- April 18, 2024
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County Commissioner Joe Mullins on April 17 paid a $750 penalty to the Florida Elections Commission over allegations that he’d reimbursed people for their campaign contributions, in violation of campaign finance law.
Under Florida law, the commission can approve a consent order before a finding of probable cause has occurred. Mullins “neither admits nor denies that he violated the Florida Election Code,” according to the Florida Elections Commission’s final consent order.
The case started with an April 9, 2018, complaint filed by Flagler County resident Kimble Medley, who explained that she had listened to a Georgia radio show in which show host Austin Rhodes presented copies of checks that seemed to show that Mullins had used his Georgia-based company, Mullins Sports and Entertainment, to reimburse some of his campaign donors for amounts that equalled their donations.
Medley wrote that she was concerned that the reimbursements may constitute "donations made in the name of another," in violation of Florida law.
Elections Commission staff obtained bank records showing that Mullins had deposited five checks totaling $3,750 on Feb. 27, 2018, including $1,000 checks from Jennifer A. Mullins, Eden Farms, LLC; and the account of Daniel R. Eden, Jr, and Julie M. Eden; plus $500 from a Heather Buchanan.
The commission staff also obtained a recording of Rhodes’ interview with Buchanan, a former Mullins employee who said in an interview on the air that Mullins had tasked her with delivering reimbursement checks to his donors, and had also reimbursed her for a donation.
“Those are his checks paying back people for their contributions,” she said, according to a transcript from the show. “I was sent by Joe to deliver those checks in exchange for a check written from them to Joe Mullins’ campaign.”
Rhodes asked, “I don’t mean to get personal with you, but can you afford to give someone a $500 political contribution?”
Buchanan laughed. “No, I sure can’t,” she said.
In an affidavit to the Elections Commission, Mullins wrote that he and his sisters were beneficiaries of a trust which distributes $75,000 each March and that the checks he'd sent pertained to the trust.
“As part of the trust arrangement, I am responsible for making payments of roughly $10,000 per year to each of them," he wrote. "I make the payments to my sisters, either from the Mullins Sports & Entertainment, LLC account (“Mullins Sports”) or from one of the Real Estate LLC’s that I manage, Mullins Properties.
"… Each of these individuals wanted to support my campaign and make a contribution. They asked that their contribution be taken from their payment. I explained that I could not do that under Florida’s campaign finance laws. I wrote checks to my sister and Ms. Buchanan from Mullins Sports in February 2018. These checks represented a portion of the annual payment I would ordinarily make to them.”
Mullins wrote that he’d reimbursed Buchanan after hearing that she had not wanted to make a donation to his campaign.
The commission also found that Mullins had failed to report a $1,000 contribution from Mullins Properties-Southern Grace, made on Feb. 28, 2018.
“I never intended to try to circumvent any Florida contribution limits by accepting contributions from these individuals, nor was it my intention that Mullins Sports would somehow be considered as the ultimate source for the contributions in question,” Mullins wrote in the affidavit.
