Looks like Congressman Joe Garcia‘s former campaign consultant-turned-chief of staff could be doing time.
Jeffrey “No Relation” Garcia, who admitted immediately to a scam that generated hundreds of unauthorized absentee ballot requests in last year’s Congressional race, has reportedly reached a plea agreement and will be sentenced to 90 days in jail.
His crime: illegally submitting absentee ballot requests for voters without their permission.
Several sources have told Ladra that Garcia — who conjured a list of voters with emails and told staffers to refer family members that could input the data to request their ballots online — signed a full confession and agreed to the 90 day sentence, which could be much shorter based on good behavior (and everyone expects Jeff to be a model prisoner). Of course, he could be there longer, depending on the outcome of a federal case being mounted against him for alleged campaign crimes involving a plantidate in the 2010 election (more on that later).
Jeff may be scheduled to meet again with prosecutors as early as Monday, but this was supposed to happen a couple of weeks ago, and that makes Ladra think that maybe Garcia may be reconsidering in light of the sweet plea deal given to a true boletera, Deisy Cabrera.
He should be.
Yeah, I went there. Let’s talk about what a lot of people are already saying — because the plea deal doesn’t seem to be a big secret — and that is that there is something awfully wrong with this picture.
Cabrera is one of three ballot handlers — they collected actual ballots, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, not requests for ballots — that got off scot-free for their role in what appears to be a far more organized, if not sophisticated, and elaborate AB fraud machinery (read: conspiracy) that may implicate quite a few elected officials.
Well, actually, Cabrera got a year of probation during which she is not to work on political campaigns. But she’s free to go back to her business with the ballots after that while Garcia will have a felony conviction hanging around his neck for the rest of his life.
Where is the justice in that?
I’m not excusing Jeff Garcia, an experienced veteran of these games who knew damn well he was doing something wrong. Apparently, he thought he found a loophole he could get away with while nobody noticed. Underestimating the elections department is a pastime around here. The problem for Garcia is that they did notice and he should pay a fair price for that (which, by market rate, might be community hours). And thank God they are a little hyper sensitive over there at elections these days. They saw large numbers of requests coming from the same IP address and flagged those ballots — which, by the way, never got sent. When what they should have done was sent the ballots and watched what happened with them. But it looks like they weren’t going to investigate it anyway, because the prosecutors said they hit a dead end with the IP addresses. They started up again only after they were basically shamed into what seems like an overly-aggressive investigation and prosecution when the Miami Herald found a way to trace the IP addresses.
But is that why this case seems like such tremendous overkill? Okay, not as much overkill as the even less egregious absentee ballot case that caused Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez to drop out of that city’s mayoral race, but almost. Or are they, as many suspect, politically motivated?
Because, if you think about it, Jeff Garcia targeted low-turnout voters and then took it upon himself — el fresco que es — to request ballots on their behalf without their knowledge or permission (key difference with the Suarez case). But he didn’t know if they would actually turn those votes in. He never touched an actual ballot. Remember, these are low-interest voters who may just toss the AB in the trash. Of course, everyone expects that Jeff would have followed up hard on that creative list of his. And that’s why the elections department should have worked with cops and prosecutors to send those ballots and see what happened.
Meanwhile, Cabrera — who we are supposed to believe acted alone? — touched at least 31 actual ballots, according to her case, and those include one in which she actually voted for a comatose senior voter in a rehabilitation home. Are you kidding me? She actually stole a woman’s actual vote. One that we know of, since she had been operating for a bit before she was stopped by police Can you really sit there with a straight face and tell me that is not far more egregious than some arrogant illegal “gotv” effort? Really? Could the difference here be the political connections that would be — but that could not be — exposed?
Remember, before she was arrested — and maybe the State Attorney’s Office should have told police to keep tailing her and see where she goes next — detectives followed Cabrera in and out of residential buildings and political offices, including the campaign headquarters of Mayor Carlos Gimenez and the district office of Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo. When they stopped her, she had three notebooks chock full of candidates’ names, dates and dollar amounts — but prosecutors give her an out without having to turn any of her cohorts in. Cohorts like Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian Casals-Muñoz, who comes to her rescue after Cabrera is stopped by police and Sen. Rene Garcia, who goes with Casals-Muñoz to take Cabrera a “pan con bistec” sandwich (with a side of cash?) later that night, but neither one of them — whose campaigns she has worked on in years past — are questioned under oath about anything.
And Cabrera is not the only one to get away with it.
Two months ago, “El Tio” Sergio Robaina, who is the uncle of former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, also got a year probation even though he was caught delivering dozens of ballots to Bovo’s office. He’s not forced to testify about this practice — which everyone knows and he admitted has been going on for years — of using a county commissioner’s office as a ballot bank.
And Commissioner Bovo’s aide, Anamary Pedrosa, who got caught handling 160-some absentee ballots — not requests, ladies and gentlemen of the jury — but actual ballots, and in an intentionally stealthy way, implying that she knew she was doing something wrong, gets nothing but a slap on the wrist because she’s young and pretty and wants to go to law school and prosecutors don’t want to ruin her life.
Does that mean they want to ruin Garcia’s life?
Or is he just a casualty of the pissing match between Kathy and the U.S. Attorney Willy Ferrer‘s office — which arrested two mayors and two lobbyists to a lot of hoopla two months ago — are in. While both say they work together on cases, and they sometimes do, Fernandez-Rundle — who has already come under fire so much for so many things — knows that they have been making her look bad (enter comeback here).
Expect a press release this week, after Jeff’s deal, where the State Attorney will pat herself on the back about her zero tolerance on absentee ballot fraud. But don’t you believe it.
Because it’s only cuando le conviene.
Balanced justice? Jeffrey Garcia to plea, get 90 days in AB scam added by Ladra on
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