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(Video) Jose Javier Rodriguez, The Candidate Calling Out James Uthmeier’s Corruption

Writer: Indivisible Boca Raton
Indivisible Boca Raton
2 days ago
6 min read

Updated: 11 minutes ago

Jose Javier Rodriguez, a labor lawyer and former state senator from Miami, is running to replace Florida’s corrupt attorney general.



What The Attorney General Is Supposed To Do

Jose Javier Rodriguez, the Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, asked Palm Beach voters for something we didn’t expect from a candidate five weeks out from an election. Along with our votes, he asked for our imagination, because Florida has gone so long without a real attorney general that “the expectations Floridians have of our attorney general’s office are, frankly, too low.” This perspective captures exactly what this race is about and why we are supporting him. He told us journalists and even lawyers still ask him what rent, the light bill, and insurance have to do with the AG. You’d only ask that, he said, if you’ve lived in Florida for the last few decades. In other states, red ones included, attorneys general “stand up for their people when they’re getting screwed,” while ours “sides with the powerful and with the money against the many.” He admitted that calling himself the people’s lawyer sounds like a slogan. “But that is also the job description.” Rodriguez understands that job, and he has spent his career doing it.



A Career Spent Standing Up To Bullies

Rodriguez described his career as standing up to bullies or helping other people stand up to them. He started at legal services in Miami after the Peace Corps and Harvard Law, representing cheated workers, low-income homeowners, and consumers taken advantage of by corporations. Today he works as a union-side litigator for cops, teachers, longshore workers, and truck drivers. He flipped both his state House and state Senate seats from red to blue, and he served as assistant secretary of labor at the end of the Biden administration. “The bigger the bully and the fewer the people that are doing something about it,” he said, “the more I’m drawn to that kind of fight.”


The 2020 Ghost Candidate Scandal

He asked for a show of hands on who remembered the 2020 ghost candidate scandal, and only a few went up. He guessed more would once he explained it, and he was right, since plenty of us knew the story without connecting it to him. Republican operatives paid a man named Alex Rodriguez to run as a fake independent in his state Senate race and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars propping him up. The fake candidate pulled about 6,000 votes, and Jose Javier lost by 32. He keeps telling the story because of who he says paid for it. According to Rodriguez, Florida Power & Light funded and greenlit the scheme, and FPL’s former CEO emailed his consultants to make Rodriguez’s life “a living hell.” Now Rodriguez says he intends to give them hell right back. We’ve heard a lot of candidates promise to take on the utilities, and we can’t think of another one who can say a utility already tried to end his career over it. Floridians paying rising power bills should want exactly that kind of attorney general.



His Agenda For The Office

His agenda runs on what he calls the three C’s: crime, costs, and corruption. He gets most specific on costs, with minimum wage enforcement, corporate landlords, utility rate hikes, and insurance companies all on the list. He also wants Florida to join the coalitions of state attorneys general that keep beating the federal government in court on things like SNAP and tariffs, the ones you only learn about at the bottom of the article, if they get mentioned at all. These are the fights Floridians need someone to take on, and he has the record to show he will.


Hope Florida And The $10 Million

Hope Florida is the biggest scandal in state government right now, and Rodriguez laid it out plainly. In 2024, $10 million from a Medicaid settlement was routed to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity championed by First Lady Casey DeSantis, and then through nonprofits into political committees controlled by Uthmeier, who was DeSantis' chief of staff at the time. That public money went toward campaigning against Amendments 3 and 4, the marijuana and abortion ballot initiatives. A grand jury later concluded the $10 million was misappropriated and that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes, but it found insufficient evidence to charge anyone because no witness would take responsibility for the decision or recalled who made it.


An attendee pressed Rodriguez for a firm commitment to reopen the case and find out who was really to blame. They weren't going to accept a general answer, and he didn't give one. He said he would keep investigating and follow the evidence, but that "the easiest part about this is just go get the $10 million back." The grand jury, in his words, ran into "a conspiratorial wall of silence in Tallahassee." Nobody in that building has to confess anything for the state to recover the money. He has already sent a litigation hold letter warning everyone involved not to destroy evidence. He is preparing for the job before he has it.


His Case Against James Uthmeier

He spent a good while on Uthmeier and said he could have gone another twenty minutes. He called him the least independent attorney general Florida has ever had, a man who “still has not figured out that he is no longer chief of staff to the governor.” He said Uthmeier designed the legal framework for Alligator Alcatraz and picked the name, created an Office of Parental Rights that now shows up in family court to fight a 17-year-old’s judicial waiver and a same-sex couple’s surrogacy agreement, and wrote himself an opinion saying he could ignore 83 state laws and programs dealing with racial discrimination. Rodriguez said Uthmeier released that opinion on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and told the Black Legislative Caucus he did it on purpose. Then came the money: a string of $25,000 donations, each followed a couple of weeks later by the AG’s office stepping into some developer fight or car dealer lawsuit it would normally ignore. Rodriguez said Uthmeier looks “more like a mob lawyer” than an attorney general. The contrast between the two candidates could hardly be sharper.


Questions From The Audience

The room had its own ideas. One person asked whether, once DeSantis is convicted, Rodriguez could reopen Alligator Alcatraz just for Ron DeSantis, James Uthmeier, and Ashley Moody. In response to this tongue-in-cheek question, Rodriguez brought it back to the inspector general’s findings on conditions there, saying “the cruelty was the whole point” and that both the abuses and the wasted money need a full investigation. Someone else asked about an Elon Musk-linked website collecting voters’ personal information, and he admitted he wasn’t familiar with the details but explained that election integrity and consumer protection both fall under the AG. That honesty is part of why we trust him with this office.


Why We Are Supporting Jose Javier Rodriguez

Another attendee said this was the first time they had heard his name, even though they read about Uthmeier in the Palm Beach Post every day. Rodriguez conceded that Uthmeier has more money and more exposure, but Uthmeier has never been on a ballot, won't debate, and, according to Rodriguez, turns down opportunities to appear on even friendly conservative talk shows. Rodriguez keeps challenging him anyway, with Gainesville next, where Uthmeier teaches a UF class Rodriguez described as a $100,000 side gig. “Don’t tell him,” he said, “but I’m going to be there.” One candidate is hiding from voters while the other has spent roughly 470 days crossing the state from Pensacola to Key West to meet them. Florida needs an attorney general who works for the people paying the light bill, and Jose Javier Rodriguez has shown us he will be that attorney general. Vote early, return your mail ballot, and make sure your neighbors know his name.


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Website: jjr.vote





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