Complaint alleges Bill Nelson campaigned on Senate business

FILE - In this Sept. 10, 2014 file photo, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. listens on Capitol Hill in Washington. Democratic senators on Friday called on federal regulators to investigate Verizon Wireless, the country’s biggest mobile provider, for secretly inserting unique tracking codes into the Web traffic of its some 100 million customers. Data privacy experts have accused Verizon of violating consumers’ privacy by using “supercookies,” an identifying string of letters and numbers attached to each site visited on a person’s mobile device. “This whole supercookie business raises the specter of corporations being able to peek into the habits of Americans without their knowledge or consent,” said Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, in a statement. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, File)

One of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s constituents is claiming the Florida Democrat violated federal laws by campaigning during a recent event billed as official business.

The complaint, filed Tuesday by Alan L. Swartz, a Pinellas accountant, takes umbrage with an April 6 townhall held at the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, or PSTA, in St. Petersburg.

Swartz charges that the event was carried out in Nelson’s capacity as a U.S. Senator, but instead served only to aid Nelson’s re-election campaign. That, Swartz claims, is a violation of federal laws limiting the scope of taxpayer-backed Senate resources. He’s asked the Senate Committee on Ethics, chaired by Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, to launch an investigation into Nelson’s alleged wrongdoings.

“There can be no more direct affront to the American system of campaign funding than to exploit taxpayer dollars to support a campaign; yet Senator Nelson appears to have directly engaged in this practice by using official resources to hold a political event in a government building,” Swartz writes in the complaint. 

Ryan Brown, Nelson’s Senate-side communications director, disagreed.

“This was an official event organized by official staff,” Brown told Florida Politics. He suggested that other members of the media have dismissed a similar complaint as “bogus” and that covering the story follows the mantra of being “all about the clickbait.”

At the crux of Swartz’ complaint is correspondence (subjected to public records requests) sent between PSTA and Nelson’s Senate office. 

Local media coverage, Swartz asserts, proves that the event was for campaign purposes — not official business. An article from the Tampa Bay Times about the event was titled, “Bill Nelson, in campaign mode, talks guns at St. Pete town hall.” It’s cited in a footnote in the complaint. 

Nelson is quoted in the Times’ story saying, “Whoever my opponent is, I always take them very seriously and I run like there’s no tomorrow.” Swartz relies on this, in part, to allege the townhall was a campaign event. It is not clear whether Nelson was prompted by a reporter to speak about campaign-specific details or whether he did so with volition. 

Republican Governor Rick Scott officially challenged Nelson three days later.

One of Nelson’s staffers named in the complaint is Sharah Anderson, who took a spot as Nelson’s political director in March — before the Senator’s town hall in Pinellas. Email records obtained by Swartz show Anderson setting up the event using a government email address and “Regional Director” as her title, a position she’s held for 14 years. Anderson splits time between the campaign and Nelson’s office — which is ethical under Senate guidelines. Nelson’s office told Florida Politics that Anderson’s correspondence with PSTA was made through her role with Nelson’s office.

But Swartz contends the April 6 event was for campaign purposes, and so “use of an official email address indicates that Senator Nelson directed official resources to be used to arrange and promote this event,” reads the complaint.

Swartz writes that “at the bare minimum” Nelson created “the appearance of impropriety,” and should therefore be admonished for reflecting “dishonorably upon the U.S. Senate.”

The complaint against Nelson is well-timed as the incumbent fights against Scott for his seat in 2018. It also follows a different complaint filed last week alleging Nelson leveraged his power to get a lower valuation on a property he owns, so he could pay less yearly in property taxes. Nelson himself dismissed that charge as a perennial political attack.

Scott’s campaign communications director, when asked, denied any affiliation shared between Scott’s campaign and Swartz. But the two have crossed paths before; the Governor appointed Swartz to the Pinellas County Housing Authority in 2015 for a four-year term.

And later on Tuesday, the Florida Democratic Party made a charge against Scott that he, too, is using his public office to advance his campaign.

In an email to media, the Democrats highlighted that Scott’s former official press secretary Lauren Schenone, who’s since switched over to the campaign side, attended a state-backed Scott appearance Tuesday. A representative from Scott’s campaign has refuted the charge from the Democrats, clarifying with Florida Politics that Scheone attended the event as a member of the public and her presence was not supported by taxpayer dollars.