Hatchet Man: Campaign consultant Anthony Pedicini wins big with shady politics, shadier money

Tampa political consultant Anthony Pedicini is at the height of his success. The single 44-year-old Republican operative with the trademark shaved head lives in a million-dollar six-bedroom home in Tampa’s upscale Beach Park neighborhood. He drives luxury cars and enjoys “fine wines,” “finer scotches” and the “finest cigars” as he boasts on X. And he has achieved all this by winning elections across the state.

“Today, Pedicini is regarded as one of the most influential political consultants in Florida,” the Sarasota Herald Tribune declared in 2022. The key to his success, the paper wrote, was his signature use of aggressive door-to-door campaigning, social media posts, and direct-mail fliers. In a 2019 article celebrating the tenth anniversary of his consulting firm, SIMwins, Florida Politics wrote how Pedicini “built a reputation for managing or consulting on campaigns with strategy that blended political savvy with necessary aggression … SIMwins has amassed a healthy list of just that — wins.”

A look at the Florida Division of Election campaign finance database shows SIMwins has received more than $35 million from state political candidates and political committees since February 2020. The committees paying SIMwins range from the Make American Great Again PAC to the Republican Party of Florida to the Friends of (Lee County Sheriff) Carmine Marceno. His firm counts among its individual clients Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and a slew of state legislators, including Sen. Danny Burgess (R-Zephyrhills), Rep. Alex Andrade (R-Pensacola), and Rep. Jennifer Canady (R-Lakeland), among many others. 

“This guy has gone viral in the state, and he’s replicating his business model all over the place,” said Cathy Antunes, a Sarasota journalist who tracks political committee contributions in Florida. 

But those wins have come at a cost to the communities he has campaigned in, she added.

“It is a brass knuckle approach. The guy is not about community, he doesn’t care who he trashes,” Antunes, who has written an E-book on political dark money in Sarasota and Manatee counties, said. ”That’s Pedicini’s stock in trade. He’s just there to get results.”

Pedicini succeeds with a brutal political machine fueled by a seemingly endless amount of money from political committees he controls that is often used to fund disinformation campaigns against his client’s opponents. These campaigns regularly employ deception, such as false allegations or fake support from ideological enemies, to mislead voters. While Florida election code makes it illegal for a candidate to make “false or malicious charges against, or false statements about, opposing candidates,” it’s not clear those working for the candidate are governed by the same rules. Some of these attacks, though, approach the line regarding Federal Communications laws against political robotexting and robocalling without consent.

Pedicini has been named in at least four libel and defamation lawsuits, all of which have been voluntarily dismissed — an indication they were settled out of court (none of the lawyers contacted would comment). And his name came up in a previously unreported criminal investigation of “election fraud” by the intelligence unit of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

For Pedicini and SIMwins, this appears to simply be the cost of doing business.

“He doesn’t care,” Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse said. Any settlements paid are simply “baked into the cost of doing business.”

Kruse should know. He was a Pedicini client during his 2020 Manatee County Commissioner campaign. He said it was Manatee County resident Carlos Beruff, a wealthy real estate developer and influential Republican donor, who instructed him to hire Pedicini. Beruff, founder of the Sarasota-based Medallion Home, did not respond to messages seeking comment. “I used him in 2020 because I was told to use him in 2020,” Kruse said. “When Carlos decided to back me, he said you have to use this guy.” 

Kruse won the election.

Election investigation thwarted 

Kruse, who is running for reelection this year, said he had a falling out with Pedicini and Beruff because they were too controlling. So now Pedicini is running the campaign of Kruse’s opponent, Kevin Van Ostenbridge, in the August 20 Republican primary. Kruse is braced for the onslaught of political fliers attacking him. “One came out today. I literally posted a picture [of the flier] on Facebook,” Kruse said in July. “It said I’m a liberal, Biden-loving, DeSantis-hating, Soros-backed … it’s always the same thing.”

Kruse would know. When Pedicini helped Kruse with his campaign in 2020, a text message blast went out on August 3, two weeks before the primary, attacking Kruse’s opponent, Ed Hunzeker, a retired county administrator. The text announced that the Black Lives Matter Movement endorsed Hunzeker, a white Republican, “for his dedication to defunding the Manatee County Sheriff’s Department.” Neither of the allegations aimed at undermining Hunzecker’s GOP support were true.

Kruse said when he saw the mass message he confronted Pedicini. “I called him within five seconds,” Kruse recalled. “I was pissed.” He told Pedicini to never do that kind of thing again. “He told me he didn’t do it. Whether it’s true or not, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Hunzeker said he didn’t do anything about it. “I figured it was just politics,” he said. “And I’ll take my lumps and keep moving forward.”

Several of Hunzecker’s supporters took a more aggressive approach: They complained to police. The intelligence unit of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office opened an investigation into “election fraud.” In an investigative summary, the detective in charge determined that Kruse “had enlisted one Anthony PEDICINI as his campaign manager” and had made payments to Strategic Image Management. The detective looked up a 2018 Hillsborough County lawsuit accusing Pedicini of defamation. “The reported facts of that case appear to be similar in nature to those of this reported incident. I also found numerous additional incidents during which PEDICINI had been accused of using similar mass-mailing tactics.” But the text message didn’t include the required disclaimer announcing who was funding the call, so there was no clear link to Pedicini or his company.

With the help of Manatee County Assistant State Attorney Dawn Buff, the detective, whose name was redacted on the report, requested subpoenas and tracked the phone numbers to a company in Chicago, which had leased the phone numbers to a company San Francisco, which had leased them to a company in Chattanooga. Eventually the detective determined a firm called MW Political in Atlanta, owned by Jim and Janna Valentine, had been contracted to send the message linking Hunzeker to BLM to more than 18,000 numbers in Manatee County. 

But when the detective and Buff requested information on who contracted them, the Valentines’ lawyer complained  they were outside their jurisdiction. “Your office is without authority to issue a subpoena beyond the State of Florida,” the attorney, Neil G. Taylor, of Coral Gables, Florida, wrote. There is no record of Buff replying to the email in the investigative summary, which simply concludes with Taylor’s assertion. Buff told the Florida Trident she does not remember what happened to the case after that. No charges were filed.

Political robocalls and robotexts to mobile phones are prohibited “without the called party’s prior express consent,”  according to the Federal Communications Commission, and must identify who is sending the message. Authorities elsewhere have been able to levy sanctions against groups for political robocalls that violate the prior consent rule, especially when they attempt to mislead voters.

The FCC fined Republican consultants Jacob Wohl and John Burkman in Washington D.C. more than $5 million for an illegal robocall campaign during the 2020 presidential election. The call was aimed at black voters and warned that if they registered to vote, police and debt collectors would use the information to find them. The two men pleaded guilty to telecommunications fraud in Ohio. Michigan’s attorney general filed criminal charges against the two for voter intimidation, a case which has been appealed to the state’s supreme court, and New York’s attorney general sued the pair. Burkman later lost his license to practice law. In May, New Hampshire’s attorney general charged a Democratic consultant with several felonies for allegedly using artificial intelligence to generate President Joe Biden’s voice in a robocall to try to deter voting in the primary. He faces a potential $6 million fine from the FCC.

But there’s no evidence anyone has complained to state or federal authorities about possible voter interference in any of SIMwins’ campaigns. Spokespeople for both the Florida Election Commission and the state Attorney General said there are no complaints on file against Pedicini or his firm. The FCC did not respond to requests for information.

In Manatee County races this year, the following are confirmed SIMwins clients: County Commission candidates Kevin Van Ostenbridge, April Culbreath, Raymond Turner, Steve Metallo; County Supervisor of Elections candidate James Satcher, and House District 72 candidate Bill Conerly. In Sarasota County SIMwins’ clients include county commission candidates Neil Rainford and Teresa Mast.

“I just do what needs to get done” 

Pedicini, who declined to comment for this story, started his career in political messaging early. While still an undergraduate at Florida State University, Pedicini was recruited to be the student director of the state health department’s “tobacco truth campaign,” according to his testimony in a 2007 deposition. After graduating a semester early in 2000, he worked as a legislative aide and liaison for House Republicans and eventually joined a West Palm Beach political consulting firm called Public Concepts in 2002. 

It was baptism by fire. In 2007 Lynne Larkin, a candidate for Vero Beach City Council, filed a libel suit against Public Concepts for waging an allegedly misleading ad campaign that claimed she used city workers for personal business. Pedicini was subpoenaed to discuss his role in researching and developing the ad in dispute. “I just do what needs to get done,” he said under oath.

Two years later, Pedicini joined with partners Thomas Piccolo and David Millner to start their own firm, Strategic Image Management, in Tampa (calls to the office for comment were not returned). He applied the lessons he learned on the job. In 2011, Pedicini told Tampa’s Creative Loafing, “Negative works. … Fear is a much stronger motivator than hope. You have to make people make a choice.”

He was referring to the negative ads he ran for his client Rose Ferlita in her race against Bob Buckhorn for mayor of Tampa. Ads called Buckhorn a failed businessman and alleged he required police officers to keep their guns locked in patrol cars, a charge the fact-checking website PolitiFact designated as false. Ferlita lost the race and voiced regrets to supporters, according to Creative Loafing.  “There were some commercials that I didn’t feel good about,” she said. “The style changed. The direction changed. Once I saw what it looked like I felt sick to my stomach.”

Nonetheless, Pedicini’s client list kept growing. And SIMwins was indeed winning. Pedicini helped former Florida Senate President Bill Galvano and Attorney General Moody win elections, as well as state Sen. Ed Hooper (R-Palm Harbor), among dozens of others. But amid the wins were some darker moments.

In 2018, Michael Beltran, a lawyer who was running for state representative against Sean McCoy in Hillsborough County’s Republican primary, accused McCoy and Pedicini, among others, of distributing a “defamatory hit piece,” a mailer alleging candidate Beltran helped “illegal aliens get back out on the streets.” Beltran believed it was based on a case in which he was appointed to defend an illegal alien facing life in prison. Beltran argued for a sentence of 15 years knowing that the defendant would be deported upon release. Beltran’s lawsuit was the one referenced in the Manatee County Sheriff’s criminal election fraud investigation. After Beltran beat McCoy and won the general election,  the lawsuit was withdrawn. Media outlets reported it was settled. Beltran declined to comment.

In 2020, the year Hunzeker lost the Manatee County Commission primary to Pedicini’s client George Kruse, Pedicini was managing another county commission race. Kevin Van Ostenbridge, Pedicini’s client, went up against Matt Bower, a registered Republican running as an independent in the general election. Bower, a lifelong Manatee County resident, financial planner and Army veteran with no criminal history, was deluged with roughly a dozen fliers, some ostensibly accusing him of crimes. “Matt Bower ‘Fraud,’” read one. Others accused him of  “misrepresentation’,” and “unethical and illegal behavior.”  The attacks stemmed from allegations made in a lawsuit against the owner of a law firm where Bower was working as an office manager. A judge dismissed the lawsuit and made the plaintiffs pay $350,000 in legal fees to Bower’s boss. Bower was not a defendant in the suit.

“There were tons of negative mailers on subjects that were completely false, followed by text messages, emails,” Bower recalled. At one point he confronted Pedicini on Facebook and Pedicini responded, “I triple dog dare you to run for any office. But watch out, you’ll have to move after it’s over.” 

Bower said he sent a cease and desist letter to Van Ostenbridge and Pedicini. His campaign had a little over $35,000 and he couldn’t afford an attorney, so a friend wrote the letter. He estimates Van Ostenbridge spent tens of thousands of dollars attacking him. “Those fliers aren’t cheap,” Bower said.

The political committee responsible for the anti-Bower fliers, Leadership for Florida’s Future, is now closed. Its registered agent was Michael Millner, who also serves as the treasurer for the Pedicini-controlled PC Citizen’s Alliance for Florida’s Economy. It’s not known if Millner is related to Pedicini’s SIMwins partner David Millner. Neither Michael nor David Millner returned messages left at their respective offices. Leadership for Florida’s Future paid SIMwins a total of $63,000 for mailing, printing and phone services in 2020, according to the Florida Department of State’s campaign finance database.

Van Ostenbridge won the election. In fact, Pedicini’s clients took a clean sweep of the county commission in 2020.

Meanwhile, over in Brevard County, Leadership for Florida’s Future was linked to an  instance of blatant political misinformation. On Feb. 21, 2020, Palm Bay City residents received a robocall made to sound like a sexual predator alert about Deputy Mayor Kenny Johnson. If the call went to anyone who had not given prior consent, it was a violation of the FCC’s rules.

“This is a Palm Bay sexual offender alert from Leadership for Florida’s Future,” began the robocall. “Please be advised that Palm Bay Deputy Mayor Kenny Johnson has been arrested for texting a picture of his penis to an underage girl.” 

The message was referencing a 2015 incident when Johnson was 22 and interacted with a 17 year-old female. The details aren’t known because the charges were dropped and the case expunged. “We can confirm there was an arrest. As a result of an investigation, all charges were dropped. The record was expunged by mutual agreement to protect all parties involved,” Johnson’s campaign told Florida Today in 2018. However, the 2020 “alert” indicated Johnson had just been arrested at the time the robocall went out.

More than half of what Leadership for Florida’s Future paid SIMwins in 2020, $34,000, was spent on phone and direct mail services, according to the state’s campaign finance database. Johnson had been feuding with State Rep. Randy Fine, a Pedicini client, at the time. There were no records with the Palm Bay Police Department related to the robocall. Johnson did not return messages seeking more information. 

In 2022 Pedicini again ran a scorched earth campaign in Manatee County. This time his client was Mike Rahn, a candidate for county commission in the Republican primary against incumbent Misty Servia. At least 22 fliers were unleashed against Servia. Rahn repeatedly accused her of being racist and hating Gov. Ron DeSantis because she once criticized the governor’s placement of a COVID vaccine clinic in a wealthy white community.

Then, in August, a robotext supposedly coming from a group called “Manatee LGBTQIA+ Alliance” endorsed Servia while stating “transgender children must be protected from their ReThugLican parents!” The message was fake. There is no “Manatee LGBTQIA+ Alliance” and there was no political committee disclaimer on the message as required by both FCC and Florida election laws. 

Servia filed a “hate crime” complaint with the Manatee County Sheriff’s Department stating the message was meant to “defraud voters using prejudice and hate.” Her complaint cited the 2020 robotext targeting Hunzeker. “The common element in these two examples is political consultant Anthony Pedicini of Tampa based (sic) company Strategic Image Management represents clients who would benefit,” she wrote. 

Servia lost the election and the sheriff’s office never contacted her about her complaint.

Trail of defamation suits 

As it turns out, 2022 was a busy year for accusations against Pedicini and SIMwins.

–In July, retired Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputy Charles Boswell, who was running for sheriff against Pedicini client Chad Chronister, sued Chronister, SIMwins, Pedicini and his partners in a wide-ranging complaint that included discrimination at his workplace and other allegations. Specific to Pedicini, Boswell claimed the consultant defamed him when he told a newspaper Boswell had been fired and then failed to retract the statement. Boswell lost his lawsuit but has appealed.

–In August, Reserve Orange County Sheriff’s deputy Jesus Rosario sued Pedicini and his client Bruno Portigliatti for violating his privacy. Rosario was engaged to Carolina Amesty, who was running against Portigliatti in the Republican primary for House District 45 in Orange County. Rosario alleged Pedicini and Piccolo used his name and likeness without permission and posted his personal information “to dox” him. “Portigliatti’s campaign has disseminated thousands of political advertisements throughout Orange and Osceola Counties containing images of Rosario along with Rosario’s telephone number, e-mail address, home address, mailing address, age, and voter registration number.” Rosario was not running for office. The case was voluntarily dismissed a week after it was filed.

–Also in August, Berny Jacques, who was running in the Republican primary for House District 59 in Pinellas County, filed a lawsuit alleging that Pedicini and Michael Millner created a fake music playlist on YouTube called the “Berny Jacques Keeping Florida Free Playlist” with songs such as “F*!K Donald Trump,” by Nipsey Hussle. Jacques, a black conservative, repeatedly asserted he did not make the playlist. The playlist was then referenced in mailers sent out to voters stating that “the anti-conservative anti-Republican song is a rallying cry to liberals all across America.” The flier was made by the political committee Keeping Florida Great, whose registered agent was Michael Millner. Keeping Florida Great paid SIMwins $211,000 on Aug. 6 and 9 for printing and mailing services. On July 27, 2023, there was a “Joint stipulation for dismissal,” according to court records. Beltran served as Jacques’ attorney.

–In September Jorge Fors, a candidate for Miami Dade County Commission, filed a complaint for defamation after a campaign flier with a banner reading “Human Trafficking Public Service Announcement” declared that motels serving as fronts for human trafficking were funding Fors’ campaign. The flier included a photoshopped image of Fors, who has never been arrested, in handcuffs. Fors was running against SIMwins client Kevin Marino Cabrera. Beltran was Fors’ attorney and the case was voluntarily dismissed.

Not “developer-friendly enough” 

Despite the strongly partisan tone of so many of the attack messages, Pedicini’s motives appear to be less political than economic. For example, contribution records reveal that four major developers, Carlos Beruff’s Medallion Home, Pat Neal’s Signature Homes, Randy Benderson’s Benderson Development, and Rex Jensen’s Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, frequently bundle multiple $1,000 contributions – the maximum allowed – towards candidates managed by Pedicini. 

When robotext-victim Hunzeker ran Manatee County’s government as the county administrator, he said he made sure developers followed the rules. “I made them pay impact fees, development fees,” he said. “I wasn’t considered developer-friendly enough.” The previous board of commissioners all supported him, he said, until “this Pedicini guy showed up supporting several candidates and took over the county commission.”

Bower, the candidate who ran as an independent against Pedicini-client Van Ostenbridge for Manatee County Commission in 2020, said that when he was on the county’s planning commission he wanted to make sure a controversial Beruff development called Aqua By The Bay in the Village of Cortez conformed to its comprehensive plan so it wouldn’t have a negative impact on the Sarasota Bay. “I was dubbed anti-developer, but I was just smart growth,” Bower said.

It costs a lot of money to launch attack campaigns like those waged by SIMwins. One candidate told the Trident a county-wide mailer costs an estimated $20,000, while a single-district mailer takes roughly $8,000. To pay for the mailers, Pedicini and his company rely on contributions that go into a network of political committees that then pay his company for the campaign services, as well as their fees. The contributors are often hidden behind a series of political committees donating to each other. Pedicini himself is the chairperson and registered agent of two active political committees, Citizens Alliance for Florida’s Economy (CAFE) and the newly formed Exposing Fake Republicans, which has accrued $159,500 in contributions since June.

So far this year, CAFE has raised $671,000 in contributions ($12 million since it first registered with the state in 2014). From January to March of this year CAFE received $186,203 in contributions. Among the contributors were the political committees Libertatem ($50,000), chaired by William “Stafford” Jones,  Keeping Florida Great  ($105,000), which is the committee involved in the Palm Bay robocall, and Bradenton developer Ronald J. Allen ($25,000). In the next reporting period, CAFE paid Pedicini’s firm SIMwins $9,600 for polling services.

In April and May CAFE received another $30,000 from Libertatem and $19,500 from Benderson Development. CAFE then contributed $50,000 to a PAC called Parental Rights, registered to Michael Millner, CAFE’s treasurer. In July, CAFE contributed $11,000 back to Libertatem, and Benderson contributed another $25,000.

But as journalist Antunes points out, information about many of the contributions won’t be released publicly until after the elections.

In this way the identities of the contributors stays mostly hidden behind the political committees while the money circulates back and forth. But Pedicini and his partners control more than just the committees on which their names are listed. Wendy White, a notary, is the treasurer of more than a dozen political committees all listing the same address as SIMwins’ office in Tampa.

A rogue voting guide

Today Pedicini and SIMwins are again active in Manatee and Sarasota Counties with predictably disruptive effects.

In July, the Make America Great Again political committee released a “voter guide” in Manatee County with pictures of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and the caption, “Make America Great Again is proud to have endorsed” SIMwin’s clients that included county commission candidates Van Ostenbridge, April Culbreath, Steve Metallo, Raymond Turner, Supervisor of Elections candidate James Satcher, House District 72 candidate Bill Conerly, and School Board candidates Alex Garner and Jon Lynch. In July the Make America Great Again committee reported paying SIMwins $220,000 for “Mailers Print/Ship” according to the state’s election database.

The mailer prompted Cindy Spray, Manatee’s Republican Party committeewoman, to post a note on Facebook saying the flier came out while she was away at the Republican convention and warned people, “This is NOT an official voter guide.” The Republican committee would not make endorsements in the primary, she noted.

Meanwhile, the political committee Exposing Fake Republicans has targeted Van Ostenbridge and Culbreath’s respective opponents, Kruse and Tal Siddique, alleging Kruse is linked to liberal donor George Soros and that Siddique and his wife are close to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Siddique’s wife has sent Exposing Fake Republicans a cease and desist letter. Beltran is her lawyer.

Kruse said he won’t run negative ads and that he is trying to stay ahead of the attacks from his opponent and even have fun with them. He started a Bingo card on his website that his supporters can play predicting what line of attack will be used, such as “Soros,” “Liberal,” and “Anti-Christian.” He wrote he wanted all of them checked off before Tuesday’s primary vote. 

“We’re making good headway, but we haven’t been able to check them all off yet,” he said recently, sounding a little disappointed.

Reporting assistance was provided by Dawn Kitterman of the Bradenton Times.