Moe to Mo: Joe Saunders’ aunt agrees to name change after Miami-Dade Judge’s HD 106 ruling

Joe Saunders faced something of a spite campaign from his estranged aunt, Maureen "Moe Saunders" Scott. Images via the candidates.

Maureen Saunders Scott will not appear on the November ballot as “Moe Saunders.” Instead, her name will be “Mo Saunders Scott,” a compromise she agreed to after a more than eight-hour hearing at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse.

Judge Robert T. Watson capped the lengthy and frequently contentious hearing Thursday by ruling that Scott could run with her nickname, sans one letter and with the inclusion of her married surname. The move came after she and lawyers for her nephew and opponent in the race for House District 106, former state Rep. Joe Saunders, agreed on the matter in a last-minute exchange.

He rejected assertions by Saunders’ lawyers, who sought to remove Scott from the ballot, that her candidacy was motivated solely by familial spite and greed.

In doing so, Watson cited several past court cases over ballot names, including Planas v. Planas, Bolden v. Potter, Levey v. Dijols and Jordan v. Robinson. None, he said, provided clear guidance that Scott should be kept from running or using the nickname.

Watson noted Scott had proven she’d gone by “Moe” and “Mo” for years. Case law provides that a candidate is not obligated to run under their maiden name.

“I can’t find that she clearly intended to deceive and confuse voters,” he said, adding that Scott had gone to significant lengths, including driving to Tallahassee twice in one week, opening a campaign bank account, paying filing and qualifying fees, and agreeing to relocate to HD 106 if she wins.

“There are many indications here of a serious candidate, and whatever anyone may think her chances are of winning, certainly nobody gave Donald Trump a chance at becoming President,” he said. “I don’t think the evidence shows by the greater weight of the evidence that this is a sham campaign.”

Saunders’ lawyers submitted evidence Scott had sought a six-figure payment from her family before filing to run against her nephew.

Scott also said she’d spoken multiple times by phone with HD 106 incumbent Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe, whom she began interacting with on X in February, four months before she entered the race. She revealed Thursday that she has spoken by phone with Basabe’s Primary opponent, lawyer Melinda Almonte, too.

Basabe is a wealthy socialite and first-term lawmaker who won office in 2022 by a margin so narrow it required a recount. Political analysts consider him among the most vulnerable Florida incumbents this election cycle, and Saunders’ campaign and legal teams have both suggested without evidence that Basabe is behind Scott’s candidacy.

“Our case talks about a candidacy that was not in good faith,” Saunders’ lawyer, Scott Hiaasen, said during closing arguments.

Throughout the day, Hiaasen repeatedly brought up an email Scott sent her siblings in 2022 demanding a 25% cut from the $1 million sale of their mother’s home. In the message, she said the payment would be enough for her to discontinue contact with them.

Scott has acknowledged that she wouldn’t have run against Saunders if she’d received the money. That admission, combined with the email, was “evidence of an attempted extortion,” said former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, another one of Saunders’ lawyers.

Watson brushed off that assertion.

“If her goal out of all this was to get money, it doesn’t make sense to continue on a campaign when she hasn’t been receiving that money,” he said. “It’s been made clear to her that her understanding of ownership of the property was incorrect, so her claim to the $250,000 was invalid, and she still continued on with the campaign.”

What’s in a name?

Saunders, a Democrat, filed suit in June against Scott, a no-party candidate who lives 300 miles from HD 106 in St. Johns County, over what he called a “clear violation of Florida Law.”

Scott first filed to run in HD 106, which covers Miami Beach and several other coastal northeast Miami-Dade municipalities, using her full, legal name on June 7. Six days later, she drove back to Tallahassee to change her name on the ballot to “Moe Saunders” and pay a $1,187 qualifying fee.

Florida Politics first flagged the switch and identified Scott’s X account, through which she interacted with Basabe and accused Saunders and other family members of trying to silence her about abuses she said she received at the hands of a family member.

She acknowledged depositing $1,700 in cash into her Tallahassee-based campaign account in June, but rebuffed suggestions she received the money from someone else in order to fund a so-called “ghost candidacy.”

Scott represented herself without a lawyer Thursday, her lone figure at the defense table starkly contrasting with Saunders’ full table of attorneys from the Coffey Burlington law firm.

Throughout the hearing, Scott, 63, referenced the sexual abuses she said she suffered as an adolescent that would have happened years before Saunders, 41, was born. She said their family, including Saunders, have repeatedly tried to silence, dismiss and disparage her since, but produced no evidence of Saunders doing so.

Judge Watson gave Scott space to discuss her grievances but frequently steered the discussion back to whether Scott should and could appear on the ballot as “Moe Saunders.”

Scott faced several legal hurdles in that aim. One was a state statute lawmakers enacted last year prohibiting candidates from running with nicknames meant to “mislead voters” or imply “the candidate is some other person.”

Also pertinent was the 2006 case, Planas v. Planas, which generally established that anyone who files to run under a nickname to trick voters should be disqualified from running. The case arose when former Rep. Juan-Carlos “J.C.” Planas, now a Democratic candidate for Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections, sued his cousin, Juan E. “J.P.” Planas, for filing under a previously unused nickname on that year’s ballot.

A family member recalls habitual harassment

Three people testified Thursday: Scott, Saunders and Richard Walter Saunders, Scott’s brother and Saunders’ uncle. He took the stand first, but remained in the courtroom to watch the hearing until its conclusion just after 6 p.m.

Richard Saunders, a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma, corroborated Scott’s claim that she has used the nickname, “Mo,” but said he’d never seen her use its masculine version, “Moe.” Over the years, he said, she accused several family members, including his infant grandson, of pedophilia and grooming.

Scott grew especially incensed and resumed hostile contact with family members, he said, after the sale of their mother’s home, the money from which went to their nonagenarian mother, but which Scott claims was divided among family members other than her.

In a 2022 email both sides of the case agreed is authentic, Scott wrote to Richard Saunders and their siblings asking for her share.

“I’d prefer to get what’s mine and go away,” she wrote, adding that there were “adult children in this family (who) want to be public figures.” Richard Saunders said that was “clearly” a reference to Joe Saunders. Scott said two other young family members had similar aspirations to work in the public eye.

During a particularly hostile exchange between Scott and Richard Saunders, Watson interjected to tell them, “Enough. This is a courtroom, not The Jerry Springer Show.”

Scott acknowledged that for years she’d received $2,000 a month from her mother to pay for bills and other expenses. Those payments stopped in September 2022.

Seven months later, family members sent Scott a cease-and-desist letter after she’d made disparaging claims against them, including contacting their employers.

In court Thursday, Scott established — with Richard Saunders’ corroboration — that she’d revealed her alleged abuse when she turned 30.

Joe v. Moe

Joe Saunders, like his uncle, said he’d “never once” known Scott to refer to herself as “Moe Saunders.” Scott submitted as evidence a calendar she printed years before with her name written as “Moe” and a text exchange between her and her nephew in which he addressed her using that spelling.

“I think her intention is to ruin my candidacy,” said Saunders, who served a single House term from 2012 to 2014 representing the Orlando area. He holds the distinction of being one of the Legislature’s first openly gay members.

He told his aunt as she was cross-examining him, “You can be unstable, and you can lash out” against family members.

In her testimony Thursday and through a deposition she gave before the hearing that Saunders’ lawyers read excerpts from, Scott admitted to not speaking with any HD 106 voters before filing.

The last time she was in Miami-Dade before the hearing, she said, was for a Robert Plant concert many years ago. After being told the venue she visited was in Broward County, she estimated the last time she spent any significant time in Miami-Dade was as a child.

Scott said that after she offered Basabe dirt on her nephew in February, Basabe gave her “the brush off” publicly. In private, however, she said he gave her his number and they spoke by phone multiple times, including on Father’s Day.

In one such interaction, Scott said, she told Basabe she was running because “I want to slaughter that little bastard (Saunders) in front of everybody.”

It is not illegal for a person to run for public office in a district where they do not live, but they must move there by the time they take office. It is illegal, however, to pay someone to run for public office or to receive payment to run.

Scott and Basabe have both denied having any such arrangement. Scott also said she has not received any help from political committees or operatives.

But the source of the June cash deposit to her campaign account raised questions. Asked about the $1,700 infusion, Scott said she used money she’d set aside after her mother stopped giving her “allowances.”

Hiaasen noted that because it was made in cash, the deposit was effectively “untraceable,” intimating she may have received the funds from someone else. Scott said the money can be traced to her mother’s checks and that she’d been using cash to lower the cost of home improvements.

She added that she hasn’t campaigned or fundraised yet because she was unsure if she’d be allowed to stay on the ballot.

“I didn’t want to be in a position where I had to pay anyone back,” she said.

Scott also told the court that if her family had recognized the abuses she said she suffered at the time she wrote the email demanding a cut of the home sale, she wouldn’t have filed in HD 106.

“If my family acknowledged what had been done, I would have gone away quietly,” she said, adding that she initially contacted Basabe on X while “in the throes of reactive abuse.”

“I was pushing back after 30 years,” she said. “I even spoke to a Republican who I did not know.”

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Saunders said he believes his aunt was given “a lot of leeway” because she represented herself. “Which makes sense,” he added.

But information pertinent to the case wasn’t provided to the court, he said, including Scott’s bank statements around the time of the cash deposit and further details about her talks with Basabe, whom Saunders previously accused of engaging in “a coordinated and orchestrated effort to fool voters in HD 106” by propping his aunt up as a spoiler candidate.

Details missing from Thursday’s hearing could explain a lot, he said.

“Maureen does not have the financial ability or cognitive capability to have figured out that she legally could run for office from Jacksonville and then came up with what we now know was cash to drive to Tallahassee,” he said. “Nothing about (what happened) today changes my belief that there is a scheme afoot and that she has been either coached or coerced to do this.”

What should be clear, Saunders said, is that he never tried to hurt or hush his aunt, and her electoral and online campaigns against him are misdirected. Scott did not provide any proof, nor did she offer examples, of Saunders acting maliciously toward her.

“I hope the process today is now clear and on the record that I’ve never done anything but want her health and safety,” he said. “When I couldn’t do that for her, I stepped back. And that space is what she seems to interpret as some kind of attack.”