[00:00:00] This is Democracy and Destiny with Ciara Torres-Spelliscy. I have the per curiam opinion and judgment to announce on behalf of the court. In Buckley against Valeo, we have a cancer within close to the presidency's growing in case 0 8 2 0 5. Citizens United versus the FEC, Justice Kennedy has the opinion of the court. The First Amendment's core purpose is to foster a vibrant political system full of robust discussion and debate. There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. With fear for our democracy. I, along with Justices Kagan and Jackson dissent.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Welcome to the show. I'm Ciara Torres-Spelliscy. I'm a professor at Stetson Law [00:01:00] School in Florida, and I'm a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. This show was inspired by my third book, Corporatocracy, How to Protect Democracy From Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians published by NYU Press, election Day 2024.

I realize in today's busy world, reading a 300-page book is not on everyone's to-do list. But even I as a law professor, have time to listen to radio shows and podcasts when I'm commuting to campus or walking my dog. So here we are. This is “Democracy and Destiny.”

Today's episode is about Florida and some of the crazy politics that happen in my home state. I will be joined in a few minutes with two guests. One is Andrew Warren and the other is Matt Newton, his lawyer. They're going to talk about the Ghost Candidate Scandal, as well [00:02:00] as the experience that Andrew Warren had with Governor Ron DeSantis. But first, let's start with pay to play today.

The term pay to play comes from the radio payola scandals from the 1950s and 1960s. Record companies would pay radio stations to play their music, hence it was literally pay to play. Today the phrase pay to play is shorthand for all kinds of political corruption, especially when government contractors or others with business pending in front of the government pay bribes to public officials to get a private benefit, like a lucrative, no bid contract or approval of a corporate merger. One of the things that I learned while writing my book Corporatocracy is that political corruption is prosecuted frequently, but the media just [00:03:00] doesn't report on it as often as other things like celebrity news.

That leaves the misimpression with the public that corrupt politicians or shady government contractors are always getting away with crimes. So I swore to myself if I ever had a news generating platform that I would highlight that political corruption can be met with serious legal consequences.

So, our example of pay to play today is from the ninth circuit. I'll call this one: "Elizabeth Holmes is still guilty." In 2025, the Ninth Circuit ruled in USA versus Holmes, and this is language from the court opinion quote, “one tiny drop changes everything.” End quote. That was the vision shared by Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh Sunny Balwani, who set out in the mid two thousands to revolutionize medical laboratory testing through a biotechnology company called Theranos.

Theranos claimed it could run fast, accurate, and affordable tests with just a drop of [00:04:00] blood drawn from the prick of a finger. In contrast to traditional testing methods that require large needles to draw blood from a vein. Investors, healthcare professionals and companies, and Silicon Valley spectators were captivated by the potential of Theranos revolutionary technology. As a result, Holmes and Balwani were able to establish relationships with major companies, investors, and prominent figures, including high ranking members of the United States military. In 2015, news reporting revealed internal struggles within the Theranos Laboratory and the limitations of its technology.

The grandiose achievements touted by Holmes and Balwani were half-truths and outright lies. Theranos blood testing device failed to deliver faster and more accurate testing results than conventional technology. Pharmaceutical companies never validated [00:05:00] the technology as Holmes and Balwani told investors.

Contrary to the rosy revenue projections shared with investors and business partners, Theranos was running out of money. After a two-and-a-half-year investigation, a grand jury returned an indictment against Holmes and Balwani. They were tried separately in lengthy jury trials, and each was convicted on numerous fraud charges.

Holmes and Balwani now bring several challenges to the District Court's decisions at trial and sentencing. We (referring to the Court) affirm factual background, the third superseding indictment charged Holmes and Balwani. Collectively the defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud against investors from 2010 to 2015.

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 and she served as its chief executive Officer until 2018. [00:06:00] Theranos aimed to revolutionize medical laboratory testing through innovative methods for drawing, blood, testing, blood, and interpreting patient data. Holmes claimed goal was to create technology to run blood tests on small samples of blood drawn from a finger stick.

Balwani, who was in a romantic relationship with Holmes from 2004 to 2016, joined the company in 2009 and was later appointed its president and chief operating officer. Holmes admitted that although not everyone directly reported directly to her, ultimately all roads led to her as the CEO Theranos.

Technology was structured around three core areas. The first was the chemistry or the essays. The second was the hardware, and the third was the software. One of Theranos [00:07:00] early developments was a miniaturized device called the Edison. The Edison used Theranos Clinical Lab to test patient samples while other devices, including the “Mini Lab” were in development while Holmes ran Theranos.

Edison was the only device developed by Theranos that was ever used to test patient samples. Blood samples that were collected by Theranos from a finger stick using the nanotainter would be tested on either the Edison device or a modified third-party device. Although Theranos developed 300 small sample essays during Holmes' time at the company, only 12 essays were ever run on the Edison. Other general chemistry tests conducted by Theranos were run on third-party manufactured machines. Theranos goal was to get as many [00:08:00] tests to run on the Edison as possible, and Holmes and Balwani pushed employees in technical laboratories to do so despite their expressed concern about the Edison's accuracy.

In 2010, Theranos partnered with Walgreens to use Theranos proprietary device to conduct patient tests in Walgreens retail pharmacies. After publicly launching its testing services at Walgreens in the fall of 2013, Theranos raised funds by offering shares to investors the indictment. Alleged that in procuring these investments, Holmes and Balwani made materially false and misleading statements to the investors.

Theranos employees testified at both trials that the Edison device consistently failed quality controlled checks and was unable to provide accurate results. They conveyed their concerns about the reliability of [00:09:00] Theranos testing to Holmes and Balwani in real time. But Holmes and Balwani dismissed these concerns.

One extensively litigated item of evidence was a report prepared by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for overseeing blood testing laboratories. It had conducted an unannounced inspection of Theranos in late 2015. The report summarized the findings from that inspection, including the conclusion that deficiencies in Theranos clinical laboratory practices and procedures presented immediate jeopardy to patient health.

The report identified quality control failures within the lab relating to tests that were run on the Edison device. As well as patient tests from modified commercial third-party devices. One form of deception charged in the indictments is Theranos use of third-party devices to conduct [00:10:00] patient sample and tests.

Theranos employees explained how patient tests were run on machines that were commercially available and manufactured by third parties. Multiple investors testified that Holmes and Balwani misled them to believe that Theranos ran its tests solely on devices manufactured by Theranos. Balwani and Holmes took steps to conceal their use of third-party devices.

Employees testified that Theranos would invite VIP guests, including investors to observe technological demonstrations of the Theranos device. These VIP guests would be placed in a room with an Edison or Mini Lab and would be led to believe that the device was running a sample of their blood. In reality, the device was running a null protocol.

While some of the VIP samples were surreptitiously run on third-party devices, Holmes and Balwani also shared false [00:11:00] financial projections with investors in the early 2010s. Theranos business partnerships with pharmaceutical and retail companies were failing to generate revenue. Theranos corporate controller testified that Theranos did not have any revenue in 2012 and 2013. In November, 2013 Balwani told Holmes that Theranos was down to $15 million in cash, but the company was spending up to $2 million weekly, but Holmes and Balwani painted a very different picture to investors. Finally, the indictment alleges that. Holmes and Balwani also misrepresented to investors the status of Theranos partnership with other companies, including retailers and pharmaceutical companies.

A Walgreens representative testified that while Holmes and Balwani were touting to investors that Theranos partnership with Walgreens was [00:12:00] expanding. The partnership was actually contracting, and the pilot program was not going as hoped. Walgreen's decision to reduce the number of stores launching Theranos testing services was motivated in part by the high percentage of blood draws that were being performed, venously-- traditional blood draws--rather than through a finger prick.

Theranos partnership with pharmaceutical companies, which began in 2008 and 2009 with the purpose of conducting studies of the Theranos technology quickly soured. A representative of Pfizer testified that he believed that Theranos answers to technical due diligence questions were oblique, deflective or evasive, and that after 2008, Pfizer and Theranos had no meaningful business dealings.

But once again, Holmes and Balwani projected a very different image to [00:13:00] investors. Holmes admitted that she personally affixed the logo of various pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Glaxo Smith Klein, and Schering-Plough onto reports containing favorable conclusions about. Theranos device in emails to Walgreens Holmes described these reports as representing the pharmaceutical company's independent and technical validation of the Theranos device.

At trial representatives from these companies testified that they neither independently validated the Theranos technology, nor authorized the use of their company logo on these reports. These reports were shared with investors who found it significant, that large, independent third party companies were vouching for the technology.

The indictment further alleged that Holmes and Balwani devised a scheme to defraud patients. Multiple patients testified at the trials. One patient testified [00:14:00] that an HIV test she took through Theranos came back positive, but two subsequent tests shows she was in fact negative. Another patient testified she received incorrect results from a Theranos blood test about her pregnancy.

After a lengthy discussion of the legal questions in the case, we therefore affirmed the district court's restitution order in its entirety. Affirmed, this is the end of the Ninth Circuit's opinion in USA versus Holmes.

Our next segment is Corruption Junction. I've been writing about money and politics for two decades. I was inspired to write my book Corporatocracy because of the events on January 6th at the U.S. Capitol. One way to think about this book is it's the Supreme Court's horrible Citizens United decision meets the horrifying [00:15:00] events on January 6th, so that we are literally on the same page.

Let me read a short excerpt from Corporatocracy. [Reading from Chapter 5 of Corporatocracy]

[00:25:00]

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Now we get to the heart of the matter, which is the problem of political corruption. My first guest, Andrew Warren is an experienced former federal prosecutor and the former elected state attorney for Florida's 13th judicial district. He is also the recipient of the American Bar Association's Minister of Justice Award that recognizes prosecutors that highlight the ABA's principle that the duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely convict. My second guest is Matt Newton. He is a Tampa attorney board certified by the Florida Bar as a specialist in City, county and local government law. He has been a host on local radio Tampa, WMNF 88.5 FM. I'm so glad to have you both here today to speak about the state of American democracy. Welcome to this portion of the show, which is called Corruption Junction.

Matt Newton: Thank you for inviting us to Corruption Junction.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Of course.

Andrew Warren: Yeah. Thanks so much for having us today.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Andrew, what inspired you to run for public [00:26:00] office?

Andrew Warren: I had wanted to spend my law career doing public service. I was a federal prosecutor, so I spent about a decade with the U.S. Department of Justice and courtrooms across the country prosecuting complex financial fraud cases, and then ended up moving home to Florida.

I had a one-and-a-half-year-old at the time, and my second daughter was born right after we moved here. As I was continuing to work for the Justice Department traveling around the country, I felt like I was missing an opportunity to continue that public service in the community where I was raising my kids.

You combine that with the fact that coming into 2016, we are starting to see this discussion across the country about the mission of criminal justice. What we as prosecutors should be doing. Tampa had fallen a little bit behind the curve of how best to maximize public safety and achieve fairness and justice in the system. And so that's why I decided to run.

Matt Newton: The 2016 election was really exciting in the city of Tampa because Andrew really came in as an underdog. An unseated was it a [00:27:00] 12-year incumbent for that position, and...

Andrew Warren: I think it was a 16-year, but nobody counted. 16 years.

Matt Newton: And how many votes did you squeak by Andrew?

Andrew Warren: I mean, it was a close one. Well, you only need to win by one, but we ended up winning by eight tenths of a percentage point with about 600,000 people voting in the election. So it was about 5,000 votes.

Matt Newton: Reelected at it with a much higher resounding margin.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: And speaking of close elections, what was the ghost candidate scandal?

Andrew Warren: Going into the 2020 election, there was a Senate race in South Florida in the Miami area.

There was an incumbent who was a Democrat named Jose Javier Rodriguez. JJR as he was known by, he was the incumbent, Rodriguez was his last name, and Frank Artiles went out and recruited somebody with no political experience, no, you know, desire to run, basically just a straw man ghost who just happened to have the same last name, Rodriguez, in a heavily Latino area of Miami to run, as a no-party candidate.

What ended up happening is he siphoned [00:28:00] votes away from the incumbent Jose Javier Rodriguez. Likely due to confusion over the last name, the election ended up being decided by 32 votes. That's 32 out of 215,000. 100th of 1%, and what ended up happening is especially with the name confusion, the no-party candidate, Alex Rodriguez, who former Senator Artiles recruited to run drew just enough votes away to allow the Republican candidate to win office there ended up being a criminal investigation.

It turned out that Artiles had paid this man to run as a sham candidate. There was a lot of evidence showing that they were doing it just for the reason that I described. This wasn't speculation on my part. This was facts that came out from the investigation.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Frank Artiles at a bar election night watching the returns, and he's apparently jumping up and down with glee and saying, I did that. I did that, which was then very useful for his future [00:29:00] prosecution. Usually I don't get confessions when I'm looking at political corruption. Yeah, so why is this a money in politics story, Matt? Where did the money come from?

Matt Newton: As Andrew can attest to as running for office, things like mailers are very expensive, especially when you're dealing with a district that populated this required money to be effective.

Very crazy story because there were documents being dropped off at the Orlando Sentinel of internal emails that ultimately reporters trace the money back to Florida Power and Light, and Florida Power and Light is one of the largest power companies in the state. Came down to JJR being a real champion for solar energy.

It was reported that emails internally, the quote was the CEO saying they wanted to make JJ R's life “a living hell,” and that it was forwarded to political operatives who presumably saw that as a directive to start funding. You know, as I read in your book, and as I read the reports, and cut to the chase, it was reported that FPL gave this money to a couple of [00:30:00] dark money nonprofits and one of those nonprofits started funding those mailers down there.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Doing my book tour for Corporatocracy, I would tell law students, in order to get to the bottom of the true source of dark money, you either need litigation or a leak. And in the ghost candidates scandal, you have both.

You have litigation, which is the prosecution of Artiles and others, as Matt was just indicating you had a leaker with used to be in this dark-money slush fund who was giving documents to Florida papers, which is why we have so much information on the sources of dark money in the scandal. Are corporate political spenders powerful in Florida?

Andrew Warren: Yes is the short answer. Corporate spending is everywhere in politics. Money is going to find every crack in the system from the Supreme Court ruling from ways back that said, the corporations are people too, and can spend. You have corporations in every state, in every election at [00:31:00] federal, and state, and even local levels spending money, we can have a separate conversation about whether we should have corporate spending and what's the best way to regulate it in our corporations people.

But the fact is, under the law, they are and they can spend that money. The problem that we have is dark money thrives here in the Sunshine State because Florida's laws are weaker than most states when it comes to transparency and accountability. There are no disclosure requirements. There's no traceability standard where you can see where the money's coming from.

You can allow money to pass through entities multiple times, which is when I was a federal prosecutor, how we prosecuted people for money laundering. Criminals run their money through multiple different entities to hide the source of it. Now you have that happening in elections in Florida because there's no requirement that they don't do that.You're allowed to have that pass through.

And the problem is the ghost candidate scandal, people got caught and they broke the law, but there's a lot of this dark money spending that influences elections and that we don't know where it's coming [00:32:00] from and it's totally legal in the state of Florida. And that's the problem.

Just to add one more wrinkle to this, the governor set up his Election Integrity Task Force, and the Task Force hasn't gone after these types of illegalities. It hasn't gone after the dark money that people know exists, that people know is having a corrupting influence. Instead, they focused on these microscopic number of voter fraud cases just to pay lip service to the far-right conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud.

That's not where the election fraud is. The election fraud is in the dark money. Where undisclosed donors spending huge amounts of money with no traceability or influencing elections in ways that are not consistent with a law. And it's really hard to catch them unless you have people willing to go after it and enforce the law.

Matt Newton: One of the ironies of the Ghost Candidate Scandal is one of the things that prosecutors went after our was exceeding contribution limits when they gave money to this ghost candidate, which is this farce [00:33:00] between so-called hard money and soft money. But there are hard limit contributions on what you can singularly give to a candidate.

But when you get into kind of the dark magic of dark money, all that pretty much goes out the window.

Andrew Warren: In Florida, you could give somebody millions of dollars filtered through organizations where the donors are not disclosed, where you don't have to trace it, where they're frankly quid pro quos. But you can do that in ways that's totally legal.

But if you give someone, you know, the thousand dollars. And you don't identify it in your donor disclosure, or if you give them $1,001, which is above the maximum, that's where you get into trouble. And so the irony of the Ghost Candidate Scandal, they didn't get in trouble for the dark money they got in trouble because Artiles paid Alex Rodriguez, they caught him on a technicality, sort of like getting Al Capone for tax evasion when you're not prosecuting him for the racketeering and organized crime and murder.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: I kept on waiting for the prosecutors to go up the chain to the big money, to the [00:34:00] Florida Power and Light money, and it never happened.

Matt Newton: It's certainly strange to say the least.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Andrew, would you be willing to discuss what Governor DeSantis did to you?

Andrew Warren: Sure. In 2022, when I was halfway through my second term, I was the local elected prosecutor. I was suspended by Governor DeSantis out of the blue for what he said was neglect of duty. The reason why, and he put this on paper that I was suspended, was because I had criticized a law that was contemplated in Florida criminalizing abortion access. So this was after Roe v. Wade was overturned, states started passing laws, rolling back protections for abortion.

Florida was looking at a 15-week ban, and ultimately Florida passed a six-week abortion ban. I've made a public statement along with prosecutors from around the country essentially saying, these laws are not a good idea. Prosecutors shouldn't be spending taxpayer money going after women and doctors. They're, there are better things to [00:35:00] do. And the governor said, aha, your criticism of the law shows that you're not going to follow it. And so he suspended me from office. Two different courts, both the district court and the appellate court found that the governor's suspension of me was politically motivated, that there was no reason for him to suspend me.

He was doing it just because he disliked me, because I'm a Democrat, because we disagreed on things. There was a lot of evidence that showed he was doing it to prop up his presidential campaign. In the end, courts ruled that what he did was illegal. It violated the US Constitution, and you'd think that the story would have a happy ending except the court case dragged on for so long that my term eventually ended and I was never reinstated in my position.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: What happened in the district court?

Matt Newton: In Andrew's case, the governor has this power to suspend unimpeachable officers. There's different things that they can be suspended for: neglect of duty, incompetence, but those types of quote unquote “offenses” historically [00:36:00] draw from old timey law. Folks getting super drunk at office, people who might have gotten injured and can't perform their duties because they're incompetent as a result of an injury.

A lot of the authorities dug up by the governor to justify the suspension were from times when state attorneys weren't elected locally. There were times, I think, before the 1950s. When state attorneys were actually appointed by the governor and the practice of law itself was not regulated by our Supreme Court. The practice of law was actually regulated by our state legislature as terrifying as that sounds to all the lawyers listening.

It was just really a stunt, drummed up by the governor and his team, the peak of the war on woke. Yet we went to court. We made an effort for a preliminary injunction, which the Northern District declined. He didn't want to quote unquote “yo-yo the state attorney's office.”

But instead, we had a very compressed timeline to trial. Three months to do a series of depositions, engage in full discovery. Had a three day trial on the merits. The district court felt it couldn't weigh in on the interpretation of Florida's [00:37:00] constitution and that these old timey cases were irrelevant.

Obviously, the First Amendment still applies. This story is compelling. What was uncovered in discovery was just as Andrew suspected that this was a politically motivated effort. The narrative goes that there was kind of a conference room meeting with the governor, some higher level staff, where he asks Larry Keefe, who is a key witness in the case, “Hey, are there any state attorneys not enforcing the law?” Mr. Keefe took that as essentially a job assignment where he did a non-investigation, which was very clear on the record. He did not consider an investigation, but just kind of asking around who in the State of Florida is quote unquote, “not enforcing the law?” On reputation only as a reform prosecutor, all roads led to Andrew Warren.

When we got to the real fact question here, which was, what was the motive to suspend Mr. Warren? Judge Hinkle adopted Larry Keefe's motivations said, well, there were six of them. Some of them protected, some of them unprotected. So Andrew, [00:38:00] if you don't mind...

Andrew Warren: The governor was looking for a reason to suspend me.

They had, and this is what the evidence showed, that they had made up their minds that they were going to suspend somebody. All roads pointed to me for reasons that nobody ever explained, and there was no facts and no explanation even from the governor's own people on it, they just basically decided they were going to suspend somebody.

They decided that it was me, and then they had to figure out afterwards the reasons why they had to come up with a pretext, a justification for doing it. And then it wasn't until I made the statements criticizing the abortion law. My comments weren't limited to Florida law. The comments were talking about different states, things that are totally out of my jurisdiction, things that I can't influence one way or the other, and that I have no responsibility to enforce.

But they said, aha, now that you criticize these abortion ban. We are going to use that as the justification. So that was the missing piece that they needed. The district court found that criticizing a law, whether it's a law you are supposed to enforce, it's a law in a different state. Whether you're [00:39:00] a state attorney or a private citizen, is protected by the First Amendment as an elected official, that's when our free speech rights are at their highest point.

Because we want candidates, we want elected officials to be able to speak their mind. As much as, and even more so than a private citizen. So the fact that they targeted me and they ultimately justified the suspension based on things that I had said rather than things that I had done, was the reason why the court found the suspension be unconstitutional and rightly so. It was purely political. A stunt that the governor could pull.

Matt Newton: Is it viewpoint discrimination? If I'm considering how big of a political bump I can get from doing this? Because essentially when you look at the record of what was the thrust behind this, it was getting clicks. It was getting earned media for the presidential run. It was getting on Tucker Carlson that night and having a long form interview about how DeSantis was distinguishing himself from other candidates.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: When this case was up at the 11th [00:40:00] Circuit, I put in an amicus brief. While the Florida Constitution gives a very broad power to our governor, the governor is still subject to the U.S. Constitution, which has supremacy. This was always supremacy plus the First Amendment that the governor cannot fire you for what you think or what you say. What happened at the 11th Circuit?

Andrew Warren: To reconstruct the timeline, I was suspended in August of 2022. We filed for the injunction in court just a few weeks later. The trial occurred, right after Thanksgiving.

The district court issued its opinion in the beginning of 2023. The district court said the suspension was illegal for these reasons, but I as a federal judge, don't have the power to reinstate you, Andrew. I can't do anything about it. So we appealed on that narrow issue. Of course, you have the power to remedy a constitutional violation, any violation of federal [00:41:00] law. You're a federal judge, you can go out and and fix it.

The governor cross appealed essentially on every other issue. We had the argument before the appellate court as in May of 2023. So now this is eight, nine months after the suspension and we're just getting to the appellate court. And the appellate court ended up issuing a ruling the following January in 2024.

So now this is a year and a half almost after the suspension and the appellate court said the lower court's findings were essentially right on all these issues, and wrong on the fact that it, he didn't have the power to reinstate me. So basically what the appellate court said was, yeah, you can't suspend someone for political reasons, and if it's a violation of the First Amendment, which you already found, it was you have the power to reinstate Andrew.

So, we're sending the case back to you. Go ahead and do your thing, which would've been the reinstatement. The problem is the 11th circuit never actually sent the case back. It just sat on the case until my term ended. At which point they said, now Andrew's [00:42:00] term has ended and the case is moot, and so it should be dismissed.

Matt Newton: Let me talk about the Bond v. Floyd case real quick. So Dr. Julian Bond, who is the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, because he essentially concurred with criticism of the Vietnam War on a radio station, he was denied the right to be sworn in to the Georgia House of Representatives because he was aiding and betting the enemy.

But quite analogous because, I mean, these were statements that he did not write. These were essentially him sharing his general agreement with sentiments expressed by Vietnam opponents. So he was denied his seat and it was pretty much upheld at trial level, then unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States, remanded back and then mandated that he take his seat.

All that happened in just about a year, and then you can compare that to the very glacial movement of the federal judiciary in 2025. And this is with all of our technology, this is with all our legal research. I think it's just something that every lawyer [00:43:00] needs to consider. How are we moving slower with faster technology?

Andrew Warren: Yeah. And, and Ciara, I mean, one of the most common questions I get asked is, what do you mean the court didn't do anything? How could they just sit on the case? It really is inexplicable. Why the court sat on the case for so long and then said, okay, now the issue's over because Andrew can't be reinstated because his term is up.

The best analogy I remember hearing to this was, it's like the referee in a football game. When a team is lining up to kick a chip shot, winning the field goal, and their time is ticking down and the team gets its players out on the field and the clock is running and they're about to kick and win the game. And the referee picks up the ball and he punts it into the stands and he waits 10 seconds and says, sorry, the clock expired.

It is unimaginable that a court sat on the case until time ran out. Said sorry, time's expired. There's nothing we can do to help you. Not sure if that ever happening in the history of this country before. I mean, certainly this case had a lot of firsts in a governor suspending someone for political reasons, but the fact that the [00:44:00] courts made their ruling and then didn't enforce it really in two different instances is probably the biggest takeaway of the failure of our judicial system.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Mootness is a snake in the grass in American law. This is very similar to what happened to two of the Emoluments cases that made its way to the Supreme Court. They sat on it. Trump then is out of office, and then they declare the cases moot, and they don't enforce the Emoluments Clauses because they don't think of it as being capable of repetition and yet evading review.

Is there a gerrymandering problem in Florida?

Matt Newton: Yes.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: And what is that problem?

Matt Newton: Well, actually, your friends at the Brennan Center published a really eye-opening article, “How Gerrymandering Tilts the 2024 Race for the House.” Shout out to the Brennan Center. But essentially, the state of Florida is one of the worst offenders when it comes to partisan gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is not just a Republican/Democrat problem. But somehow the free state of Florida got five extra [00:45:00] seats the last time this went around for the Republican delegation in Congress.

Andrew Warren: Actually, Florida passed two constitutional amendments back in 2010, and those constitutional amendments are passed by the voters.

So these are not written by the legislature. And those two amendments prohibited gerrymandering, basically prohibited drawing districts in a way to intentionally favor a political candidate or a political party. So you've got 63% of Floridians saying, we don't want people drawing districts in a way that favors a candidate or favors a party. We just want it to be done fairly.

Congressional districts were redrawn after 2022. You know, the governor took a really active role in what was happening in drawing those districts. In that case, you had a district court say, yes, it's unconstitutional, and then the appellate court actually overturned it, and now it's pending before the Supreme Court.

But the point is that we've had these laws in place in Florida. Laws again passed by the voters because the voters really care about this issue, and you have politicians who are doing whatever they can to violate the law, if [00:46:00] not the spirit of the law, sometimes the letter of the law too, and be where you have these sinister politicians who will always find cracks in the law, in ways to exploit them, to help themselves or help the party rather than helping the people.

Matt Newton: Andrew, you were front and center in trying to return the vote based on another citizen-initiated referendum saying, this is what we want the law to be. You have it being executed almost backwards.

Andrew Warren: There's a huge irony in that Florida voters passed constitutional amendment saying, we believe the citizens of Florida, that people who are returning citizens. I mean, it's not, it wasn't everybody.  It excluded like murderers and rapists, but most people who are getting out of prison can have their civic rights restored.

And so I, as State Attorney said, well, there's a role for the State Attorneys to play in this. So we tried to help implement that law. And went above and beyond in doing so when the legislature was trying to undermine the law. I didn't get any pats on the back for doing that. Then you fast forward a few years and then I'm suspended because they said I'm not enforcing a law that doesn't [00:47:00] exist. The hypocrisy is so thick, you could cut it with a knife,

Matt Newton: and I want to emphasize something to our New York friends that are listening. When you have a citizen referendum in the state of Florida, it is not a 51% threshold. You have to get above 60% of the electorate to get these, these referendums adopted. These have to be supported on a bipartisan basis mathematically to get through. And so when you have a major directive to have fair electoral maps, this is a 60% directive, not just a slim majority.

Andrew Warren: I think it's so important that we're having these conversations, and I, and I hope that, you know, people listening, understand the things that we're talking about have come to pass in a Republican versus Democrat type of way. Right? My suspension, I'm a Democrat, the governor's Republican. What's happening with the gerrymandering? It's, you know, Republicans and Democrats fighting over drawing districts. The Ghost Candidate raised Republicans and Democrats.

But the underlying principles just go way beyond that. This is about how our elections are [00:48:00] supposed to work, how representation is supposed to work, whether our governor is supposed to follow the law, whether elections matter, whether democracy matters, whether courts have the power to fix violations of the law.

Those questions. That we should all be able to agree on, have nothing to do with partisan politics. And the sooner that we all across country come to recognize that there are certain principles that just are far more important than the tribal partisan politics of the day, that's when things start getting better politically.

That's when we stop seeing these Ghost Candidates, when we stopped seeing  these political stunts, when we start seeing us come together more as a union to actually do things that help people.

Matt Newton: We got to get to a point where politicians are stopped trying to find the cheat codes to win elections and actually give it to the people. One person, one vote, and not one person, one vote, you know, up, down, left, right, get more corporate money, suspend people you disagree with when they win the vote, pack and crack districts to make sure that we score more points [00:49:00] than the other guy. Democracy is sacred.

Andrew Warren: Democracy is sacred. And so, these values of fear and free elections of free speech, those are the ones we've been talking about today, are just instrumental, just core principles of our democracy. And so I'm proud that I had both of your support, my fight to uphold those principles that we're continuing to fight for them. Now that we're having this conversation to help explain the importance of these principles. And look at the end of the day, that's what, that's what makes this country amazing is: The values and the principles that we were founded on.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Well, thank you so much for being here today.

Matt Newton: Well, thank you for having us.

Andrew Warren: Thanks for having us.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: I really do appreciate it, gentlemen.

As someone who spends her time focused on political corruption, it's easy to end up with a dim view of humanity. But one thing that has kept me happy and sane over the past eight years is my 100 pound chocolate Labradoodle. [00:50:00] Let me share my life motto with you, which is "Loves dogs. Hates corruption."

I have to travel a lot for work, especially when I was on my book tour for Corporatocracy. I was traveling nearly every week and my dog does not like it when I leave. He first gets depressed when he sees the rolling bag of sadness, which is what we have, nicknamed my Away travel suitcase. Then when I'm gone, he often goes on a hunger strike and refuses to eat. Sometimes he looks for me on his walk around the neighborhood, pulling my husband to and fro.

When I am home, if we have a prescription to fill or we need some band-aids that we need to pick up, we often walk to our local drugstore, and that walk is usually me, my husband, and my doodle. Now, they don't let dogs inside, so, frequently, my husband and the doodle [00:51:00] will wait outside for me. Depending how long the line is inside, it can be a little while before I emerge.

While I was out of town for a trip this fall, my doodle dragged my husband to the door of our local drug store and planted himself there as if to say. "Where's mom? I bet if we wait long enough she will emerge from the pharmacy the way she always does." And my husband tried to reason with the dog, but my dog stayed put for a long time waiting for me to come out of the pharmacy, which I find very endearing. Eventually, he walked home with my husband disappointed, but I flew home the next day and the doodle seemed to forgive the absence. Okay, now back to business.[00:52:00]

So now we get to our final segment. “The fix is in.” Many of the problems with our democracy seem unfixable, but that is not true. These problems were created by human beings, and they can be solved by human beings. We can improve laws and practices at the local, state, and federal level. And the first step is realizing that these are not unsolvable problems. We can fix it.

Today, we talked about dark money in Florida elections that facilitated the Ghost candidate scandal. This is a good reminder that because of Federalism and the 10th Amendment, the 50 states have 50 different laws including 50 different approaches to election law in general and to campaign finance law in particular. Just as Congress needs to improve federal laws to fight dark money, states also need to improve their campaign finance disclosure laws to combat dark money in state elections.

Just [00:53:00] remember that democracy is worth defending and a little truth goes a long way.

Thank you to my guests for joining me today. This is a production of Ciara Torres-Spelliscy who can be found on social media as ProfCiara, P-R-O-F-C-I-A-R-A. The episode was mixed by WBAI. Our logo is by Entire World. Theme Music was composed and performed by Matt Boehler. This show is based on the book Corporatocracy, published by NYU Press. This has been Democracy and Destiny with Ciara Torres- Spelliscy.

You can listen to the full episode here: https://soundcloud.com/profciara/democracy-and-destiny-ep-8

Or here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/democracy-and-destiny-ep-8-with-andrew-warren-matt/id1818631157?i=1000721311086