Republicans float rules change after criminally charged members win Executive Committee seats

Some leading members of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) are talking about updating the party’s bylaws so that if the Governor removes a criminally charged member from public office, that member can’t then run for a party leadership post.

Three Republicans facing indictments won seats last week on the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee. Two of them, former Miami City Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla and ex-Hialeah Council member Angelica Pacheco, were removed from office in the past year by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The third is ex-U.S. Rep. David Rivera, a former Chair of the Miami-Dade GOP. He was not in office in December 2022, when he was federally indicted for allegedly working as an unregistered foreign agent.

Hialeah state Rep. Alex Rizo, Chair of the Miami-Dade GOP, told Florida Politics that amending the state party’s rules to address criminal charges against members is “something that has been brought up” in discussions among county- and state-level leaders. It’s a change party members may officially consider — but only after the November election.

“You are innocent until proven guilty, but if there’s already a precedent that the Governor has suspended you as an elected official, then shouldn’t the same rules apply when it comes to the party?” Rizo said.

“At the very least, we need to debate that. Though I can tell you that in Miami-Dade, I don’t know if you would get a clear majority on the matter.”

So far, it’s only been talk, and some key members of the party haven’t been involved. Former Alachua County GOP Chair William Stafford Jones, who leads the state party’s Constitution and Rules Committee, said he’s seen no formal proposal or discussion item. And any policy change would need to go through the panel to be adopted.

“It’s not been brought up,” he said. “If other individuals in the party have talked about such a thing, I am unaware of that. They are free to talk about whatever they want, and if there’s something they want to send to Constitution and Rules, they can send any proposal they want to.”

Rizo said he broached a similar subject with ex-RPOF Chair Christian Ziegler before Ziegler’s ouster early this year. He said Ziegler made clear that as long as a member isn’t convicted or charged with crimes of moral turpitude like rape or murder, the party’s policy is to allow the member to continue serving as they fight to clear their name.

Notably, sexual battery allegations lodged last year against Ziegler prompted the state Republican Executive Committee to vote Ziegler out in January. Later that month, Sarasota police opted to recommend just one charge of video voyeurism, which prosecutors declined to pursue.

Díaz de la Portilla, a deeply entrenched Miami politician, was arrested last year on numerous corruption charges, including bribery, money laundering and criminal conspiracy.

Pacheco surrendered to the FBI in June, seven months after she won a seat on the Hialeah Council, on federal fraud charges. Prosecutors accuse her of billing insurers more than $19 million for false or medically unnecessary service at her addiction treatment center.

DeSantis suspended both from office within a week of their arrests. Díaz de la Portilla then ran to win his Miami Commission seat, but lost in a runoff after unsuccessfully suing to get his opponent removed from the ballot.

Rivera, who represented Florida’s 25th Congressional District from 2011 to 2013, was arrested in early December 2022. Prosecutors initially charged Rivera for failing to register as a foreign agent, accusing him of lobbying the United States on behalf of Nicolás Maduro’s regime while working on a $50 million contract with Venezuela’s oil subsidiary, PDV USA. They later added tax evasion charges to the indictment.

As of early July, Rivera had yet to enter a plea. He said last month that his work for Venezuela was subterfuge, and his efforts were in fact “directed at decapitating the Maduro regime.”

Díaz de la Portilla and Pacheco have pleaded not guilty.

All three deny any wrongdoing.

It’s not just Florida Republicans who lack rules to prevent criminally charged members from attaining leadership posts. The Florida Democratic Party also doesn’t have strictures to hit the pause button on potentially troublesome members’ ambitions, according to Miami Gardens state Sen. Shevrin Jones, who was elected Chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party in April.

But when such situations have arisen, he said, it’s the party’s unofficial policy to pressure those members to step down.

Jones said it’s on-brand for Florida Republicans, who have a convicted felon as their presidential candidate, to elevate accused criminals within their ranks. It’s also hypocritical, he added, considering the lengths to which the GOP has gone to block reenfranchisement in defiance of voters’ wishes.

“It’s amazing to me that the Republicans do not believe in restorative justice for other individuals who probably got caught up in the system, but they turn a blind eye when it plays to their benefit,” he said. “This is their M.O. — ‘rules for thee but not for me’ — and the moral and values check on the Republican Party is dying every day they continue to allow this stuff to happen.”

Florida Politics contacted RPOF Chair Evan Power for comment but received none by press time.