With election day a few days away, State Representative Randy Fine is up to his same old trick of lying to voters in order to influence elections. Now his illegal activity has implicated those who have unwisely allowed him to take them under his wing.
Fine was already under investigation by the State of Florida for his illegal involvement in having a teenager file to run for office in his district as a “ghost candidate.” Florida law states you must be at least 21 years-old in order to be a Florida State Representative. More on that story later.
It is no secret that over the last 4 years, Representative Fine has orchestrated a character assassination campaign against Palm Bay’s Deputy Mayor Kenny Johnson. A few years ago, we wrote an article explaining why. He has sent out countless robo-calls, robo-texts, post cards, Facebook posts, and any other media he can pay for full of false, slanderous, and misleading accusations and lies to all of the residents of the city of Palm Bay. According to campaign finance reports, he has spent nearly $100,000 of donors money in doing so. Now he is using others to do so as well. It’s worth noting, Fine was just found guilty himself of breaking campaign finance laws just a few months ago.
Florida Statute 104.061(1) states: Whoever by bribery, menace, threat, or other corruption whatsoever, either directly or indirectly, attempts to influence, deceive, or deter any elector in voting or interferes with him or her in the free exercise of the elector’s right to vote at any election commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084 for the first conviction, and a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084, for any subsequent conviction.
This would be the first conviction for Nathan White (Johnson’s opponent planted by Fine), and Josiah Gatlle the Space Coast Young Republicans President. Gattle is also the employer of White at a local UPS Store. However, for Representative Fine, this could be his second conviction.
Representative Fine and Nathan White have been coordinating together for over a year in their attempt to “take down” Deputy Mayor Johnson. They have attended numerous events together when Fine, as the guest speaker would share completely false information about Johnson to the voters, then point to Nathan White in the audience telling the voters to support him instead. Listen to this example below.
Not one word of what Representative Fine states in those accusations is true, he’s never provided any evidence of it, however he knows that his followers will simply believe it, and spread the false information on his behalf in order to influence voters.
Representative Fine is very careful about the words he chooses to use when posting to his Facebook page, because unlike when speaking to a crowd which he believes isn’t being recorded, his Facebook posts leave no question to what is said. He presents complete hearsay as fact, often prefacing his libel with “someone told me” or “I heard that..” and then goes on to pretend as if this is something that has been proven. All it turns out to be is obvious and poorly coordinated conspiracy between him and those he has influence of.
Josiah Gattle has formed a political action committee called “We The People” whose largest expenditure to date is to Representative Fine. Fine has two political campaign finance accounts with hundreds of thousands of dollars in them at his exclusive disposal. The $4,000 Gattle paid Fine accounts for less than 1% of Fine’s contributions, but accounted for 30% of We the People’s expenditures at the time.
What was this expenditure for? At the kickoff event for We the People, Representative Fine was again, the keynote speaker. Listen to this audio recorded at the event of Fine coordinating with Josiah and White about their plans for Johnson.
As is often the case when Fine attends or speaks at a fundraiser, he never gives to the actual campaign or organization he is asking others to do so for. He considers his presence alone a contribution. The latest example came when School Board candidate Gene Trent held a fundraiser for his campaign. School Board Member Matt Susin was listed as the top person, in bold on the advertisements. Fine was listed several names down, and not bold. Fine told Trent’s campaign that he wanted to be listed on the top and in exchange he would share his campaign event to his 40,000 followers on his campaign page. Trent’s campaign would not oblige his request, and in retaliation, Fine held his own fundraiser on the same day, at the same time and refused to share Gene’s. Unfortunately for Fine, nearly no one actually showed up to his fundraiser, and Trent’s was essentially sold out. Fine frequently posts a host committee with dozens of names (some of which asked to removed as he didn’t bother to ask them) but almost none of them actually give to his campaign.
Fine was also responsible for a mail hit-piece that went out to nearly every home in the city of Palm Bay, attacking Johnson and myself. When questioned by Florida Today about the mailer, Fine said he had nothing to do with it. His campaign finances show that to be false.
The disclaimer on the mailer shows that it was paid for by Leadership for Florida’s Future. Within days of this mailer, which was also accompanied with a robo-text, Fine sent $3,500 to Leadership for Florida’s Future, and $17,000 to Citizens Alliance for Florida’s Economy, both owned by the same person and at the same address.
Coincidently, Leadership for Florida’s Future spent $16,995 for “mailing services” the very next day. And wouldn’t you know it, Citizens Alliance for Florida’s Economy spent $3,250 that same day on “phone services” aka text messages. The expenses were paid to SIMWINS which is owned by Fine’s campaign consultant Anthony Pedicini and is also the Chairperson of Citizens Alliance for Florida’s Economy.
Obviously, Representative Fine isn’t running against Deputy Mayor Kenny Johnson, but Nathan White is, who as you can hear in the audio, has promised to do everything he can to help Nathan defeat Johnson in this election. This is just one example alone of at least $20,000 in help. And again, the information provided in these mailers and text messages with doctored mugshots, is false.
Last week, Palm Bay residents received another text message with doctored mug shots and false information, however this time, Josiah Gattle took credit for it in the message itself.
Shortly after these text messages went out, State Representative Fine posted an “anonymous letter” he received at his campaign office. The letter was post marked in June of this year. It was signed “a concerned citizen” and simply made claims about Deputy Mayor Johnson’s mother of his son, and who he dates.
Right before Representative Fine made that post, Nathan White was scheduled to debate Deputy Mayor Johnson on Palm Bay Live. White pulled out of the debate literally minutes before it was to start. Florida Today wrote a story about it.
Besides White, the debate featured 3 black men; Deputy Mayor Kenny Johnson, owner of Palm Bay Live Kevin Vaccianna, and Diversity non-profit owner David Jones. In a Facebook live video the following day, White stated that the reason he backed out of the debate so abruptly, was because he found out that Johnson and Jones were “longtime friends” and felt he was being “setup.” He said he was provided “proof” of these allegations right before the debate was to start and didn’t have time to “investigate” them.
What was the proof? A Facebook photo of Jones, Marcus Smith (retired Lt. Col who Randy calls a thug), and myself attending a formal gala. Who sponsored the Gala? The Black Chamber of Commerce. Other than that, the proof White provided was that Jones ‘liked’ some of Johnson’s facebook posts. David is also 12 years older than Johnson, and just recently moved back to Florida after living in another state almost his entire adult life. What White thought he could possibly be being set up for is unknown. Lastly, I am not his campaign manager, nor involved in his campaign. His campaign manager is an Australian woman about a foot shorter than myself, that would be very hard to confuse with me. Nathan White has met her, spoken to her, and knows that she is his campaign manager, so this is just another false statement by himself.
But what we are beginning to see is a trend. About a month ago, a resident posted a screenshot of a Facebook post from Nathan’s personal Facebook account. The post was from 4 years ago and is below.
After the post was made, Nathan White immediately made his entire personal profile private. About an hour later he made a post stating that the comment was false, and posted a screenshot of the actual thread with the comment now deleted. He says he would not and did not ever make the comment, but as we can see above, he has no problem making false statements, and has allowed his campaign to be run by Randy Fine and Tres Holton who make a living off of making false statements.
We have learned that it is Fine’s plan that if White should win, Fine will lobby the other Republicans on the council to make a motion to fire all of the chartered officers in the City of Palm Bay to include the City Manager, and in turn re-instate those who were removed amongst allegations of corruption in the past. Tres Holton, who Johnson defeated in 2018 was also, according to Fine, instrumental in him winning his first election. During Holton’s interrogations with the FBI and FDLE, Holton admits to supplying elected officials and lobbyists with escorts in Tallahassee. Fine’s office is located directly across the street from the strip club PinUps, and the FBI questions Holton repeatedly about bringing prostitutes from there to Fine’s office. You can listen to that interrogation here.
It is reported that the plan is for Holton to be installed as the new Deputy City Manager after they “clean house” to give Fine control of both the council, and the executive side of the city of Palm Bay.
All of this conspiring is not new to Palm Bay. It is exactly what happened in the past when Holton and others were elected and shortly thereafter appointed Gregg Lynk and David Isnardi to the city management positions. It resulted in a federal investigation, multiple wires being worn on elected officials and others, arrests, and removals. All of those individuals are no longer with the city. Fine and White appear to be conspiring on a way to get them back in. The only question is if the citizens of Palm Bay will allow history to repeat itself. The other question I’m sure Fine is asking is whose been “wearing the wire” around him. The bottom line is it is clear that they are trying to corruptly influence voters, which as we showed from the beginning, is a felony.
Earlier this week after receiving a lot of negative backlash from backing out of the original debate, White agreed to another debate hosted by citizens in Bayside Lakes. Johnson clearly dominated the debate providing substantive answers to every question asked. The very next day, another negative text message came out with the same graphics and language as the one earlier. This time however, the disclaimer was missing. The message was almost verbatim a Facebook post Fine shared less than an hour prior. It made a slew of outrageous accusations against Johnson from gun violence to mental health claims. All completely false accusations with no evidence whatsoever to support them. There’s no bar too low for this group of people so hungry for power it seems.
Fine repeatedly begged his followers to share his posts in order to “influence the voters.” Almost no one did.
After that attempt flopped, Fine this morning posted a new false post to his Facebook page. This time alleging that a woman “he believes” may be someone provided him with another false story about Johnson. The very first person to respond to the post (besides Fine liking it himself) was Nathan White. The actual person who Fine pretends contacted him has definitely stated that she has not and will not speak to Randy Fine, who has no problem using women for his own political gain. Again, Nathan White claims to have no knowledge, nor any involvement in any of this, and has pledged to run a clean campaign. Voters will determine whether they believe that or not.
Today is the last day of early voting, and then there is election day next Tuesday. Unfortunately, voters can count on more salacious, messages and spam to hit their phones and mailboxes prior to then from these corrupt individuals.
