Florida ‘ghost’ candidate scandal haunts FPL in merger talks with Dominion

Florida Politics admin October 9, 2026 0 Comments

Florida ‘ghost’ candidate scandal haunts FPL in merger talks with Dominion

A 2020 political scheme that put fake candidates on the ballot to siphon votes away from Florida Democrats has become a key flash point in a proposed merger between Virginia-based Dominion Energy and Florida Power & Light’s parent company.

As part of its corporate merger review, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission NextEra, Florida Power & Light’s parent company, last week to produce documents related to its political operations in Florida. The utility company was expected to submit those records this week under strict confidentiality rules, essentially keeping them under seal.

One of the documents is a 2021 memo sent by a former consultant to then-NextEra CEO James Robo detailing the utility’s political activities. Observers, including utility watchdogs and NextEra, believe the “Robo Memo” outlines Florida Power & Light’s role in the effort to place “ghost candidates” on Florida ballots to run against Democratic state legislative candidates the utility opposed.

In 2020, conservative-allied political consultants targeted the Democratic incumbent of a Miami state Senate district, recruiting a candidate with the same last name to confuse voters. The incumbent, José Javier Rodríguez, lost to the Republican candidate by 32 votes.

Rodríguez is now running for Florida attorney general.

NextEra is facing an ongoing lawsuit from its investors over the allegations that it funded and orchestrated that scheme against Rodríguez and other candidates. The company has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Much of the information about that political operation has been made public in news reports and legal proceedings. But Rodríguez said the “Robo Memo” could give Floridians key information heading into the November election, should it become public, about a powerful Florida company and its history with him.

“I think it would absolutely be really relevant to voters as they’re deciding who’s going to be the next attorney general,” he said.

He’s running against incumbent Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier, who was not involved in the scandal and was appointed to his position by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

No one at Florida Power & Light or NextEra has faced charges for their alleged involvement in the ghost candidate effort. That’s a point NextEra Vice Chairman Armando Pimentel emphasized to the Energy Commission of Virginia on Wednesday as part of his argument for why the “Robo Memo” shouldn’t be made public.

“That Robo Memo has a number of unsubstantiated allegations associated with it,” Pimentel said. “We — NextEra Energy, Florida Power and Light Co., our current employees and former employees — were never charged in any of that.”

Rodríguez said Thursday that he thinks the lack of charges is more likely evidence of corruption in Tallahassee than it is evidence of innocence on the company’s part.

“The fact that they’ve faced no accountability because they own the political process is not a very compelling argument,” Rodríguez told the Times/Herald.

Uthmeier did not respond to emailed questions to his office and campaign about the “Robo Memo” and proposed NextEra merger.

Data center concerns

NextEra and Dominion asked a Virginia commission this week to for the memo to be reviewable “in-person” and “eyes only” to certain individuals at the utility lawyers’ offices after signing nondisclosure agreements, “as opposed to being broadly available on a shared computer platform to which hundreds of individuals have formal or informal access,” according to a petition filed late Wednesday.

The hearing examiner , meaning the memo likely won’t be made public unless there is a successful challenge to that ruling.

Regardless of whether the document comes to light, Rodríguez argued that Floridians should closely watch the utility merger because of its other implications for Florida voters and electricity customers.

If the merger goes through, NextEra and Dominion would become the largest regulated electric utility in the world and provide power to about 10 million customers in Florida, Virginia and the Carolinas.

Dominion Energy’s customers include the world’s largest cluster of data centers, often called Data Center Alley, in Virginia. Data centers have emerged as a key, contentious campaign issue in Florida’s elections as the industry increasingly looks to Florida as one of its next frontiers.

“One of the reasons why we are, as Floridians, keenly interested in what’s happening in Virginia is because there doesn’t seem to be any assurance that Floridians aren’t going to be subsidizing data centers in other states,” Rodríguez said. “So while Virginia’s taking a close look at this merger, Florida is doing nothing and just allowing the biggest utility to get bigger.”

When the merger was announced in May, Florida Power & Light said its customers would not see their bills go up as a result, adding that it would remain a separate entity regulated by Florida officials.

“FPL customers won’t subsidize data centers in Florida much less data centers in Virginia,” company spokesperson Andrew Sutton said at the time.

This story was originally published October 9, 2026 at 12:10 PM.