He lost his Senate seat to a conspiracy. Now he wants to be Florida's top prosecutor

Miami Herald

5 days ago

Promising to go after 'corrupt power brokers in Tallahassee,' José Javier Rodríguez, the Miami Democrat who lost his Florida Senate seat to a criminal election conspiracy, is launching a campaign to become Florida attorney general.
The Harvard-educated attorney and former Biden administration official told the Herald/Times that he is running to challenge operatives and corporations that he believes have run amok in the Republican-controlled Capitol, including property insurers and utilities.
'The Office of Attorney General is supposed to be the people's lawyer,' he said in an interview Friday. 'To stand up to the corrupt and powerful when you need to, but always serving the best interest of the people of Florida.'
The job of attorney general 'is not to be the governor's lawyer, and it is not to be a mouthpiece for the corrupt and powerful,' he added.
The campaign is Rodríguez's first since he lost his 2020 re-election campaign for the Florida Senate by 34 votes. The race was likely tilted by political operatives who recruited and promoted straw candidates to siphon votes away from Democrats. Five people tied to the scheme took plea deals or were convicted, including former Miami state Sen. Frank Artiles.
Rodríguez said he doesn't consider himself the victim of the scheme. The voters in his former Miami-Dade district are the victims, he said. If elected, Rodríguez said his priorities would include investigating those who are trying to 'muddy up our elections.'
'We need an attorney general looking out for the best interests of the people, and when these election schemes pop up, absolutely they'll be subject of investigation,' he said. 'Anything that the Attorney General's Office would need to do under my leadership to protect voters, we would do.'
Rodríguez criticizes Uthmeier
Rodríguez, 46, is facing an uphill battle in a state where Democrats have had little to celebrate over the last two decades. If he overcomes the odds and is elected, he would replace Attorney General James Uthmeier, who was appointed in February by Gov. Ron DeSantis after serving as the governor's former chief of staff and top political adviser.
In the short time Uthmeier has held his post, much of his attention has been on culture war-centered fights and amplifying the governor's messaging on immigration. A Miami federal judge may hold him in contempt of court for telling police he 'cannot prevent' them from enforcing a DeSantis immigration law that was blocked by a court order. The attorney general was also involved in a $67 million Medicaid settlement that steered $10 million to a charity created to support the first lady's Hope Florida program.
Records related to a House Republican investigation of the settlement are now part of a criminal investigation opened by state prosecutors in Leon County. Uthmeier has called the House GOP investigation of Hope Florida a 'smear campaign.' DeSantis has said there is 'no basis' for the investigation.
'The current attorney general is probably the least independent Attorney General we have ever had,' said Rodríguez, who called Uthmeier 'corrupt.'
Rodríguez, who served as assistant secretary of the Department of Labor under President Joe Biden, is also trying to get back into Florida politics because he says there are a lot of ways that consumers are not being protected.
'In my view, the battle is with the corrupt power brokers in Tallahassee who want to keep things as they are and keep increasing our costs and shifting things onto us,' he said.
Rodríguez on FPL
If elected, he said he will work to bring homeowners relief by suing bad actors in the property insurance industry. He also raised the possibility of suing utilities, such as Florida Power & Light, which he said is seeking a nearly $9 billion hike to customers' base rates over four years — an amount that advocates said represents the largest rate hike request in U.S. history.
'If I'm Attorney General, they [FPL] and any other powerful interest that throws their weight around Tallahassee, if they're violating the law, if they're exceeding what they should be doing and hurting people, they will be held to account,' he said.
Rodríguez pointed to his track record as a state lawmaker to show he is willing to challenge powerful companies, like FPL. As a Democratic state senator, he proposed a law that would have cut into FPL's profits by allowing landlords to sell rooftop solar power to their tenants, a move that would have cut out FPL.
Rodríguez's criticism of FPL infuriated the utility's former chairman and CEO, who was later accused in lawsuits of being involved in some of the transactions in the straw candidate scheme in the 2020 election. Rodriguez said FPL funded 'a corrupt scheme by Republicans.' The company has denied any involvement in the scandal.
'If you think anybody in Tallahassee is really going to hold them to account, I'll tell you that I wish that were the case,' Rodriguez said. 'But if history is the guide, they get what they want almost every time, and there's no one to stop them.'
He wants voters to believe he can be the one that can reverse that trend.
'I'm not afraid to bring the fight, to continue bringing the fight, and I think I've got the track record to prove that,' he said.