David Rivera has made fools of Miami voters long enough. Time for him to pay the price | Editorial

If there were a scale of one to 10 for ridiculousness, David Rivera’s decade-long battle to dodge the consequences of his unlawful campaign finance actions would be an 11.

It has been an unbelievable 10 years since the election that got Rivera, a former Florida legislator and ex-South Florida congressman, into trouble. But perhaps the end of this long-running farce is in sight. A federal judge is ordering him to pay a $456,000 fine for “knowingly and willfully” making campaign contributions under someone else’s name.

That’s a sanitized way of saying what we all know by now: Rivera secretly funneled almost $76,000 to a candidate, Justin Lamar Sternad, running against his likely Democratic opponent for Congress, Joe Garcia. It was a ploy to divide the Democratic vote in the district in 2012 so that Rivera could prevail. But he lost the Miami-Dade County seat to Garcia, anyway.

Two other people have long since taken the fall in this case. Sternad and Republican campaign consultant Ana Alliegro pleaded guilty to criminal charges and served short sentences. Rivera wasn’t charged. According to a Miami Herald story, prosecutors were concerned about relying on Alliegro for testimony since she was Rivera’s friend. Eventually, though, the Federal Election Commission filed suit against Rivera when he wouldn’t pay the fine.

Time to pay

Years of wrangling later, Rivera, now 56, still hasn’t paid.

His most recent claims: The FEC did not have jurisdiction to pursue its campaign violations claim because the five-year statute of limitations had expired and that he was not properly notified before the lawsuit was filed.

U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Cooke was unimpressed. “It is disingenuous and smacks of hypocrisy that Defendant David Rivera — a former U.S. Congressman — now insists that the court conveniently ignore his multiple discrete violations of a federal law in favor of his strained reading of a statute of limitations and his interpretation of the FEC’s claims against him,” she wrote in her ruling late last month.

She rejected his bid to dismiss the case, ordered him to pay the $456,000 — plus $95 in court costs — and specified that he is banned from making campaign contributions under the name of another. That last bit isn’t just window dressing; Rivera continued to run for office after losing the race for the 26th Congressional District.

Rivera’s history is messy (and that’s being generous.) He has avoided charges involving a secret casino consulting deal that sparked Internal Revenue Service attention and a state investigation into allegations that he used campaign accounts to pay for personal expenses. He also repeatedly dodged nearly $58,000 in penalties on ethics violations. That’s all in addition to the 2012 case, first revealed by the Miami Herald.

His political career has certainly taken a hit. Though he shared lodgings with then-state Rep. Marco Rubio back when he was a member of the Florida House, he hasn’t been elected since he left Congress in early 2013. He doesn’t seem to be hurting financially, though. In 2020, he was sued over a $50 million consulting contract for Venezuela’s state-run oil company. He’s under FBI investigation for that contract as well, the Herald has reported.

Rivera may face consequences on that deal or others sometime in the future. But for now, there’s the immediate matter of the FEC fine. He failed in his attempt to fix the election — a candidate who couldn’t even win his race with illegal help — and then he spent a decade trying to wiggle out of the repercussions.

Rivera has made fools of the voters for long enough. On the FEC fine, there can be no more excuses.

This story was originally published April 11, 2022 at 3:31 PM.