Florida’s dark money playbook: How ‘ghost’ candidate scheme revealed secretive political tactics
Last year, less than a month before Election Day, voters in Seminole and Volusia counties who would help decide one of the closest state Senate elections in Florida began receiving mailers touting a little-known independent candidate: Jestine Iannotti.
The mailers featured a stock photo of a Black woman, promised a candidate free from the influence of special interests who would “change the politics in Tallahassee,” and emphasized her focus on social justice, climate change and campaign finance reform.
It was pure fiction.
Iannotti is a white woman who was already planning to move to Sweden. The mailers were designed by Republican strategists in Tallahassee. And the dark money that financed...
