At least one thing remained the same last year for Miami Democrat Joe Garcia as he shifted from candidate to congressman: his most trusted political adviser.

Jeffrey Garcia, who had shaped the newly elected congressman’s run for office and managed his failed campaign two years earlier, made the move from political operative to congressional chief of staff.

Hiring a Capitol Hill outsider for the top staff job appeared unusual for a first-time congressman trying to navigate Washington’s treacherous politics — and for a career campaign consultant attempting to embrace the task of governing.

But those close to the two men, who are unrelated, knew they shared more than a last name. They were friends for more than a decade, graduates of the same alma mater, brought closer by two hard-fought campaigns. And friends stick together.

Until May 31, when Joe Garcia dismissed Jeffrey Garcia, after he admitted to the congressman that he directed a secret online campaign to submit hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests for the Aug. 14 primary.

“I couldn’t see straight,” Joe Garcia told The Miami Herald, describing the angry conversation. “He’s a huge loss for me, as a friend and as an adviser.”

The congressman says he didn’t know about the scheme, and prosecutors so far have backed him up. No charges have been filed. Law-enforcement officials seeking computer records raided the family homes on May 31 of John Estes, Garcia’s former campaign manager, and Giancarlo Sopo, his communications director, who has since been placed on unpaid administrative leave.

The raids prompted Jeffrey Garcia, 40, to acknowledge to his boss his involvement in the plot, which the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office began investigating after The Miami Herald found in February that some of the phantom ballot requests could be traced. Prosecutors initially had said otherwise.

Jeffrey Garcia has declined to comment.

“Everything that I know about Jeffrey and the people who know him is positive,” said his attorney, Henry Bell.

Garcia’s fall from grace was striking for a political operative who had a reputation for befriending the candidates who hired him — often long-shots for victory.

“His life was the underdog,” said former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, a Democrat who hired Garcia as a lead campaign consultant for his unsuccessful 2008 congressional run.

“I don’t condone anybody doing anything illegally in elections, because I’ve been the victim of that. But I can understand — and I’m not justifying him — but I understand the frustration, because he always played by the rules. The other side didn’t, and he lost. That could have put him in this position.”

Jeffrey Mark Garcia grew up in Miami the son of a Cuban-American father and an Irish-American mother, a distinction that made him somewhat different from his classmates of entirely Cuban descent at the all-boys Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, a breeding ground for Miami-Dade politicians.

His friends describe him as free-spirited, intense and deeply loyal, particularly to other Belen grads running for office, even if they were Republicans. Among them was Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez, a good friend whom Garcia advised in 2009, though he has not worked on Suarez’s current city mayoral race.