operations.
State funding and aging buildings create budget nightmares
Cassellius says state needs to keep up its share of school funding
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel editorial board, MPS leader Brenda Cassellius says budgets and buildings are her two top worries.
Cassellius said the on-going budget crisis is her top concern. She said the state’s failure to live up to its share of funding is exacerbating MPS’ budget woes. A group of school districts, teachers and parents filed suit against the state Legislature and its Joint Finance Committee claiming the current state funding system is unconstitutional and prevents schools from meeting students’ educational needs.
Funding for special education is especially critical. About 20% of MPS students have disabilities, almost twice the share of the city’s charter schools, and the average of 14% across Wisconsin.
“What’s keeping me up now, you know, is really just the budget crisis we’re in, with not only this year but multiple years going out without additional state aid, we’ve been not getting funding for what our needs are for our students, and particularly our students with special needs,” she said.
Although the state budget increased special education funding to a 42% reimbursement rate, the actual rate has been about 35%. Another component to the budget headache is the age of MPS buildings. The average age is 85 years-old compared to 45 across the nation.
“We have just kicked this can down the curb or kicked it down the street or whatever you call it for too long. And it’s time that we really take on a serious conversation about the conditions of the learning environments in which we send our children,” she said. “Particularly in Milwaukee Public Schools, we serve the most vulnerable children. Children who have language barriers, children who have disabilities, children in high-concentrated poverty.”
What needs to happen before MPS seeks another referendum
Voters need to be comfortable MPS has made tough budget decisions
In an interview with Journal Sentinel editorial board, Brenda Cassellius said voters will need to see budget improvements before seeking more spending
Cassellius said MPS will definitely need to go back to voters for a new referendum in the future. In addition to the 2024 measure, voters approved an $87 million plan in 2020.
Before doing that, she said the district first needs to rebuild trust in the community through completing required state audits, putting into place controls to prevent overspending and routine reports to the school board and public about finances.
“I don’t think that the voters are going to want us to bring something forward until they feel comfortable that we have done the cleanup that is necessary,” she said. “And we’ve built the trust that we have the sufficient controls in place.”
In the interim, she’s hoping the state will meet its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund public schools.
“What the public expects is you know where the money is, you’re spending it as close as you can to children, you’re getting good on the promise around art, music, and PE, and the things the public said they wanted to fund,” Cassellius said. “And they want their kids to have so that they have a quality education and an excellent education in Milwaukee Public Schools, and that they had the right amount of staff that they actually need. In the school to be safe and to run a good operation.”
Rebuilding finance staff in wake of $46 million in overspending
MPS is rebuilding school finance staff in wake of reporting lapses
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel editorial board April 15, MPS superintendent discusses accountability for district’s financial problems.
The $46 million budget shortfall from the 2024-25 school year started coming into view last fall and was confirmed in mid-January. Cassellius noted that in addition to hiring a new superintendent, MPS also parted ways with its comptroller and CFO.
“We are really rebuilding the personnel and staff of the finance department. That is what’s critical, is having the right people in the right seats doing the work,” she said. “Also critical is making sure that you have the right controls in place. The audit findings found that we did not have proper controls in place and now we have those proper controls in place and when we find things we put new SOPs in place and that is what any business does.”
Identifying that shortfall, though painful, was the result of better accounting.
“Being three years behind in auditing means that you don’t have full sight on your actual revenues and expenditures. And so we have now full sight of our revenues and our expenditures and that’s why we were able to see this new deficit of $46 million,” she said. “And we still continue to work with DPI on those processes to make sure that every month we’re doing monthly to actuals and doing those accounting, reporting that to the board. In a way that is consumable to the public that they can understand.”
Jim Fitzhenry is the Ideas Lab Editor/Director of Community Engagement for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Reach him at jfitzhen@gannett.com or 920-993-7154.
Property markets move in cycles, and with interest rates rising and other pressures like high fuel costs, some markets are clearly slowing down. Many first-home buyers who have only ever seen markets going up are conditioned to think that when purchasing, competition is always intense and decisions need to be made quickly.
In those times, buyers often feel they need to act fast, stretch their budget and secure a property at almost any cost. But things have definitely changed.
In a softer market, the dynamic shifts. Properties take longer to sell, competition thins, and it’s the vendors who begin to feel pressure.
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For buyers who understand how to navigate that change, the balance of power quickly moves in their favour. The opportunity is not simply to buy at a lower price. It is to negotiate from a position of strength.
If that’s you right now, these are the key skills first-home buyers need to take advantage of in softer market conditions.
The most important shift in a soft market is psychological. In a rising market, buyers often feel like they are competing for limited opportunities. In a softer market, the opposite is true. There are more properties available, fewer active buyers and less urgency overall. This gives buyers options.
When buyers understand that they are not competing with multiple parties on every property, their decision-making improves. They are more willing to walk away, compare opportunities and avoid overpaying. Negotiation strength comes from not needing to transact immediately. When that pressure is removed, buyers are able to engage more strategically.
One of the most common mistakes first-home buyers make is continuing to apply strategies that only work in rising markets. Auction urgency is a clear example. In strong markets, auctions often attract multiple bidders and create competitive tension. In softer conditions, properties are more likely to pass in, shifting the process away from a public bidding environment into a private negotiation.
This is where leverage increases.
Private negotiations allow buyers to introduce conditions that protect their position. These may include finance clauses, longer settlement periods or price adjustments based on due diligence. Opportunities that are rarely available in competitive markets become standard in softer ones.
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