Miami Herald doing a good job with this reporting. Can someone tell me why FPL hasn't been brought up on some sort of charges already? ‘Nightmare scenario’: How FPL secretly manipulated a Florida state Senate election (msn.com) The documents show that FPL sent $200,000 to the nonprofit, a Washington, D.C.-based group called Broken Promises, in the fall of 2018. Within five weeks, Broken Promises had donated $20,000 to Goston’s political committee and spent roughly $115,000 on mailers and advertising supporting him. Best of all for FPL: Because of its nonprofit status, Broken Promises didn’t have to disclose its donors — meaning the cash was untraceable. No one would know that FPL had paid to secretly manipulate a state election in favor of Republicans. Voters were in the dark about who funded Goston and why. The records tying FPL to Broken Promises — which come from inside the utility’s political consulting firm — mark the clearest instance of FPL cash being directly linked to a series of election scandals rocking Florida politics. They raise questions about whether the utility “subverted” a free and fair election in Gainesville, said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C. “This is pretty much the nightmare scenario,” Ghosh said. “You have a powerful corporate player in Florida politics using its financial resources to defeat a candidate without any disclosure to the public. … This is election rigging.” As a corporation, FPL is allowed to contribute to political campaigns. But under state and federal law, it is not permitted to hide contributions through “straw” donors. And tax-exempt nonprofits like Broken Promises, which FPL used as a pass-through, are not supposed to engage primarily in politics.
I well remember when this happened and always wondered who did it. IIRC, Mr Goston published a magazine or newsletter and the ad campaign for his “candidacy”was done via ads in his publication so, in effect, FPL money went straight into Goston’s pocket. edit: Again, IIRC, a big chunk of the money given to Mr Goston was for political ads in his publication after the election. Corruption Rules.
I am at the moment a fan of Duke energy. I think the government is paying them to bury the power lines in my area of DeLand. It is almost done on my street. When it is finished I will go back to being opposed to privately owned public monopolies.
