If there were a scale of one to 10 for ridiculousness, David Rivera’s decadelong 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.
