By now, most people know to take campaign ads with a grain of salt. Few politicians are as noble — or evil — as ads proclaim.
Smart voters do their own research and rely on trusted sources more than anonymous political committees.
Still, even savvy voters can have trouble figuring out who’s paying for all this slop that fills their mailboxes and TV screens.
And there was a whole lotta slop to track after politicians and committees filed their final pre-primary spending reports on Friday. So Orlando Sentinel staffers spent much of the weekend combing through the reports.
What they found was billionaire George Soros dumping truckloads of money into the state attorney’s race (again), big Florida businesses desperately trying to keep embattled Orange County Commissioner Betsy VanderLey in office and would-be developers in Seminole County attacking two county commissioners who have vowed to protect rural lands.
Here’s a rundown:
State attorney
Monique Worrell is the local candidate benefiting the most from deep-pocketed donors.
The political newcomer — and former head of incumbent prosecutor Aramis Ayala’s conviction integrity unit — is one of four Democrats running for state attorney in Orange and Osceola counties. And her promise to put fewer people behind bars for petty crimes, charge fewer children as adults and reduce the use of cash bail has won her support from state and national advocates for justice reform.
Many of the ads touting her candidacy are positive and stress her platform. But some — such as the ACLU-sponsored ads I cited last week — have been misleading, playing fast and loose with the facts, misrepresenting the positions of the other candidates: Deb Barra, Belvin Perry and Ryan Williams.
Still, all the early support Worrell received pales compared to the $2.2 million that Sentinel reporter Jason Garcia found pumped into a committee backing Worrell over the last two weeks.
Spending reports show that the group that spearheaded Florida’s popular 2018 amendment drive to restore voting rights to former felons donated $1 million to promote Worrell. And Democracy PAC, a political committee set up by Democratic billionaire and megadonor George Soros donated another $1 million.
That’s a lot of dough for a local prosecutor’s race.
Soros’ committee also played a big role in getting Ayala elected in 2016 and was responsible for ugly attack ads against Jeff Ashton — ads I described then as “race-baiting” and “woefully free of facts.”
This year’s ads don’t have the same tone. Most tout Worrell in positive fashion. But some also attack Perry, the best-known candidate and former chief judge, accusing him of being part of a lock-’em-up crowd. That’s a pretty broad generalization, especially since one of Perry’s legacy efforts was leading the state’s Innocence Commission, whose entire focus was not locking up people who didn’t deserve it.
Worrell obviously has the money and bought-media advantage. But the fact that her funders are going after Perry down the homestretch suggests they don’t think they’ve bought Worrell a win yet.
Orange County
Outside money is also flowing into a race for Orange County commission.
As Garcia also reported, a Tallahassee-based committee — fueled with donations from Disney, Big Sugar and Florida Power & Light — gave $25,000 to a group helping Commissioner Betsy VanderLey, who is struggling to hold onto her seat.
VanderLey — who has been dogged with bad headlines about her ethics foibles and undisclosed business income — has struggled to find legitimate negative things to say about her opponent, Nicole Wilson. So the group decided to portray Wilson as a “radical lawyer” because of her support for a proposed environmental amendment that would allow citizens to sue business and governments over pollution.
VanderLey was a heavy favorite going into this race. She’s an incumbent who has raised more than six times as much money as Wilson — some of it in maximum-level, $1,000 checks from companies such as Universal Orlando, which needed VanderLey’s vote in a controversial road-funding deal last year.
Still, with all this money flowing VanderLey’s way at the last minute, her backers seem nervous.
Seminole County
Up in Seminole, Sentinel reporter Martin Comas revealed that the developer behind the controversial proposed River Cross development poured another $50,000 into a committee tied to an effort to defeat two sitting county commissioners who have blocked the development.
Incumbents Lee Constantine and Bob Dallari vowed to honor citizens’ wishes to protect rural lands on the eastern side of the county — and Chris Dorworth, the legislator-turned-lobbyist involved with River Cross, wants them out of office.
Comas found a Dorworth company donating $50,000 on Aug. 4 — on top of $100,000 he’d already spent — to a political committee run by strategists who also oversee committees that have paid for attack ads against Constantine and Dallari.
Without this financial backstory, most Seminole County residents would probably have no clue who’s involved, since the committees involved have nebulous feel-good names like the “Greater Florida Foundation” and “Sunshine State Rising.”
State Senate
And finally, we have a plot twist to an earlier story about dark-money attacks in one of the state’s most hotly contested legislative races.
Last month, the Sentinel exposed how a group that was portraying itself as Democratic – and urging Democrats to be true “progressives” and vote against Democrat Patricia Sigman – was actually connected to a Republican lawyer.
The reality seemed to be that Republicans were worried Sigman might defeat the GOP candidate, Jason Brodeur, in November — so Republicans were trying to con Democrats into taking her out in August.
Well, after the Sentinel pulled the curtains back on that ploy, that dark-money group closed its campaign account. And now Republicans are going after Sigman directly with a new ad from the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that says it was personally approved by Brodeur.
The ad is a mess of misrepresentations, using excerpts from a Politico story that try to make it look like Sigman was the focus of a scandal. In reality, the cited story never even mentioned her name.
But at least give Brodeur and the Republicans credit for attaching their own names to the latest attack. It shows how badly they want her to lose Tuesday … so that Brodeur might not have to face her in November.
Charter schools attack
And finally, late last week, the Sentinel’s Leslie Postal revealed how charter schools were behind a late attack on school teacher Karen Castor Dentel, a member of the Orange County school board.
Castor Dentel has been a reliable advocate for teachers and a staunch watchdog of tax dollars. The charter school industry apparently doesn’t like either, financing mailers that describe her as “Public Enemy #1.”
Instead, the attackers urged voters to cast ballots for a voucher-school supporter who says God delivered him from meth addition and the “adult film industry.” The school-choice advocates argued hospitality worker Jonathan Hacker is “the champion we need” on the school board.
We’ll have more on this one later in the week.
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
