What’s going on with the Supervisor of Elections?

Dennis Ward, State’s Attorney for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county. 

One of the decisions coming up in this election will be for Supervisor of Elections. 

Ward said, “I’d like to talk about Joyce Griffin, what a great job she’s done. As you know, she’s worked in the supervisor of election for over 40 years. In 2012 she was elected, I believe, if I recall correctly, to the position, a supervisor of elections, and she’s been in there for the last 12 years, and I can only wonder what’s going through her mind. When you’re in these positions you think about, how’s the office going to run when I’m done? I got people there, I’ve got people in place. I know the way it runs and now she’s looking at this election and nothing but controversy in this election, and it was thought about at the Republican executive committee when there was a vote taken on rule eight to endorse one Republican against another Republican, and the chair was told over and over again we don’t do that, we don’t do that, we don’t do that. She went ahead and did it anyway. It was a divisive vote. It was a vote that wasn’t a proper vote. The State Committee woman was asked to go to the Republican Party of Florida and show the results. There was, at that time, 63 members in the organization. On that particular morning, there were 39 members present, 38 voted. One abstained. It was a 20 to 12  vote. You needed 60% it didn’t happen. Cathy Ovide, State Committee Woman was instructed to contact RPOF. She was in the process of doing that when the chair came out and sent out an email saying that they were endorsing Sherri Hodies and they were going to give her $20,000 and that she spoke with the people, the heads of the party, the Republican Party of Florida, I asked her, please don’t do anything yet, until we get something in writing that indicates that RPOF said that that was a good vote, because it’s very important. I mean, the 60% threshold is there because it’s dividing when you endorse one Republican over another. So she decided to go ahead and do what she wanted to do anyway, and now here we are in this controversy. Every newspaper in Monroe County has written at least one article, most multiple articles on this issue. There’s comments from the chair that the vote tallies were taken to the highest levels of the Republican Party of Florida by her and they told her chairman to make the call. That’s the recent response. Before that, she was told that the vote was great. Sherri Hodies came out and says, oh yeah she talked to the RPOF chairman and the executive director of the process, and the vote was approved. Finally, David Goodhue, with the Miami Herald and Florida politics, caught up with Evan Power, the chair of the party. He told the Miami Herald he has no knowledge of the details of what happened. The only thing our team would do was point them to the rule on endorsement expenditures. He said he doesn’t get involved in primaries, nor does he tell any REC how to operate. In Florida politics, Sherri Hodies says she only accepted the endorsement donation after getting an okay from RPOF chair, Evan Power, who denied any involvement in the matter. So I mean, for Joyce to go out on a note like this, with all this controversy going on and it’s going to continue. My only involvement was other than an REC member, was as a state attorney, I received a complaint from a citizen of Monroe County. Obviously, I’m a witness to what happened, so I can’t handle the case. I send a request to the governor for an executive assignment, and he assigns Amira Fox over in the 20th circuit. Then I start getting bombarded on Facebook by the chair Rhonda Lopez, who accuses me of being Liz Cheney and I’m a RINO, even though she begged me 10 or 12 times to run for Supervisor of Elections, I said, no, I’m the state attorney. Why would I run for the supervisor of elections? Because we need name recognition to beat Ron Saunders. I said, I’m the state attorney, over and over and over again, I told her these things, and now she accuses me of being a RINO. I’m sure that there will be investigators from the 20th circuit to come over and speak to a number of people, and we’ll go from there. On my radio show, I’ve invited Sherri Hodes to come on and and debate with Ron Saunders. Ron Sanders showed up. Sherri didn’t. I mean, she needs to answer these questions. 

A recent conviction for GPS thefts happened. 

Ward said, “This was a great investigation put together by Sheriff Ramsay and his troops. They had noticed some strange irregularities, and seeing that these GPSs in some of these high end boats were being stolen. Those GPSs are very expensive, and there was a ring of them. So they got together with the Miami Dade County Marine Task Force, and I think Collier County, they were experiencing thefts over there. There were thefts all over like every county in the southern part of Florida, and Sheriff Ramsay and the other law enforcement agencies, along with my office, began looking at these things, and they saw a pattern, and they started tracking these guys, and then they started making arrests, and then we got their cell phones, and there was just a wealth of information in there, all over South Florida, and I think there were about close to about a dozen of them arrested. Some of the cases are still pending. The one that’s in the news media here the last couple of days, a young man that was 18 years old that was arrested and he pled straight up to judge Morgan last week, and Judge Morgan sentenced him to three years in prison, followed by three years of probation and fines, court costs, community service and what have you. This is going to send a signal to the other ones that are still waiting to go to trial, and we welcome to go to them to go to trial. We’ve got some pretty responsible jurors down here that will be sitting on that on that jury, and a lot of them are boat owners and have GPSs. So my advice to them would be to take a plea, because I think it may go a little tougher on you if you go to trial and get convicted.”

There have been some recent audits of Monroe County Parks and Beaches. 

Ward said, “Having been involved with the clerk’s office in some of these prior audits, they do a pretty good job over there, and that’s their responsibility, and they need to take a look at some of these things, and the County Commission has made it known that they want to go into every department and look at every department. They’re bringing in different organizations to take a look at various duties in the county. I think Kevin, he’s doing his due diligence, is checking on some of these things, and that’s led to the sheriff’s office being involved in this Parks and Recreation issue, and they did a pretty good job in the fire department, the Air Rescue issue, although they were thwarted by the lack of cooperation by the fire department. Certainly when we were asked to join in in that investigation, and started issuing some subpoenas, and what have you, that thing moved pretty good. So hopefully this is just a minor type of incident, and there’s not really theft going on. It’s faulty bookkeeping. We can only hope for that. Hopefully there’s no theft, but I’m sure the sheriff’s office will do a great job in this investigation as well. I’m sure Kevin is going to do audits on a lot of the departments. The county commission is is behind him 100% and they’re going to do their own evaluations of the various departments within the county. I understand the mayor is going to go over to the motor pool and see how that works, and meet some of the employees and stuff. It’s good for the county commissioners to get involved, not to tell people how to run their job, because that’s not their job. That’s the county administrator’s job. It’s just to go over and take a look and ask the employees, hey, how’s things going? What can we do to help you guys out? How’s housing? I’m sure they’ll talk about a number of issues, so I think that’s good.”

What’s been happening with the firing of the city manager in Key West? 

Ward said, “We sent out requests and public records request and subpoenas for some of the records of cell phones and emails that deal with their jobs in particular, and we’ve just received a lot of that over the last week and a half or so and putting that together, and now we have to go through the tough task of going through each and every one of those communications. So that’s going to be pretty time consuming on our part.”

A large drug sting happened with federal agencies a few weeks ago. 

Ward said, “As you know, we had those migrants that came in a few weeks ago from Ecuador and China, and they chose not to prosecute those cases. So my office, in conjunction with the sheriff’s office, will be prosecuting those cases, and we’re working very well with Sheriff Ramsay. He’s been very outspoken about that particular incident. It was brought up on the floor of the House of Representatives, I believe, last week and our representative, Carlos Jimenez, along with other South Florida people that are concerned about these things, kind of scolded the administration for not doing their job. That’s just one. I mean, we had a boatload of cocaine come in a few months ago that they chose not to prosecute, and a really nasty child pornography, child sexual battery case that came in, and we asked them to help us out with it, some investigations up in the Midwest, and they told us that, sorry, that’s out of their jurisdiction. I’m going, well, wait a minute, you’re the United States Attorney’s Office. How could it be out of your jurisdiction? Anyway, we’re prosecuting those cases. But hats off to those guys for doing that big cocaine thing. It’ll put a dent in the organization until these guys bond out, or somebody else, it’s like putting your hand in water, and pulling it out with these drug dealers. We’re hammering them down here. So we’ll see what happens. I’ve noticed that there’s an uptick in DUI arrest up and down the county ever since Julian Garcia was struck by that drunk driver and he lost his leg. There’s been a significant increase in DUI arrests, so just a heads up out there.”