‘Ghost candidate’ group funds campaign to oust Orange County commissioner

Some big-dollar donors are desperate to sway this year’s local elections in Orange County, where half of the county commission is up for grabs.

Photo credit: Mick Haupt

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Last month, right around the time early voting began for Florida’s Aug. 20 primary elections, voters in west Orange County were sent ugly mailers meant to trick people into thinking that Nicole Wilson, the county commissioner for the area, had made racist remarks.

The eleventh-hour attack ads came from an innocuously named political committee that had been set up by allies of Austin Arthur, a marketing executive running against Wilson for Orange County’s District 1 commission seat.

And they were sent just as the pro-Arthur political committee got a $50,000 cash infusion from a controversial source: A dark-money nonprofit in Tallahassee that was at the center of Florida’s 2020 “ghost candidate” scandal.

The $50,000 gift is an example of how even some candidates in local races in Florida are flouting traditional campaign fundraising rules that were supposed to limit the influence of money in politics.

But it also reveals how desperate some big-dollar donors are to sway this year’s local elections in Orange County, where three of six county commission seats are on the ballot this fall — in races in which there are clear differences between all the candidates on key issues like taxes and development.

Arthur — who squeaked through the August primary into a November runoff race against Wilson — is by no means unique. Four of the six candidates in Orange County’s commission races have closely aligned political committees that are cashing unusually large checks from donors.

Arthur has used a political committee to build an enormous fundraising advantage in his race against Wilson in Orange County’s District 1, which covers suburban communities such as Horizons West and Winter Garden as well as Walt Disney World.

But Steve Leary, a former Winter Park mayor, has done the same in District 5, which runs from downtown Orlando to the St. Johns River and where Leary faces Kelly Semrad, a university professor and environmental activist, for an open seat. A political committee has enabled Leary to accept donations such as a $7,500 check from Universal Orlando, the theme-park giant that has sought public subsidies from Orange County for a new theme park.

The financial playing field is more even in District 3, which includes neighborhoods south and east of Orlando and where both candidates are using political committees to sidestep fundraising caps and solicit five-figure donations. Incumbent Commissioner Mayra Uribe’s biggest donors include county contractors and local developers, while Linda Stewart, an outgoing state senator challenging Uribe, has been propped up by property insurance companies.

Still, Austin Arthur has been more aggressive than most. A review of campaign-finance records show that no other candidate-aligned committee has raised nearly as much money in recent months as his “Citizens for Common Sense Solutions,” which has collected more than $170,000 since it was created last summer.

To be clear, Arthur’s name doesn’t appear on any of the group’s public filings, and he says Citizens for Common Sense Solutions is independent. “It does its own thing,” Arthur said when asked about the group, which is currently financing digital ads attacking Wilson.  

But records show the committee’s chairman is a videographer who has been hired by Arthur’s campaign. It has made monthly payments to Arthur’s campaign manager. And Arthur has publicly boasted about the committee’s fundraising as if it were his own.

Most of the money Citizens for Common Sense Solutions has raised comes from a relatively small circle of donors.

For instance, records show that Fun Spot America founder John Arie Sr. has given a combined $30,000, through personal donations and from a consulting firm he runs. Companies controlled by local developer Karam Duggal have donated $15,000. And a fundraising committee run Republican state Rep. Taylor Yarkosky of Montverde has provided another $10,000.

But Arthur’s biggest donation by far — the biggest donations made in support of any of Orange County’s commission candidates so far this cycle — is the $50,000 it took last month from a nonprofit called “The American Promise.” That’s an organization in Tallahassee that recently changed its name from “Let’s Preserve the American Dream,” and it played a pivotal role in a 2020 election scheme used to help Republicans win three key state Senate seats around Florida.

Arthur directed questions about Citizens for Common Sense Solutions to the organization itself. Jose Virella, the videographer serving as chairperson of the group, declined to answer any.

“We do not have comment on this or anything else surrounding our donors or the various support we offer candidates and causes,” Virella said in a text message.

There’s no way to know where that $50,000 originally came from because dark-money nonprofits do not have to disclose their donors. But The American Promise has been closely linked in the past to Associated Industries of Florida, a big-business lobbying group in Tallahassee.

And Associated Industries of Florida also paid for mailers attacking Nicole Wilson four years ago, when the environmental attorney first ran for a seat on the Orange County commission and beat a developer-backed incumbent.

Much like Austin Arthur, records show that District 5 candidate Steve Leary has tapped tourism and development donors to fund his political committee, which Leary named, “Neighbors for a Sensible Orange County.”

The biggest donor is Universal Orlando, which has given $7,500.

But Leary’s group has also received $4,000 from a fundraising committee controlled by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who is helping development giant Tavistock move forward with plans to build homes across a vast swath of east Orange County. And a company controlled by Tavistock itself has given Leary’s committee another $2,500.

Records show Leary has used his political committee to pay for polling and text-message adverting so far, as he tries to catch up with Semrad, the university professor who finished in first place in the August primary despite raising far less money overall.

In fact, Wilson and Semrad are the only two of the six Orange County commission candidates who are not relying on political committees to get around donation caps.

But then there is District 3 where both candidates — Uribe, the incumbent commissioner, and Stewart, the outgoing state senator — have been using political committees for years.

Through her political committee “Action for Florida,” Uribe has recently taken $10,000 from National Health Transport, an ambulance contractor that does business with Orange County, and at least $3,500 from developers of “The Grow,” a 1,200-acre subdivision being built in east Orange County.

On the other hand, Stewart’s political committee, called “Citizens for Florida,” has pulled in more than $10,000 in just the past few months from the property insurance industry.

Those donations — from entities affiliated with State Farm, American Integrity, and American Coastal, among others — came after Stewart was the only Democratic state senator in Florida to vote for an industry-backed bill that made it easier for insurance companies to raise rates and harder for homeowners to fight back when an insurer underpays a claim.

The District 3 race also stands out because both politicians seem to be using secondary political committees to attack each other.

Uribe isn’t directly affiliated with “Concerned Citizens of Orange County,” which has paid for mailers attacking Stewart. But contribution records show that its largest donor is an eminent domain attorney who Uribe appointed to one of the most powerful local boards in Orange County.

Stewart is similarly removed from “Florida Workers’ Alliance,” which has hit Uribe with negative ads and which is part of a larger network of political committees that makes it all but impossible to trace the original source of its funding. But expenditure records suggest the group is controlled by a controversial political consultant who does work for some Democratic state senators.