Alex Rodriguez

My name is Jose Javier Rodriguez.

They ran a guy named Alex Rodriguez.

They bribed him to get in the race.

They put hundreds of thousands of dollars behind mailers supporting his candidacy.

Republican operatives have done this many times, including in 2018, the general election cycle immediately prior.

In this case, what was different was it was so brazen and there was so much money behind it.

And they actually bribed the ghost candidate Alex Rodriguez to run.

They paid off his debts.

This was the case in Florida in 2020.

Authorities claimed that Republican state senator, Frank Artiles recruited a ghost candidate, Alex Rodriguez, with a $50,000 payment to run for office in the Florida legislature to cause the Democratic incumbent with the same surname, Jose Javier Rodriguez, to lose the election by taking votes away in a razor-thin race.

Alex Rodriguez received over 6,000 votes in the election, and the Republican candidate beat the incumbent by 32 votes.

Artilles ultimately was convicted of excessive campaign contributions and procuring the falsification of a candidate oath form.

Alex Rodriguez had sworn that he lived in the district's limits when he actually resided in a different county entirely.

Now, Florida law does permit ghost candidates, but prohibits people making excessive amounts of campaign contributions over $1,000.

Bob Ferguson leaned on an 81-year-old Washington state law that makes it a felony to challenge somebody with the same name and whose political reputation is widely known with intent to confuse and mislead the electors to get the other two Bob Fergusons to drop their candidacies after just 72 hours when he threatened legal action.

Republican Frank Artilles, how do you pronounce that? I should have looked that up.

Artilles, yeah, Artilles, paid a man named Alex Rodriguez to run against Democrat Jose Rodriguez.

CBS Miami reported that the ghost candidate pulled in 6,382 votes.

When all was said and done, Artilles said, won, won by like 36 votes.

And this is the closest analogy to the Dan Sullivan case in Alaska, where In that instance, the Republican actually flipped the seat as a result.

So if that stalking horse candidate hadn't been placed on the rolls, if Rodriguez, the fake Rodriguez, the ghost candidate, wasn't on the rolls...

Alex Rodriguez, I mean, the Rodriguez, the Democrat that was actually running named Rodriguez would have won.

But no one called for Frank, Republican Frank Artilles, to drop out or not certify the race or have his seat nullified.

But there was a third candidate.

His name was Alex Rodriguez.

Rodriguez.

He had no political party affiliation.

The margin between the two leading candidates ended up to be that 32, just 32.

It was an extraordinary result, and what investigators uncovered afterward would eventually lead to felony convictions.

Let's get into this ghost candidate in Florida, shall we? Alex Rodriguez hadn't simply decided to enter politics on his own one day.

I have an idea.

Republicans have used similar tricks in other races in the past.

such as with the candidacy of Alex Rodriguez in Florida in 2020, whose presence on the ballot was a factor in the incumbent, Jose Rodriguez, losing by 32 votes.

And this one doesn't come close to all the corruption of the gerrymandering that's been going on in plain sight, the blatant attempts at election interference, all being done by the Trump administration to a jaw-dropping degree in the last... year or two.

But if your best argument for your side is, hey, the others do it worse, then sure, that is technically true, but unfortunately it kills your claim to be the agent for democratic renewal.

But there was a third candidate.

His name was Alex Rodriguez.

Rodriguez.

He had no political party affiliation.

The margin between the two leading candidates ended up to be that 32, just 32.

It was an extraordinary result, and what investigators uncovered afterward would eventually lead to felony convictions.

Let's get into this ghost candidate in Florida, shall we? Alex Rodriguez hadn't simply decided to enter politics on his own one day.

I have an idea.

As we welcome the woman so sexy and fabulous, she needs a hundred names.

Haley DeSola Pinto from Broadway's Pillow Tech and Squid Game Challenge 2, season two, by the way, with my co-host, model musician, Steven Dehler, and me, your sassy host with the sassy most, buttons and bows and pantyhose.

The place where we're too glam to give a damn.

Raise a glass.

Yes, I did.

So actually, it's quite interesting.

When I was in my early 20s, I went to France and I worked as a chalet host.

Your life is going to be in HBO Max.

Now consider Florida in 2020.

Authorities allege that former Republican State Senator Frank Artelis arranged nearly $50,000 in payments to recruit Alex Rodriguez as a ghost candidate in a race against Democrat and incumbent Jose Javier Rodriguez.

Alex Rodriguez received more than 6,000 votes.

Republican Ileana Garcia won by just 32.

That doesn't prove how every Rodriguez voter would otherwise have voted, but it shares why an alleged scheme to exploit a shared surname deserves serious attention.