Republican legislators were scolded by the courts for deleting
emails and other communications between them, their staff
and the operatives they worked with. An editorial in the
Bradenton Herald called it a deception with “paranoid secrecy
in the operation.”

This statewide political scandal with national implications is
based in Gainesville. A main focus of the suit is Pat Bainter,
owner of Data Targeting, a Republican political polling and
consulting firm located in Gainesville. The court documents
show no fewer than six of his employees are involved, all
residents of Alachua County.

Bainter’s right-hand man is Stafford Jones, chair of the
Alachua County Republican Party. Jones also manages
nearly three dozen conservative PACs in Florida controlling approximately $30 million. Employees from his other enterprise, Electioneering Consulting, are also named in court documents.

On social media, Jones claims he’s just a regular guy exercising
his First Amendment right to participate in the democratic
process by submitting maps to the legislature. Don’t buy it.
When you make your living running a political machine that
consults, orchestrates and finances campaigns, as Bainter
and Jones have done for years, you don’t get to claim to be
a neutral civilian.

Moreover, Bainter and Jones tried to prevent the courts from
obtaining their internal emails claiming they had to protect
proprietary business information. First they say they’re
ordinary citizens, but then they’re fiercely guarding some
secret recipe?

The courts didn’t buy it either and subpoenaed Bainter and
Jones, along with their Gainesville-area associates, Alex Patton, Remzey Samarrai, Robert Krames, Matt Mitchell, Delena May and Jones’ wife Christie. Depositions were taken in May and June
portions of which were reported on in Politico’s entertaining
July 17 article “Depositions show Florida GOP push for favorable Senate lines.”

Adding insult to injury, Florida taxpayers are on the hook for
more than $8 million in court costs to force the Legislature to
honor the Fair Districts amendments. Worse, the Senate
granted the millionaire legislators named in the suits thousands
of dollars of your money for their legal defense.

The Florida GOP is paying Bainter’s legal fees. This underscores
the fallacy that he is just an ordinary citizen participating in the democratic process.

Seeing the writing on the wall, the Senate admitted its maps
were also unconstitutional so agreed to a special session in
October to devise all new state Senate district maps. This
eliminates the need for another trial, which must be a relief
to Bainter and Jones, who were fighting the subpoenas for
that court battle. If the Senate can admit what it did was
unconstitutional, why can’t these political operatives?