Bain responds to allegations of GOP election interference 

The question about allegations of GOP meddling with the Ninth Circuit state attorney race came about 30 minutes into Wednesday's lunchtime Hot Topics forum between Democrat Monique Worrell, former State Attorney, and current State Attorney Andrew Bain, an independent. The forum was hosted by the League of Women Voters of Orange County. 

Worrell, you may recall, was removed from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis last August and replaced with Bain amid claims that she was not appropriately prosecuting crime. Worrell has long maintained her ouster was political. An Orlando Sentinel investigation found that more than half the cases that prompted her removal didn’t hold up — and that Bain did not revive them once he took office. 

Seth Hyman, winner of the Republican primary, was also meant to be part of the forum but dropped out of the race shortly after his decisive win, fueling speculation — and a federal lawsuit — about Republican quid pro quo and possible election tampering to keep Bain in office. 

“The rumors are circulating that Mr. Hyman was promised some sort of support, judicial appointment, support for running for a legislative seat,” said Fred Lauten, the former chief judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit who moderated the forum. “If it turns out that these kind of promises were made in a primary race, orchestrated to eliminate a Republican challenger, what would be the appropriate response?”

“Only one of us stands to benefit from that type of election election interference, but it goes hand-in-hand with everything that's happened up until this point,” Worrell responded. "The appropriate response is to have free and fair elections, and that's what we have in a democracy."

She added that former GOP candidate and criminal defense attorney Thomas Feiter, present at the event, had warned that Hyman would drop out after the primary. “Then it happened exactly how he said it was going to happen.” 

Bain said it was up to the election crimes branch of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to handle any investigation and that the FBI had no standing to investigate. 

“Somebody in this race told you all that the FBI can investigate this case. The problem with that is the Constitution prohibits the federal government involving themselves in state races,” Bain said. 

Worrell checked him, saying, “The federal government does have the authority when there's a pattern in practice of certain behavior that's being perpetrated by the state.”

A "sham candidacy"?

Monday, Worrell and Feiter held a joint press conference to announce the lawsuit, which alleges that a “small faction” of Republicans — including Hyman, Bain, DeSantis, his chief of staff James Uthmeier, Secretary of State Cord Byrd, attorneys Jeff Aaron and Joshua Grosshans, Florida Republican Party Chair Evan Power, Orange County Republican Party Chair Erin Huntley, State Committeeman Mark Cross and Orange County Supervisor of Elections Glen Gilzean — “orchestrated the conspiracy” of “Seth Hyman’s sham candidacy” to manipulate the state attorney election to keep Bain in office. 

Filed in the Ninth Circuit Court, the case will be heard Oct. 1 at 9 a.m. by Chief Judge Lisa Munyon. 

Hyman said in a Monday Facebook post that he "was never promised anything in return for dropping out of the race for State Attorney."

In a Friday phone call with VoxPopuli, he called the lawsuit "frivolous and an abuse of the court system." In a prior interview, Hyman, who said he began campaigning six months before Worrell was replaced, sought to portray Feiter as the "ghost candidate," who created a primary, but then didn't campaign. "Before he jumped in, we wouldn't have had a primary and the Republican Party could have gotten fully behind the effort to make sure Monique Worrell doesn't win," he said.

During the forum Q&A, Feiter directly asked Bain if he would "welcome a federal investigation into our legal community's collective concern that Seth Hyman was a ghost candidate recruited" to help him stay in office.

Bain said the “question was asked and answered” and described the situation as a “civil rights issue not a party politic issue.” 

Bain then went on a tangent about whether or not he was a Republican — he was a Democrat until 2019 when he became an independent —and that Feiter hadn't explained why he wanted to be state attorney but supposedly said that Bain needed to wait his turn to be state attorney. “I’m good, man. I told y’all, big Black man. I don’t need to wait my turn for nobody.”

He later apologized for the digression. 

Asked after the forum if he was satisfied with Bain responses, Feiter said no. 

"I'm not satisfied with the answers that I got from Andrew Bain today,” he told VoxPopuli. “I asked him, What should happen to people who are involved in election fraud?, and he did not answer.” 

A pressure campaign

Rumors about election interference began swirling after the Orange County GOP endorsed Hyman over Feiter on June 27. A week later, on July 3, Feiter filed a complaint with the Florida Bar, stating that he believed “vulnerable adults of the Orange GOP” were “unlawfully exploited … in a scheme to remove any Republican candidate from the 2024 general election in the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida; and/or a scheme to aid NPA Candidate Andrew Bain get elected/appointed State Attorney.”  

The bar complaint, ultimately rejected, cited Hyman’s 2017 termination from the state attorney’s office for a pattern of excluding exculpatory evidence that could be exonerating for defendants — something Orange GOP Chair Huntley shrugged off as “a difference of opinion” in a “political” state attorney office where he was “not aligned with the administration” under Democrat State Attorney Aramis Ayala.

Feiter’s bar complaint also alleged a pressure campaign between May 10 and June 18 led by Huntley, attorneys Aaron and Grosshans and Uthmeier, DeSantis’ chief of staff, to urge him to “drop out of the race to clear the way for Andrew Bain — because that is what Governor DeSantis wanted, according to each of them."

VoxPopuli talked with Feiter in August about conversations he had with Aaron, Grosshans and Uthmeier. 

“They said, Look, you can't be state attorney. That's reserved for Mr. Bain. The governor wants Mr. Bain to continue in that role,” Feiter said he was told. 

“They basically said You seem like a young guy with a lot of ambition — even though I was older than both of them — and you don't want to kill your political future by going against the will of the governor. I'm like, Last I checked, this was a democracy, and the governor didn't have control over the state, and people do. So I'd like to stay in the race and I'd like to ask the governor to consider supporting me instead of Mr. Bain. They said, That’s not going to happen, but we will run your proposal by the governor. Is there anything else you'd be interested in? Circuit court judge? County court judge? There's some state senate seats opening up, some house of representative seats, which one of those would you like better?”

Feiter said when he refused to drop out of the state attorney race, “they started getting very aggressive and nasty with me and saying that I'm not a team player and Seth Hyman is.”

Feiter shared a text message with VoxPopuli from Hyman that reads, “[DeSantis] supporters don’t want either of us in this race. You continuing to run will likely harm your business in the future. If you ever want to run for anything in the future they will make it impossible … The entire Republican establishment is very mad you are running.” 

Feiter also shared phone records showing an 8:12 p.m. phone call on June 5, where he'd noted that Aaron called him a “selfish asshole for not dropping out” and “threatened to come after me and my family.” 

Aaron, Grosshans and Uthmeier did not respond to VoxPopuli’s requests via text message and phone for comment.  Huntley said she couldn't comment on the lawsuit.