Frank Artiles appeals conviction in ‘ghost candidate’ case

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Former Sen. Frank Artiles has followed through on his plan to appeal his conviction in an election conspiracy case for which he was sentenced to two months in jail and a lengthy probation period.

Artiles’ lawyers filed a Notice of Appeal on Tuesday, one day before the deadline Circuit Judge Miguel de la O gave them to appeal.

Gainesville resident Mark Glaeser, a database researcher and programmer, first flagged Artiles’ appeal Wednesday.

Last month, de la O sentenced Artiles to 60 days in jail with credit for time served, 500 hours of community service and five years for each of three felony counts for which he was found guilty.

But the Judge stayed Artiles’ sentencing because his attorneys said they would appeal what many considered a slap on the wrist for election meddling that cost a sitting Senator his seat.

Jurors agreed with prosecutors in late September that Artiles, 51, unlawfully tampered with election proceedings, finding him guilty on three of four counts that each carried a maximum five-year prison sentence.

Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s Office accused Artiles of conducting a so-called “ghost candidate” scheme in which he recruited and paid nearly $48,000 to machine parts salesman Alex Rodriguez to run as a third-party candidate in the 2020 election.

The goal was to siphon enough votes from similarly named incumbent Democratic Sen. José Javier Rodríguez to deliver the Senate District 37 seat in Miami-Dade to Republican Ileana Garcia, a former radio host and founder of Latinas for Trump.

Alex Rodriguez took more than 6,000 votes. Garcia won by 32 votes. Garcia denied any knowledge or involvement in the scheme and won re-election in 2022 by 18 percentage points.

Artiles and Alex Rodriguez were arrested in 2021. Rodriguez, who lived in Palm Beach County and never campaigned for the seat he signed up to run for, took a plea deal that August, receiving 36 months of probation in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors in the case against Artiles.

In his defense, Artiles’ attorneys argued that while their client did give money to Rodriguez, it was for Rodriguez’s daughter’s school tuition and for a lawyer, not to run for office. They conceded that Artiles did advise Rodriguez to change his party affiliation.

After multiple delays the jury found Artiles guilty Sept. 30 of making excessive campaign contributions, conspiring to make excessive campaign contributions and procuring a falsified candidate oath form. The jury found him not guilty of procuring a falsified voter registration form.

Artiles, a Cuban American who previously served three House terms, was pushed into resigning from the Senate in 2017 after using a racial slur and other belittling language against Black lawmakers.

His attorneys sought leniency in the “ghost candidate” case, asking for only probation rather than a three-year prison sentence prosecutors sought.

They also pointed to the case of former Miami Beach Democratic Rep. Mike Grieco, who pleaded no contest in October 2017 to a misdemeanor charge of accepting $25,000 in foreign contributions through a political committee he was surreptitiously running. Grieco received a year’s probation, during which he couldn’t run from office.

That punishment is appropriate for Artiles too, his lawyer said, but wasn’t provided by Fernandez Rundle’s Office because she is a Democrat and Artiles is a Republican.