Florida’s Award-Winning Nonprofit Investigative Newsroom | Reporting for Central Florida, the I-4 Corridor & All of Florida | FloridaBulldog.org
PRESS RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: March 5, 2026 Issued by: FloridaBulldog.org | Fort Lauderdale, FL
POWER, MONEY & THE I-4 CORRIDOR: FLORIDA BULLDOG INVESTIGATES THE STORIES CENTRAL FLORIDA’S POWER BROKERS DON’T WANT TOLD
A Resurrected Lawsuit Puts FPL’s Ghost Candidate Scandal Back in the Spotlight | How Republicans Blocked an FEC Investigation Into FPL’s Dark Money | A FPL-Linked Firm That Surveilled Orlando Journalists | How the Florida Bar Twice Investigated a DeSantis Critic for the Same Conduct
Along the I-4 corridor — stretching from Daytona Beach through Orlando, Kissimmee, Osceola County, and Polk County into the Tampa Bay region — Florida’s fastest-growing communities are home to some of the state’s most consequential political battles. The I-4 corridor is the swing region that determines elections. It is the economic engine that powers Florida’s growth. And it is, increasingly, a landscape where a powerful utility, a shadowy network of dark-money consultants, and a governor willing to deploy the machinery of state government against his critics have combined to test the boundaries of democratic accountability in ways that affect every resident of Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Volusia, Polk, and Brevard counties. Florida Bulldog is the newsroom reporting on that test.
Florida Bulldog is Florida’s only statewide independent nonprofit investigative newsroom — funded entirely by readers and donors, free from advertiser influence, and answerable to no political party or corporate interest. We were founded in Fort Lauderdale in 2009 by award-winning investigative journalist Dan Christensen, and our reporting reaches every part of Florida, from Pensacola to Key West and from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic. The four investigations in this edition connect directly to Central Florida: they involve Florida Power and Light’s alleged use of a network of consultants to hide political money during the infamous “ghost candidate” scandal that rocked Orlando-area elections — a scandal first exposed largely by the Orlando Sentinel and that Florida Bulldog has continued to cover as federal regulators have failed, one by one, to hold anyone accountable.
The ghost candidate scandal touched the lives and elections of Central Florida voters in a direct, documented way. In state Senate races that affected the communities of Orlando, Kissimmee, and surrounding areas, sham third-party candidates were propped up with dark money funneled through nonprofits — candidates who did little campaigning of their own and appear to have been put on the ballot specifically to siphon votes away from Democratic candidates. The scheme, as documented in leaked internal emails and reporting by the Orlando Sentinel and others, was allegedly orchestrated by consultants connected to Florida Power and Light. And despite all of this documentation, the Federal Election Commission deadlocked and closed the case without accountability.
Florida Bulldog’s reporting also covers a story with a direct Central Florida dimension in the operation of the state’s legal and professional accountability systems: the five-year campaign by the Florida Bar — on orders from a DeSantis-aligned Florida Supreme Court — to prosecute lawyer Daniel Uhlfelder for challenging the governor’s COVID policies. The case began when Leon County Circuit Judge Kevin Carroll dismissed Uhlfelder’s lawsuit and created a fast-track to the First District Court of Appeal — a sequence that set off years of Bar proceedings and produced revelations about the Bar’s own misconduct. This is a story about what happens to any Florida lawyer who challenges state power, anywhere in the state — including in the Orange County courthouse in downtown Orlando.
For Central Florida residents, the common thread running through all four of today’s investigations is the question of who is accountable for the exercise of power in Florida — and who is escaping accountability entirely. Florida Power and Light is the electric utility that serves much of Central Florida. Its political activities, its alleged use of dark money to influence elections, and the failure of federal regulators to hold it accountable are not abstract concerns for Orange County residents — they are questions about the integrity of the elections that determine who governs the communities where Central Floridians live, work, and send their children to school.
Florida Bulldog is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded entirely by readers and donors who believe that accountable journalism is a civic necessity. Every dollar contributed is tax-deductible and goes directly to the reporting that tells these stories. We do not have a paywall. We do not charge for access. We do not accept advertising from the companies and political interests we cover. We ask only that Central Florida readers who find value in this work support it with a contribution at FloridaBulldog.org/donate-to-florida-bulldog. Now, please read the four investigations below — and share them with your neighbors.
Resurrected Lawsuit Puts FPL’s Past Ghost Candidate Controversies Back in Spotlight
FloridaBulldog.org | November 29, 2025
A federal appeals court decision has resurrected a lawsuit that could reopen Florida Power and Light’s most damaging political controversies — including the ghost candidate scandal that was first exposed through reporting by the Orlando Sentinel and that implicated the utility in an alleged scheme to secretly funnel dark money into Central Florida and other Florida elections. Florida Bulldog has reported in detail on the legal developments that put FPL’s old wounds back in play, and what they mean for the accountability of one of Florida’s most politically influential corporations.
At the center of the FPL controversies was Matrix LLC, an Alabama-based consulting and lobbying firm FPL had employed. Internal company records — which leaked to reporters at the Orlando Sentinel, The Miami Herald, The Florida Times-Union, and the nonprofit newsroom Floodlight — connected FPL to a series of seemingly discrete controversies across Florida. Among the most significant for Central Florida: in a 2020 state Senate race, those internal records showed that former Matrix operatives propped up a sham candidate who shared a last name with the incumbent senator, apparently designed to confuse voters and siphon votes from Democratic candidates. Similar schemes were alleged in other Florida races during the same election cycle.
The leaked Matrix records also revealed an extraordinary chapter involving a journalist who had been critical of FPL’s efforts to acquire a publicly owned utility in Jacksonville: Matrix operatives are alleged to have surveilled that journalist and attempted to lure an FPL critic off a city council with a six-figure job offer at a sham nonprofit. These were not minor political dirty tricks — they were alleged systematic corporate interference in public governance and press freedom. FPL has vigorously denied any role in these activities. The resurrected lawsuit will give the courts another opportunity to examine those denials.
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The implications for Central Florida are direct and concrete. FPL — a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, the world’s largest producer of wind and solar power — is the electric utility that serves a large portion of Central Florida, including communities in Orange, Osceola, and surrounding counties. Its political activities, its lobbying expenditures, and its alleged use of dark money to influence state legislative races are not abstract concerns for Orlando-area residents — they are questions about whether the company that sends their monthly electric bill is also buying influence over the legislators who regulate it.
The resurrected lawsuit creates a new legal forum in which the documented allegations about FPL’s political activities can be tested in court — with discovery, sworn testimony, and cross-examination. That forum has been denied by the FEC’s partisan deadlock and the absence of any state-level enforcement action. Florida Bulldog will continue to cover the lawsuit’s progress and its implications for accountability in Florida’s utility-political complex.
Florida Bulldog’s coverage of the FPL controversies has tracked every chapter of this story — from the original Orlando Sentinel reporting that sparked it, through the FEC complaint and deadlock, to the resurrected federal lawsuit. Taken together, this body of reporting provides Central Florida readers with the most complete independent record available of how Florida’s most powerful utility has operated in the political arena — and how the accountability mechanisms designed to scrutinize that conduct have repeatedly failed.
FEC Republicans Block Investigation Into FPL’s Alleged Ghost Candidate Dark Money
FloridaBulldog.org | April 16, 2024
In a development that legal observers compared to the spirit of Watergate accountability failures, the Federal Election Commission deadlocked 3-3 along party lines — with Republicans unanimously opposed — to block a full investigation into allegations that Florida Power and Light used a network of conduit corporations to hide $1.27 million in allegedly illegal political contributions tied to Florida’s ghost candidate scandal. The FEC’s own Office of General Counsel had reviewed the evidence and recommended a full investigation, finding that the record established reason to believe illegal contributions were made. Three Republican commissioners voted to close the case anyway.
The complaint at the center of the FEC proceeding was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and was based on in-depth investigative reporting by the Orlando Sentinel, The Miami Herald, and others about a November 2019 email and accompanying memos sent to FPL’s then-CEO Eric Silagy by Jeff Pitts, then-CEO of Matrix LLC — the Alabama lobbying and consulting firm that allegedly proposed a method for FPL to make anonymous contributions to federal and state political committees by transferring funds through multiple levels of conduit entities. The leaked documents, which the Orlando Sentinel obtained and published, provided the evidentiary backbone for the FEC complaint.
The Republican commissioners who blocked the investigation dismissed the Orlando Sentinel’s reporting as “anonymously-sourced” and argued that the FEC “has long declined to proceed on the basis of such information.” The two Democratic commissioners pushed back sharply, writing that the FEC “should consider all sources of credible information when making reason to believe findings, including factual allegations uncovered by investigative journalism.” They noted that the Orlando Sentinel’s reporting was “detailed and well-sourced,” including “internal emails and memoranda from the political consultants discussing the scheme in its possession.” The FEC’s general counsel agreed. The three Republicans did not.
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For Central Florida voters whose elections were potentially affected by the ghost candidate scheme, the FEC’s failure to investigate is not an abstraction — it is a direct statement about what accountability means in practice when a politically connected company is the subject of allegations. The FEC that could not muster four votes to investigate $1.27 million in allegedly illegal contributions connected to Florida legislative races is the same FEC that Central Floridians depend on to ensure their elections are not corrupted by hidden corporate money.
Silagy, the FPL CEO at the center of the allegations, retired abruptly from FPL in January 2023 with a compensation package in excess of $13.5 million. He had been appointed to Florida’s state university system Board of Governors by Governor DeSantis in 2019. FPL has consistently denied any role in the ghost candidate scheme or any illegal political activity. Florida Bulldog will continue to report on the legal proceedings that may yet test those denials.
The FEC deadlock in the FPL case is one chapter in a broader story that Florida Bulldog has documented about how partisan gridlock at federal regulatory agencies has effectively shielded politically connected corporations from accountability. The FEC that Republicans controlled deadlocked on the FPL case. The same FEC let former Congressman David Rivera walk free after 13 years of pursuit. These are not isolated failures — they are the predictable result of appointing commissioners who oppose enforcement of the very laws they are charged with enforcing.
FEC Deadlocks on Allegations FPL Used Matrix Conduits to Hide Contributions to Ghost Candidates
FloridaBulldog.org | March 13, 2024
Florida Bulldog has provided a detailed accounting of how the Federal Election Commission came to close its case against Florida Power and Light without finding a violation of federal campaign finance law — despite the existence of internal company documents, obtained and published by the Orlando Sentinel, that appeared to describe precisely the kind of scheme that the FEC’s own general counsel concluded gave reason to believe violations had occurred. The story is a granular examination of regulatory failure that is essential reading for Central Florida voters who want to understand what actually happened to the investigations triggered by the ghost candidate scandal.
The case began with a complaint filed by CREW — based on the Orlando Sentinel’s reporting on a November 2019 email from Matrix CEO Jeff Pitts to FPL CEO Eric Silagy, which appeared to propose a method for secretly channeling FPL money into political campaigns through multiple conduit entities. The Sentinel’s reporting also connected Matrix-linked nonprofits to the ghost candidate scheme in which third-party candidates with strategically chosen names were placed on ballots in Florida legislative races — including races in the Central Florida and I-4 corridor region — in an apparent effort to siphon Democratic votes.
NextEra Energy, FPL’s parent company, ultimately notified the public that the FEC “voted to close its file” on the complaint without a finding that the company violated federal law. What that statement did not explain — and what Florida Bulldog’s reporting makes clear — is that the case was closed not because the evidence was examined and found wanting, but because three Republican commissioners voted to close it before a full investigation could even begin. The true sources of the allegedly illegal contributions remain unknown. The FEC closed the file without finding out who they were.
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The Grow United nonprofit — which paid for mailers promoting third-party candidates “who did little campaigning of their own and appear to have been encouraged to run in an effort to siphon votes from Democratic candidates” — was connected in the leaked Matrix records to consultants once employed by Matrix. For Central Florida voters who cast ballots in the races where these sham candidates appeared on the ballot, the FEC’s closure of the case without finding the true source of the money means they may never know who funded the scheme that sought to manipulate their votes.
Florida Bulldog’s reporting on the FPL-Matrix-ghost candidate complex — tracking the story from the original Orlando Sentinel investigation through the CREW complaint, the FEC proceedings, the Republican deadlock, and the resurrected federal lawsuit — represents the most complete independent record of this story available to Florida readers. It required sustained attention to complex federal regulatory proceedings over months and years — the kind of long-term investigative commitment that only a dedicated nonprofit newsroom can make.
The ghost candidate scandal is not history. The lawsuit has been resurrected. New evidence may emerge. And Florida’s 2026 elections — including races along the I-4 corridor — will take place against the backdrop of a scandal in which the mechanisms designed to ensure clean elections demonstrably failed. Florida Bulldog will be there for every development, reporting what happens and what it means for the Central Florida communities whose democratic integrity was at stake.
Florida Bar Conjures Dubious Ethics Complaint Against DeSantis Critic Uhlfelder
By Noreen Marcus | FloridaBulldog.org | April 28, 2024
When Daniel Uhlfelder dressed as the Grim Reaper on Florida’s beaches in 2020 to protest Governor DeSantis’s refusal to close them during COVID-19, he filed a serious lawsuit alongside his protest — a case that landed before Leon County Circuit Judge Kevin Carroll in Tallahassee. Carroll, doing his job, dismissed the case on constitutional grounds while welcoming the “public-spirited” nature of the lawsuit and creating a fast-track to the First District Court of Appeal so that a higher court could quickly review his ruling. What followed was one of the most extraordinary episodes of politically motivated legal persecution in modern Florida history — five years of Florida Bar proceedings that Florida Bulldog reporter Noreen Marcus has documented in unprecedented detail.
On orders from the Florida Supreme Court — whose DeSantis-appointed majority rejected the Bar Board of Governors’ recommendation of leniency and directed a second, harder look at Uhlfelder’s conduct — the Florida Bar took the extraordinary step of investigating Uhlfelder twice for the same allegedly unethical conduct. Retired Florida Supreme Court Justice R. Fred Lewis, who spent 20 years on the state’s highest court, told Florida Bulldog: “I have not seen that occur ever. It’s like they started all over again.” When one of the most respected voices in Florida’s legal history describes a Bar proceeding as unprecedented in his entire career, it is worth asking why the Florida Supreme Court was so determined to see Uhlfelder punished that it rejected its own Board’s call for leniency.
The technical charge the Bar eventually brought was this: Uhlfelder failed to formally notify the First District Court of Appeal that his two co-counsel had withdrawn from the DeSantis case appeal. What the Bar did not disclose before trial — and what Florida Bulldog later revealed — was that both co-counsel were themselves under active Bar disciplinary proceedings at the time they testified against Uhlfelder. Former Florida Bar president Hank Coxe called that concealment “cheating.” A Taylor County circuit court judge-referee, overwhelmed by the case’s complexity, ultimately recommended the lightest possible sanction — a mild reprimand.
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For Central Florida readers, the Uhlfelder story is important not because of its technical Bar proceedings but because of what those proceedings reveal about institutional independence in Florida. The Florida Supreme Court that drove the second investigation of Uhlfelder is the same court that governs the legal profession in every Florida county — including Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Volusia, Polk, and Brevard. Every lawyer who practices in Central Florida courts operates under the rules of a Bar whose disciplinary function, Florida Bulldog’s reporting documents, has been compromised by the political influence of a governor who has appointed five of the court’s seven justices.
If the Florida Bar can be directed by the Florida Supreme Court to investigate a lawyer twice for the same conduct because that lawyer publicly embarrassed the governor — and if the Bar’s own prosecutors can conceal their misconduct against their witnesses without immediate sanction — then every Central Florida attorney who might one day need the Bar to protect them from politically motivated prosecution has reason to be concerned. The system that is supposed to discipline unethical lawyers and protect the public has instead become a system that punishes lawyers who challenge the governor and protects those who serve his political interests.
Florida Bulldog’s coverage of the Uhlfelder case — from the original Grim Reaper protest through the first Bar proceedings, the Supreme Court’s rejection of leniency, the second investigation, the trial that backfired on the Bar, the revelation of the Bar’s witness concealment, and the referee’s ultimate recommendation — constitutes the most complete and sustained independent record of this story available anywhere in Florida. It is accountability journalism that directly serves the interests of every Florida resident who depends on a legal system governed by genuinely independent professional discipline, wherever they live along the I-4 corridor or across the state.
ABOUT FLORIDA BULLDOG
Florida Bulldog is Florida’s independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative newsroom — reporting for Central Florida, the I-4 Corridor, and all of Florida since 2009. Founded by award-winning journalist Dan Christensen — a veteran of The Miami Herald and Daily Business Review — Florida Bulldog covers Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Volusia, Polk, and Brevard counties as part of its statewide reporting on government, politics, the courts, law enforcement, education, business, the environment, health, and public safety. Ad-free. Corporate-free. Answers to no political party. Florida Bulldog is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and member of the Investigative News Network (INN).
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Mailing Address: Florida Bulldog P.O. Box 23763 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33307
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