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Police raid home of former GOP lawmaker who bragged about planting no-party candidate
BY ANA CEBALLOS AND SAMANTHA J. GROSS
MARCH 17, 2021 10:58 AM, UPDATED 1 HOUR 16 MINUTES AGO

Law enforcement officials on Wednesday raided the Palmetto Bay home of former Miami state Sen. Frank Artiles, who is believed to be tied to a state investigation involving a no-party candidate who likely swayed a key Miami-Dade Senate race.

Artiles’ involvement in the race first became public after the Miami Herald reported that he recruited and boasted about planting Alex Rodriguez, an auto-parts dealer, in Miami-Dade’s Senate District 37 race. Rodriguez ran as a no-party candidate, shared the same surname as the incumbent Democrat, and his mysterious candidacy has been under investigation since last November.

Rodriguez had never been a political candidate before, and had been a registered Republican just days before he filed as a candidate in the race.

Miami Republican Ileana Garcia won after a three-day recount by just 32 votes out of more than 215,000 cast. She beat Democratic incumbent Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, cementing the GOP majority in the Florida Senate for years to come.

Over drinks at an election night party, Artiles publicly bragged about planting Alex Rodriguez, a longtime acquaintance and Facebook friend, to run in the race. His involvement in launching Rodriguez’ bid was extensive, sources with direct knowledge indicated to the Herald last December.

“That is me, that was all me,” Artiles told a crowd at Liam Fitzpatrick’s restaurant in Lake Mary, where Sen. Jason Brodeur was holding his election night party, according to a person who was there and who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.

Senate Republican leaders have distanced themselves from the allegations raised against Artiles since the Herald broke the story. Erin Isaac, a spokeswoman for the political committee that ran Republican campaigns in the Senate, in December said she was not aware of Artiles’ involvement in the race, and that Senate President Wilton Simpson, who heads the political committee, was also unaware Artiles recruited Rodriguez to run in the race.

Isaac did not immediately respond when asked for comment on Wednesday, when news broke about the raid.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office declined to comment on Wednesday’s raid. When asked if an arrest was forthcoming, the office said: “They can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any possible investigation.”

Artiles 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.