Q&A of the Day – Is There an Inappropriate Link Between Cornerstone Solutions & The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s Entry: So the PBC County Commissioners, with a Republican majority, approves the SOE budget despite knowing Cornerstone Solutions, a democrat political operative is embedded in our Supervisor of Elections operations. Why are our Republican elected officials so challenged when it comes to standing up for what is right? I also have information on 60,000 voters disappearing from the PBC voter rolls, unbeknownst to Wendy Link. She only spoke to our data analyst, who discovered it, once the information went viral. She had no idea it happened and never would have if we did not discover it. Goes to show you our SOE is not effectively monitoring our voter rolls. Elections begin with clean voter rolls and ‘someone’ other than the county is clearly managing them…and we know who it is…
Bottom Line: This note and what I’ll cover in today’s Q&A requires a bit of backstory. This note is the follow-up to a note I first received last week citing an extremely detailed story published by The Miami Independent which is presented as an expose. The Headline of the story: A Highly Partisan Democrat Political Consulting Firm Is Deeply Embedded In The Palm Beach County Supervisor Of Elections. The “highly partisan Democrat political consulting firm” called into question is West Palm Beach-based Cornerstone Solutions. In the story several statements of fact are presented which call into question whether the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office is compromised due to the influence of an allegedly partisan consulting firm. The timing of this story and the listeners’ notes and comments were especially relevant because of this week’s County Commission Budget Workshop Agenda, in which the funding for Cornerstone Solutions to continue to provide consulting services for the Supervisor of Elections office, was on the agenda. So, what’s the deal? Do voters in Palm Beach County need to be concerned of potential shenanigans due to due this consulting firm providing services for the Supervisor of Elections?
The Miami Independent story begins by presenting evidence that Cornerstone Solutions appeared to be managing the public email address for the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections which they found to be odd (in lieu of an SOE employee). They then establish the narrative that they’re a “highly partisan Democrat political consulting firm” by identifying the list of political candidates they consult. As they note, 19 of the 22 political candidates they represent are Democrats with only 3 that are Republicans. The story then dives into details calling into question Cornerstone’s president – Rick Asnani followed by the past dealings with Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link as stated: A need to understand the relationship between the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections and Cornerstone Solutions lead to the discovery of a newspaper article emphasizing the Supervisor of Election’s relationship with Cornerstone Solutions. Cornerstone Solutions represented Wendy Link in her 2020 Supervisor of Elections campaign. Wendy Link oversaw her own election as the Supervisor of Elections. And not only was she elected in the August of 2020 Primary, a newspaper article, quoting Cornerstone Solutions executives, very proudly states Wendy Link received more votes than any other candidate on the ballot.
Wendy’s previous representation on the ballot, in addition to her performance in 2020, were presented as “exhibits” of potential issues associated with Cornerstone. From there an extensive detailing of payments made by the SOE to Cornerstone for various services over the previous few years is shown. At the end they reach this conclusion:
The relationship between Palm Beach County’s Supervisor of Elections and Cornerstone Solutions appears to be extremely unethical and must be investigated. A highly partisan democrat political consulting firm is embedded in and deeply involved with OUR Supervisor of Election’s operations. We, as voters and taxpayers of Palm Beach County demand the emails, financial records, text messages, and all other correspondence of the Supervisor of Elections be turned over to the Division of Elections and the Secretary of State for investigation.
So, in addressing the charges made in the investigative report, in addition to the other concerns which are that essentially Cornerstone is a Democrat operative firm which is embedded within the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office (and is potentially involved in fixing elections)... I’ll start by saying there’s a lot more to the story. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. Here are additional facts to consider.
- Cornerstone consults businesses in addition to political candidates
- Cornerstone’s business clients include BP, Hark Rock, Seminole Gaming, FPL, Tenet Health, Keiser University and The Palm Beach Kennel Club among many others which commonly have conservative leanings
- Cornerstone provides services for many businesses and civic organizations which are similar to the services they’re providing to the Palm Beach County SOE
- A majority of elected partisan officials in Palm Beach County are Democrats – therefore, it’s not unusual for a top political consulting firm in the area to mostly be hired by Democrats
- Wendy Sartory Link was appointed as Supervisor of Elections by Governor DeSantis
- Wendy Link was a registered Republican at the time she was appointed supervisor only changing her voter registration to Democrat prior to running for election
- The day that Wendy Link took over as PBC’s SOE Democrats held a voter registration advantage of 129,948 voters. Today that advantage is down to 82,081 voters
- Donald Trump performed 2.5% better in Palm Beach County in 2020 than he did in 2016
- Palm Beach County voted for the entire Republican cabinet in the 2022 election cycle – the first time that’s happened, in the county’s history
Effectively these facts shred the narrative advanced by The Miami Independent. Republicans have gained 47,867 voters net of Democrats in the county since Wendy Sartory Link took over. Donald Trump performed meaningfully better in the county in 2020 and the Republican Party had the best performance it’s ever had in Palm Beach County in 2022. This isn’t to say that the SOE’s use of Cornerstone is necessarily the best use of funds or the most efficient process. This also isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be diligent.
I’ll be interested to see what the public records request produces and what the follow-ups will be. As someone who has been in the election integrity trenches for many years – including in my efforts to document the laws broken by her predecessor (and Brenda Snipes in Broward), to halt the illegal vote tabulations in 2018, in Palm Beach and Broward and to see to it that both corrupt supervisors were removed...I take all of this very seriously. For now, the facts don’t match the narrative in the context of this story...and frankly that’s an understatement.