Last week, Florida voters re-elected Attorney General Pam Bondi in a landslide. Bondi received 55 percent of the vote, while her Democratic challenger, George Sheldon, received 42 percent.
Bondi has had a number of controversies surface during her time in office. Most notably, Bondi ensured that a scheduled execution would be moved so she would be able to attend a political fundraiser.
Despite Bondi’s troubling track record during her first term, her success in portraying herself as tough on crime, particularly in the areas of drug abuse and human trafficking, led to an easy re-election. Bondi was helped by an anemic, poorly funded Sheldon campaign that truthfully never stood a chance against Bondi’s well-oiled political machine.
Bondi’s re-election campaign received massive contributions from the Republican Attorneys General Association, an organization that seeks to elect and support Republican attorney generals across the country. RAGA is heavily funded by secretive dark-money groups, which are supported by corporations, giant political action committees and conservative mega-donors.
Just a few days after Bondi’s re-election, The New York Times published a damning report about Bondi’s relationship with a high-profile corporate lobbyist whose firm donated $35,000 to RAGA.
Last year, Bondi took a free ride on a private jet to a resort island, courtesy of Washington lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Shapiro “specializes in building personal relationships with state attorneys general to help corporate clients avoid becoming targets of investigation.”
After the plane ride, Bondi extended an offer to Dickstein Shapiro lobbyist Lori Kalani to stay at her Tampa home while Kalani recovered from surgery.
During Bondi’s first term, Dickstein Shapiro contacted Bondi’s office on behalf of a number of corporate clients, including pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and for-profit college giant Bridgepoint Education. However, the firm is not registered to lobby in the state of Florida, suggesting that Dickstein Shapiro employees may have committed serious violations of Florida ethics laws.
For Florida voters who were unaware of the implications of re-electing Bondi to another four-year term, the report from The New York Times makes Bondi’s values and priorities abundantly clear. Our attorney general has no desire to protect the interests of Floridians or to uphold our state’s constitution. Her main priority is to ensure that the large corporations and lobbying firms that provide her with campaign donations and free trips avoid any legal consequences for their behavior.
Unfortunately, it is too late for Florida voters to rectify their error in allowing Pam Bondi an additional four years to transform the Office of the Attorney General into a hotbed of corruption and bribery.
Hopefully, Floridians will take a stronger stand against corporate influence in state government in 2018.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 11/12/2014]
