{"id":332882,"date":"2026-07-08T10:11:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T10:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/332882\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T10:11:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T10:11:30","slug":"st-johns-county-officeholders-charged-in-connection-with-fake-voter-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/332882\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Johns County officeholders charged in connection with fake voter guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three St. Johns County elected officials face misdemeanor criminal charges in relation to a fake voter guide that circulated ahead of the 2024 election. <\/p>\n

St. Johns County Commissioners Christian Whitehurst and Sarah Arnold, as well as former St. Augustine Beach Mayor Dylan Rumrell, are charged with two misdemeanor counts of conspiracy and misrepresenting a false voter guide as an official slate of endorsements from the local Republican Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several others are named in the charging documents, including Front Street Consulting owner Brianna Jordan, her employee Jamie Johnson and her intern Garrett Davis. Jordan ran the reelection campaigns for Whitehurst, Roy Alaimo and former County Commissioner Henry Dean, and worked with other local candidates.<\/p>\n

Jordan faces an additional felony charge of tampering with evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She did not respond to Jacksonville Today\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Voter guide conspiracy<\/p>\n

The 2024 races for the St. Johns County Commission brought a split in local Republican voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The local Republican Executive Committee endorsed a slate of newcomer candidates<\/a> opposed to the sitting Republican incumbents. The candidates who received endorsements, Ann-Marie Evans, Ann Taylor and Clay Murphy, all criticized their opponents \u2014 Whitehurst, Dean and Alaimo \u2014 for allowing rapid growth in the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite those endorsements, many voters in St. Johns County received a fake voter guide purporting to be from the local Republican Party. That guide falsely indicated that the party had endorsed incumbents Whitehurst, Dean and Alaimo, as well as alternate congressional candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators allege that those mailers were assembled at a rented house in St. Augustine that Jordan was using as a campaign headquarters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From a charging affidavit in the case: \u201cJordan\u2019s scheme consisted of creating a voter guide that mimicked the (St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee) official voter guide. Jordan used the same logo \u2026 however she reversed the color from white lettering on a red background to red lettering on a white background. Jordan did not include any of the statutorily required language to identify who created or paid for the production of the voter guide.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Florida<\/p>\n

Investigators allege that the mailers were then sent out in early August from Orlando and Jacksonville \u201cin a further attempt to conceal their origins.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The charging documents say Jordan and her team worked with Whitehurst and Arnold to package the mailers. Documents note that Whitehurst\u2019s mother and Arnold\u2019s children were present, and that Rumrell, now a city commissioner, was at the house, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jordan\u2019s employee at the time, Jamie Johnson, also alleged that the campaign manager for Jim Priester, then a candidate St. Johns County sheriff, participated in the operation, too.<\/p>\n

Arnold, Rumrell and Whitehurst did not respond to Jacksonville Today\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

A tense election<\/p>\n

The fraudulent voter guide was one of a number of controversies surrounding the 2024 elections, including a number of candidates who filed to run but seemingly did not campaign at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although several candidates with actual Republican endorsements like Murphy, Taylor and Rep. Kim Kendall ultimately prevailed in the election<\/a>, St. Johns County Commission candidate Ann-Marie Evans lost to Whitehurst in a tight race decided by less than 1,000 votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking with First Coast News earlier this year<\/a>, Evans said she believed the voter guide was the cause of her loss.<\/p>\n

And although he was elected, Murphy says that, at the time, he thought it was the end of his campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The people involved are innocent until proven guilty, Murphy says, but he is still shaken by the charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree and fair elections are at the heart of our constitutional Republic and a bedrock of democracy, and I oppose anything that can taint those,\u201d Murphy said in a statement. \u201cI strongly support free and fair elections \u2014 free from unlawful coercion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann Taylor took a different tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile these charges are currently alleged, the standard for holding public office is entirely different,\u201d she said in a statement to Jacksonville Today. \u201cThe mere fact that the State of Florida has officially filed criminal conspiracy charges against Commissioners Christian Whitehurst, Sarah Arnold and Dylan Rumrell completely shatters the public trust required to govern. If there is any truth to these allegations, for the integrity of St. Johns County, they need to step down immediately so our residents can have a board they can trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

The road ahead<\/p>\n

Denver Cook, the chair of the St. Johns County Republican Party, says the usage of the party\u2019s logo is \u201can affront to every volunteer who serves our party and every citizen who casts a ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe details outlined in the state\u2019s sworn affidavit reveal a shocking, calculated criminal conspiracy designed to subvert the democratic process and hijack the official, trusted voice of the St. Johns County Republican Party,\u201d Cook said in a statement. \u201cIt was a mass-scale deception involving tens of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of fraudulent mailers, and a deliberate attempt to overwrite the official, democratic votes of our local (Republican Executive Committee) membership.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement to the media, John Bachman, the attorney representing Arnold, Rumrell and Whitehurst, said the allegations of his clients\u2019 involvement with the voter guide \u201chave lingered for nearly two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith formal charges now filed, County Commissioner Arnold, County Commissioner Whitehurst and St. Augustine Beach City Commissioner Rumrell look forward to the conclusion of this matter and will have no further comments at this time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Arnold, Rumrell and Whitehurst are scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three St. Johns County elected officials face misdemeanor criminal charges in relation to a fake voter guide that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[265,43323,88005,116,118,117,99028,115,99,82006,5902],"class_list":["post-332882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-crime","tag-distribute","tag-government-politics","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jaxtdy1","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-st-augustine-beach","tag-st-johns-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}