MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Sen. Daphne Campbell is crying foul over questions about whether she lives within her Senate district as required, and about recent controversial actions.
Local 10 News reporter Glenna Milberg caught up with Campbell at a county meeting, where the incumbent blamed political propaganda and her opponent for her troubles.
In campaign and state records, Campbell has been associated with five addresses over the last six six years, though owns none of them, and it is unclear in which, if any, she has resides.
The one home where she is listed as property owner is outside district lines.
“It’s mine,” acknowledged Campbell. “I gave it to my kids.”
That property on Northeast Fourth Avenue near 148th Street is the home where, after Hurricane Irma, Campbell requested priority electricity restoration from a governmental contact with Florida Power and Light. In a series of texts with FP&L Vice President John Holley, Campbell said her mother was sick and on oxygen.
Months later, a video surfaced of a 2016 interview where Campbell discusses her parents, both of whom had died years earlier.
“Listen,” said Campbell, “Haitians - we call everyone our ‘mothers,'” she said.
Then there is the video posted on YouTube from Campbell’s 60th birthday party last year, showing one of the guests, a lobbyist, gifting Campbell a designer handbag, then putting a wad of cash inside.
“First of all, the purse was for his wife. He took that purse from his wife,” Campbell said. “That was a joke.”
Campbell says she regrets throwing the party and the actions she called a joke.
“I don't do anything wrong. I follow laws: I abide to the law: I stay with the law,” she said.
State election records lists a series of audits and fines levied against her for late and incomplete campaign reports.
Her opponent, Jason Pizzo, has filed a complaint against her with the Florida Commission on Ethics.
He is challenging the incumbent Senator Campbell in the August 28th primary.