COMMENTARY
“Silagy and others have pointed to the results of the 2013 referendum as the definitive expression of the will of voters, but they do not explain that FPL spent more than $100,000 influencing the outcome of the referendum.”
MARK SCHUMANN
With Harry Howle’s narrow 50-vote victory over Amelia Graves, Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, now holds claim to two seats of the Vero Beach City Council.
Challenger Howle, a favorite of the local Tea Party, was aided in his campaign by two last-minute attack mailers sent out by Citizens Alliance for Florida’s Economy. The mailers targeted incumbents Amelia Graves and Richard Winger.
Howle has been a critic of the city’s recently revised wholesale power agreement with the Orlando Utilities Commission, and has been a proponent of selling Vero Electric’s Indian River Shores customer base to FPL. He sold voters a 5-point plan he promises will lead to the sale of Vero Electric to FPL.
CAFE, as it turns out, received a $7,500 contribution in July from Innovate Florida, a registered political committee to which FPL has contributed $100,000 since 2013.
“It’s troubling that folks at FPL, which has a deal to buy the city’s electric operation, would wallow in the muck by contributing money to political committees such as Innovate Florida,” wrote Press Journal columnist Larry Reisman.
This is hardly the first time FPL has flexed its financial muscle to influence the outcome of a municipal election. In 2013, the utility giant funded an electioneering communications organizations formed by Glenn Heran to support then councilwoman Tracy Carroll. Earlier that year, FPL funded a political action committee, also headed by Heran, pushing for voter approval of a purchase and sale agreement between FPL and Vero Beach.
Silagy and others have pointed to the results of the 2013 referendum as the definitive expression of the will of voters, but they do not explain that FPL spent more than $100,000 influencing the outcome of the referendum.
Two years earlier, when FPL operatives and staffers were arguing against even holding a referendum in Vero Beach, the company was spending more than $500,000 to change the City Charter of South Daytona to prevent the city council there from buying back its electric utility from FPL.
As I wrote last week in first reporting on the attack mailers, “There is no road too low, no gutter two filthy for those who believe winning is everything.”
Even armed with this information, which I have reported before, many people who you would think would care do not even bother to vote; and so Vero Beach winds up with a councilman like Harry Howle, who is little more than a hired hand for FPL.
Rising voter apathy leaves me wondering about the future of our democracy.
Indian River Guardian 
The citizens of Vero can now be certain that the Press Journal has not played the game fairly with regard to this latest local election and many previous elections also. This unmasking of their financial infusions to some PACS confirms what many of us have suspected. As far as I am concerned this expose puts a doubt into their journalistic integrity. In fact, at this juncture it looks like none exists. The PJ Brunjes & FPL Brunjes connection must be severed if the PJ is ever to regain any objectivity that existed at one time. BTW most do not believe the PJ editorial board is objective and above board.either. Thank you Larry Reisman for your ” wallow in the mud” quote which is right on the money.
To clarify my previous statements, the financial infusions I referred to previously were made by FPL which in my opinion had a trickle down effect on the FPL/Brunjes & the PJ Brunjes connection. Larry Reisman has ,to some degree, restored my belief that some objectivity is possible at the PJ. Mr Reisman should be commended.