Ceasar’s Russian TV work draws harsh spotlight in elections race

The devious attempts by Russian hackers to disrupt Florida’s 2016 election are still cloaked in mystery, four years later.

The state says the Russians tried but did not violate the voting systems of two targeted counties, neither of which has yet been publicly identified by authorities in a failure of transparency. But the hacking expeditions jolted our collective sense of voting security, and we’ve been looking over our shoulders ever since.

With Russian intrusion in the presidential election still a threat, any U.S. politician should stay as far as possible from any Kremlin connection, especially a Democrat who wants to run our elections system. The optics are all wrong.

Former Broward Democratic Party chairman Mitch Ceasar, a leading candidate for Broward supervisor of elections, repeatedly appeared as a political expert last year on RT America, a TV outlet that American intelligence authorities say is a propaganda arm of the Putin regime. (RT stands for Russia Today).

Three years ago, RT America registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. U.S. intelligence agencies say the outlet was part of an effort by the Kremlin to interfere on Donald Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election. NPR called RT America the one news outlet Trump is comfortable with.

Ceasar’s punditry on an obscure subscription-based Russian TV outlet surely was unseen by the vast majority of Broward voters, and there is no evidence that he soft-pedaled his criticism of Trump or Republicans. But two of his opponents say that voters should know about it because it raises character questions.

“It seems like pretty poor judgment to appear on state-sponsored Russian television when we’re having all these cybersecurity issues,” said candidate Chad Klitzman, a 26-year-old Weston lawyer. “I just find it kind of odd.”

Another candidate, Joe Scott, 38, of Parkland, a Ricoh account manager and graduate of West Point, said he found it strange that Ceasar did not share his RT appearances on Twitter or his Facebook account. By raising the issue, Scott acknowledged that he’s trying to slow the momentum of Ceasar, a better-known, better-financed opponent.

“It’s not really clear what his relationship with RT is, but he appears to have a relationship with an organization that is attempting to influence our elections,” Scott said. “There had to be something in it for him.”

If there was, Ceasar isn’t saying. Ceasar, who emphasizes the importance of transparency in the elections office, calls his Russian TV work a nonstory. He declined to tell us whether he was paid. He did say RT paid for Uber rides to and from his Plantation home and RT’s Miami studio.

His state financial disclosure form shows no income from RT in 2019. “I’m not going to get into it,” Ceasar said.

As an invited guest in RT America’s Miami studio with the city’s glittering skyline behind him, Ceasar offered commentary on Trump, the Mueller report, gun control and other topics. He was sometimes pitted against a conservative strategist and was identified as a former state Democratic chairman, a job he held for less than a year in 1998 and 1999.

The RT America website shows he appeared on RT four times alone last October. Its search engine showed 88 hits under his name.

“I appeared because I wanted the truth to be told,” Ceasar told me. “I was never pressured to bend my opinions.”

Ceasar said he had not heard of RT America but began appearing when his good friend Ed Schultz anchored a show there. Schultz, who died in 2018, was a popular host on MSNBC where Ceasar also appeared as an expert on Florida politics.

The RT appearances were frequent enough that Ceasar displayed a relaxed on-air familiarity with anchors Scottie Nell Hughes and Rick Sanchez, a familiar face to South Florida viewers as a former news anchor on WSVN Channel 7.

At the end of a back-and-forth over “Russia-gate” with Ceasar in May of last year, Sanchez invited Ceasar to return, and the Democrat said: “Would love to. Plenty to talk about.”

Ceasar, 66, a pre-eminent Broward political activist since the 1980s, is one of six Democrats in a primary that likely will determine who runs the county elections office for at least the next four years.

Following several controversies and a chaotic recount of a U.S. Senate race, former Supervisor Brenda Snipes departed after the 2018 election and was replaced by Pete Antonacci, a Tallahassee insider and ally of former Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican who beat Democrat Bill Nelson in that Senate race. Antonacci, a Republican, is serving as a caretaker and never intended to run for the office.

Besides Klitzman and Scott, the other Democratic candidates include consultant Ruth Carter-Lynch, former school board member Jennifer Gottlieb and Oakland Park commissioner Tim Lonergan. The closed Democratic primary is Aug. 18.

Ceasar filed as a candidate for supervisor of elections on June 5, 2019 and his last appearance on RT America was on Dec. 30. His guest shots stopped as he ramped up a county-wide bid for elections supervisor.

“It was time to part company, amicably,” he said.