Politics
Palm Beach County candidate arrested at Elections HQ for refusing to move campaign table
Republican candidate Jeff Buongiorno’s campaign efforts in Palm Beach County got put on hold over the weekend after Sheriff’s deputies arrested him at the Main Office of Supervisor of Elections Wendy Link.
Buongiorno, who is running for House District 89, maintains he broke no law and is being personally targeted by Link, a Democrat whom he challenged in 2024.
His arrest form with the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office (PBSO) shows he was taken into custody for trespassing in violation of a posted notice and unlawful solicitation of voters at a polling location.
He was released on bond at 9:48 p.m. Saturday, the same day he was placed in handcuffs.
Video of the incident, posted to X by self-described citizen journalist and “MAGA Mom” Nancy Ross, shows seven PBSO officers approaching Buongiorno in the Main Office’s parking garage. One officer informs Buongiorno he cannot solicit voters there, prompting Buongiorno to ask if he’s under arrest.
“We’re going to ask you to leave,” the officer responds.
“Under what authority?” Buongiorno fires back.
“You’re going to be issued a trespass warning,” the officer says, to which Buongiorno begins to argue that he can’t be issued a trespass warning as a candidate for public office. The officer responds, “If you’re refusing to leave, you will be trespassing. You understand, sir?”
A circular argument follows, during which Buongiorno confirms that he is refusing to leave. Immediately after that, the officers walk around the table and place Buongiorno in handcuffs. He does not resist arrest.
The same officer then warns Ross and others who can’t be seen in the video to leave too, or be arrested for trespassing. Ross identifies herself as a citizen journalist and says she plans to check on her early voting ballot. The officer says she can’t and must leave immediately.
“You’re standing here videoing,” he says. “You’re not trying to do your early ballot voting.”
Ross continues to argue with the officer and within seconds is arrested too.
Buongiorno, who is scheduled for arraignment before Judge August Bonavita on Sept. 1 at the county’s Main Courthouse, told Florida Politics that Sheriff’s deputies warned him before Saturday against setting up his table in the garage.
He continued to do so anyway, he said, because nothing in state statutes prohibits him, adding that he and other candidates did the same thing during the 2024 cycle and saw no issues.
It’s an advantageous location, he continued, noting that the spot where he set up his table was right by the elevators, giving him direct access to people who parked in the garage and were walking to the nearby office to vote.
The warning succeeded this year in scaring away other candidates from the garage locale — where Buongiorno said he “did very well” in convincing voters to cast ballots for him in 2024 — but not him, he said.
“These candidates are weak,” he said. “I was the only candidate there, (and) I was kidnapped and taken hostage.”
Buongiorno cited several Florida statutes to support his argument he wasn’t violating state law, including Section 102.031, which establishes a 150-foot no-solicitation zone around the entrance to a polling place, polling room or early voting site, and around secure ballot-intake stations and certain election offices providing vote-by-mail ballots.
He said he was more than 150 feet from the entrance to the polling site, but argued Link improperly used a secure ballot intake station also on-site to further extend the buffer zone.
“She cannot extend it,” he said, adding that he’s conferred with a lawyer and is filing an injunction against Link. “She’s allowed to add as many of those (secure intake) boxes for voter convenience as she likes, but you know, she could extend that to the Everglades if she wanted, according to her theory.”
Asked why he didn’t comply with the officers’ directives, avoid getting arrested and continue to campaign throughout the weekend while pursuing the injunction, Buongiorno said he had already tried to do that.
“This was the final icing on the cake,” he said.
“All of these RINOs (Republicans in name only) who have their little surrender parties every time they lose, this is for them. This is for Democrats. This is for independents. They have to get out. They have to go to that location, and they have to confront voters and solicit to get their vote. They don’t. Instead, they’re sitting at home drinking lattes. OK? This is what campaigning is about, and the candidates in Palm Beach County, they’re basically soft.”
Buongiorno set up his table right in front of a “No Blocking” sign written on the concrete floor behind pylons separating the garage’s drivable area with the elevator area. The arresting officers made no mention of that signage, and Buongiorno said it wasn’t an issue.
He said Link tried to have him arrested twice in 2024 and pressed criminal complaints against him. When that didn’t work, he said, Link cheated to win.
It’s a complaint Buongiorno’s repeated for years and prefaced before Election Day in 2024 with doubts about the 2020 election, when Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump for President.
Ahead of the 2024 Election, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel announced that for the first time, it would not publish the answers to an online questionnaire it sent Buongiorno, which it said was rife with “myths and falsehoods.”
Buongiorno, a businessman who previously ran for Congress, pointed to, among other things, the massive divide in vote-by-mail ballots cast for Link over him two years ago, 169,530 to 59,148, which widely swung the outcome of a contest he would have otherwise won through early and Election Day ballot counts.
Notably, the mail-in votes Link received were the most any candidate got in Palm Beach County. The second- and third-most went to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw (160,255) and Kamala Harris (156,524).
Buongiorno and Cathy Higgins, a former Atlantis City Council member and the city’s first woman Mayor, are competing for the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. Debra Tendrich in the Nov. 3 General Election.
The Primary is Tuesday.
Florida Politics requested Buongiorno’s arrest report from the PBSO, but did not receive it by press time.
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