Contribution Shell Game Further Undermines Elections

This week, the Florida Elections Commission found probable cause that Manatee County Commissioner John Chappie violated election statutes by paying inflated bonuses to various political operatives. Nothing about Chappie's campaign–which was for an uncontested seat–passes the smell test. What happens next will go a long way in determining whether Florida is interested in preserving even the appearance of fairly contested elections that respect the rule of law.

Chappie raised more than $78 grand for his 2012 reelection campaign. That's a lot of money for a local office, though pretty much par for the course for a district seat on our county commission. However, there was one thing that stood out about Commissioner Chappie's race. He had no opponents; none–no primary opponent, no general election opponent, not even a write-in candidate.

Of course that didn't mean he couldn't raise money for the campaign. Well-connected incumbents often raise up a war-chest early in the cycle if only to discourage would-be opponents. In fact, Commissioner Chappie already has $35,000 in his 2016 campaign account for which he is again completely unopposed at this time.

I'm sure that seems rather daunting to anyone mulling over the prospect of initiating a grass-roots challenge for Chappie's district 3 seat. If history is any indication, they would seem highly unlikely to be able to amass that sort of campaign fund even if they started tomorrow, because in Manatee County, the big money tends to line up behind the one candidate who seems most likely to view their interests favorably, and history has proven it very difficult to beat the Manatee County money machine.

Obviously, an unopposed candidate like Chappie will actually need to spend very little of that war-chest if no one runs against him. However, the state of Florida is very limited and prescriptive in terms of how that money can be discharged. At the end of the campaign, a candidate can use leftover monies to pay outstanding invoices, fund their office account, or donate some or all of it to a not-for-profit.

Chappie put $10,000 in his office account, but then somehow managed to spend every last penny of the rest of it. However, he didn't spend it on a campaign against no one. He simply made a bunch of big payments to some well-connected political operatives. For what, no one can be exactly sure, which is the problem he now faces.

In addition to normal payments for the very minimal services they would have had to provide Chappie's campaign, Commissioner Chappie awarded a total of $44,520.53 in bonuses or other non-specified extra payments to three political operatives–$15,000 to Mac Stevenson's firm, Political Insights (who'd already been given $12,000 for services), $15,000 more to consultant Linda Cinque (who'd already been paid $4,678.94), and $14,520 to the firm of Sarasota/Venice accountant Eric Robinson, his campaign treasurer.

The bonuses to Stevenson and Cinque were described as ”winning bonuses,“ while we're not sure what the supposed justification for the extra payout to Robinson's firm was. What we do know is that Chappie was already paying them $250 a month for what would have been a very small amount of services given that there was so little campaign activity, as he had no opposition. We can also look at monies paid to those firms by other candidates who required far greater services because they were in competitive campaigns and see that Commissioner Chappie, in many instances paid several times what they did (more details in this article).

The FEC found probable cause on 4 counts, amounting to two-thirds of the bonuses paid to Cinque and Stevenson, though not the extra 14 grand paid to Robinson, which amounts to somewhere around three and a half to four 40-hour weeks of services at standard rates. Take a look at Chappie's campaign fund records and you'll see there's no way there was enough activity for that to be even remotely possible. As we went to deadline, the FEC had not yet released the full record of their investigation that would provide more insight on their decisions.

Regardless of how they explain it, it's clear that money was moving around in a very suspicious manner, raising major questions as to what it was doing and whose interests it was serving. Was the money being funneled through Chappie's account and payments to fund some of the shady political action committees that some of the players were also involved with? Was it to benefit other political allies?

None of these things would be legal of course, and while I'm openly speculating at this point, I think it's fair to say we can be certain that there could be no legitimate purpose for the payments that took place given all of the facts, while considering the race was uncontested and comparing them to payments in other comparable campaigns.

This sort of murky and convoluted flow of political dollars only serves to further undermine what's left of public trust in an already broken system. We know there's too much money in politics. We know it's too expensive to run an honest campaign against someone funded by special interests. There might not be anything we can do about some of these things, but there are still rules to be followed.

Once a democracy devolves into a sort of openly corrupt process where scant effort is even made to make it look like a representative government rather than one in which puppet masters pull the strings on their bought and paid for servants, what are we left with beyond expensive public officials who are little more than avatars for the interests that manipulate their actions?

In Manatee County, there is a small cabal of developers, financiers, attorneys, speculators and their other appointed grifters who run the show on most things the county government decides. All you have to do is look at the campaign finance reports and you'll see that the checks correspond with the votes. You have a team of officials, if you will. They all get donations from the same places. They all hire the same operatives. They all recirculate the money in the same circles. In doing so, they earn a sort of Special Interest Seal of Approval that keeps them on the gravy train as trusted stewards of the good old boy network's good fortune.

Often, there's nothing that can be done. This time, it seems that hubris, audacity or just plain carelessness has opened the door for at least some measure of accountability. Commissioner Chappie has 30 days to respond to the findings in the order of probable cause and either agree to some sort of fine with the FEC or contest their findings. It should be noted that the FEC has no power to remove an official from office and election law violation is a civil, not a criminal matter.

However, criminal violations exist within the election code that can be pursued by a state attorney–though it should also be noted that ours is a charter member of the aforementioned team and has already gone soft on one political ally who was brought up on criminal fraud charges connected to election fraud. However, in 2013, a Lee County Commissioner was forced to resign when misspending campaign money led to federal charges of wire fraud, which is a common way in which political financial chicanery can be prosecuted criminally. Because it's federal, it also doesn't involve foxes guarding local hen houses.

As for Commissioner Chappie, regardless of the outcome, I suspect he'll have a lot to explain to voters when he asks for four more years in 2016. Chappie's done a good job of playing it safe by knowing when he can and can't get away with a vote. He's lent his support to island issues and some of the matters involving the Village of Cortez, both of which lie in his West Bradenton district, but he's almost never the swing vote on a 4-3 item. When it's a county issue that doesn't have his constituents in an uproar, he's been a reliable friend to developers, phosphate mining, health care companies and other special interests, just like a majority of his fellow board members.

Of course if Commissioner Chappie remains unopposed for 2016, that might not matter. Time will tell if his transgressions–and the resulting notion of political vulnerability–inspire a viable opponent to go up against the big-money machine.

Dennis Maley's column appears every Thursday and Sunday in The Bradenton Times. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com. Click here to visit his column archive. Click here to go to his bio page. You can also follow Dennis on Facebook.