I Am Matt Gaetz’s Collateral Damage: My Fear Is Legitimate
Part Two: I May Have Met the Man Hired to Silence Me
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I wish what I’m about to share was simply lies, histrionics or paranoia.
As a result of my run for office, over the past three years, I have been physically assaulted and strangled, publicly humiliated by my attacker (including sexually humiliated), sexually extorted by political gatekeepers, smeared in the press, followed by private investigators and politically extorted by my own party. And it happened as I was recovering from cancer.
Police records vital to my protection have been illegally expunged by the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Florida. I have encountered political moles, I have had funds embezzled from my campaign, even the Supervisor of Elections did their part to undermine my campaign’s integrity and other major elections outcomes. My property has been damaged and stolen several times: furniture, family heirlooms; even my garbage.
Running for office in the swing-county of the swing-state is supposed to be hard.
But not this hard.
Shrapnel From a Bomb
In 2017 McClatchy’s DC Bureau described the eruption of the Gaetz/Latvala scandal as follows: “Allegations of sexual assault, sexual harassment and infidelity among the state’s legislators flew like shrapnel from a bomb blast.”
My campaign got caught in the political crossfire of two of Florida’s most powerful elected officials who were vying for top political positions in the 2018 elections. They each had their own sex-scandals so they decided to take each other down politically by weaponizing them.
Matt Gaetz was on one side of this war and my political opponents were on the other.
This issue was so volatile that Florida state press would barely touch it. Journalists would barely touch it. The by-line of any article attempting to do so listed multiple reporters because no single journalist would put their career on the line by taking on something so controversial. POLITICO broke the story.
This is what I encountered.
When I entered my political race against one of these waring camps, I got caught in the crossfire of a battle that was not mine. But I bear all the shrapnel regardless.
Campaigning As Guerrilla Warfare
I would doubt the truth of this myself if I didn’t have such an extensive political team of literally dozens of dedicated people who also witnessed and endured it.
We went though hell together. But I wish I was the only person to be blindsided, traumatized and harmed by this assault.
I’m not.
I want to acknowledge a vast network of donors, political leaders, volunteers, supporters, managers, family members, friends, field organizers, as well as data and media strategists who stood by me and withstood these hits. I forgive those who couldn’t. I want each of you to know I am grateful for you and I am sorry that this happened.
This isn’t normal and it’s not right. Dark money-backed war tactics should have no place in American Democracy.
The Sick Fetish of American Political Sex-Scandals
Media cycles dazzle us with the daily spectacle of reckless, powerful and untouchable men so much it has become our fetish. No drama is complete without a good villain and we sit on the edge of our seats wondering when, or if, they will finally be caught.
Either way, we get off: if they are punished it’s a sign that justice has prevailed. If they walk free it affirms the perfect impunity of wealthy, white men. After-all, some of us secretly desire to be just like them.
America is infatuated with the concepts of justice and impunity, though one is paradoxically at odds with the other.
Justice-for-all is intrinsically a threat to exceptionalism-for-some. It’s time we picked a side.
We have become so entranced by political sex-scandals that we forget these men are our public servants. They’re partying with our tax-dollars.
We forget that when these predators abuse their power and dodge prosecution, innocent people get hurt and they are usually women. We are often so mesmerized by sex-scandal headlines we forget that we’ve barely heard or seen the victims. We are embarrassed to admit we hardly care: we’re really just here for the show.
Innocent People Have Been Hurt
My campaign treasurer, a military veteran and highly-respected delegate, died of a heart-attack shortly after my campaign assault began. His widow was so impacted by what she encountered that she left the state. Three other women who worked on my campaign have since left Florida too. That bears repeating. When four different women pick up and leave an entire state it might indicate they feel extremely unsafe. My neighbor’s apartment was robbed. Several women on my campaign team had to step away from their volunteer service because what was happening to me, in real time, was bringing back their own paralyzing personal trauma.
But you wouldn’t know any of this by reading the Tampa Bay Times’ coverage of my race. If this is what women and underrepresented leaders are to expect when they go into politics we should not be surprised that so few of us occupy elected office. Especially in Florida.
Lives and livelihoods were damaged because of my political assault. I hope the Koch family and other backers of Citizens United are proud of the Frankenstein monster they’ve created. Koch’s recent investment in the Poynter Institute / Tampa Bay Times has ensured their monster is very much alive. It feeds on leaders like me.
Not a single person has been held responsible for what happened during my race. Perhaps we should celebrate their exceptionalism as well.
We’ve Lost Our Way
There are certain things that should be taken off the political table entirely if we want more women and underrepresented leaders in politics. Weaponizing trauma and sexual extortion should be met with zero tolerance. Resorting to actual war tactics in the name of public service should be met with political expulsion.
Do we really want to elect civic leaders who take pride in causing their own constituents this degree of harm?
Really. What are we doing to each other? We are invariably harming ourselves. This is not a partisan issue, it is a human rights one.
What is happening in Florida is akin to the conduct of countries on the brink of genocide. This isn’t about media page-hits, paychecks or profits anymore. We have seriously lost our way.
Is this really what we want the United States to be?
How much more is it going to take?
Political Attacks, Hacks and Prompt Erasure
What is most troubling about what I’ve endured is the repeated attacks on my data, because my records are my greatest defense. In my quiet moments of weakness and self-doubt my records are my personal reminder that in the wake of all of this, I haven’t lost my mind.
This hell is indeed my reality.
The photo headlining this article is of a man who my neighbors and I deduced was likely casing my residence just before it would be broken into. I texted a photo of what I saw to my neighbors.
I lived in what was effectively a tiny, island community. My neighbors knew each other. They knew I was running for office; they knew private investigators were driving by. We were all vigilant. In the headline photo, the chairs on the lawn across the street were regularly occupied by watchful residents.
No-one had ever seen this guy or his car before. The car appears to be a white Nissan Maxima with Florida plates (possibly EMF 143). The man in the car looked Eastern European and was well dressed with a clean haircut. He was parked outside my residence for several minutes with the door open looking down at his phone.
While there were far more expensive valuables in the apartment on the day of the break-in, the only thing stolen that day was a computer case of a neighbor I shared a wall with. It was full of all sorts of irreplaceable family heirlooms like photos he really cherished. It’s not fair his memories were stolen.
This person was not after money, he was after data. My neighbor owned a firearm that was in plain sight during the robbery and it was untouched. Luckily I had my computer with me on the day of the theft. My guess is if this contractor didn’t deliver something approximating an attempt at my data, he wouldn’t get paid. Shortly after the failed attempt at my computer, my hard-drive crashed. There have been other data hacks as well and based on what’s missing I have a good sense of who’s behind it.
Computer theft and hacking seems to be common in Florida politics, especially in Latvala’s immediate circle. On October 27, 2017, one week before POLITICO would break the Latvala sex-scandal they would break a related scandal about Democratic Senator Jeff Clemens involving Latvala himself after Devon West, the a lobbyist who was having an affair with him, purportedly stole his computer and all of his personal contacts.
Clemens asked Latvala to meet with West to recover his laptop. They were all friends. POLITICO reported that it had relied on anonymous sources to break the story.
UPDATE: This is Why I’m Afraid
The article you are currently reading was originally published, with the photos of the man in the white Nissan Maxima, on June 8, 2021. Two day’s after publishing the this article I received a suspicious phone call I missed from Jason Campbell of Morristown, NJ. Please Google this name. You will find a series of concerning articles about a man who fits the description of the man who likely tried to steal my political data and he is known for his involvement in political races. There are several photos of him in these search results and the photos closely match the photo of the man in the white Nissan Maxima I took before the robbery at my residence.
This is the lead paragraph of the article I Googled: Former Morris County Sheriff’s officer who once faced charges of arson and official misconduct has filed lawsuits against since-retired Morris County Sheriff Edward Rochford as well as county detectives, a former assistant prosecutor and a state trooper, alleging he was falsely arrested, detained and prosecuted because he was vocal over his support for Rochford’s then-primary election rival, Steven Olimpio.
What’s even more concerning is the date of the article’s publication is July 6th 2018 exactly one day before I would take the photo of the suspicious man outside my residence.
Because I am in this fight largely by myself right now and I’m forced to be my own investigator, I called the phone number that came up on my phone this week. I recorded my call. The man who answered the phone had a heavy accent. I told him I received his call and that I was calling him back. I asked if he was the Jason Campbell of Morristown, NJ mentioned in the article. He said he was not. He said the call must have been a mistake.
I have reported my concerns to local and federal authorities. I hope I will be protected.
I have given friends, family and attorneys information on whom to investigate and how to publish the rest of my already-written and privately distributed story in case I die.
I have started a defense fund and it is not some kind of sleazy political fundraising scheme. For years I have been terrified of coming forward for all these reasons and more. This may be the only way justice will ever see the light of day.
This is the hell I have quietly carried for the past three years.
I rarely walk outside alone now.
Why Responsible Journalism Matters
I hope I am horribly wrong about all of the new information I have presented in this article. Though I was trained by a Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer, I do not consider myself a journalist. I need the help of researchers and journalists — outside of Florida — to objectively get to the bottom of what is happening here.
I am legitimately afraid of the repercussions of finally breaking my silence. And I’m going to need all the help I can get.
If fascism officially comes to America, it will arrive through Florida’s ports. This state decides national politics and what happens here affects all of us.
READ about why I cannot trust Florida’s largest journalism institutions here.
READ about Politics’ #MeToo Reckoning here.
