Outrageous unlimited political contributions should be illegal
Lobbyists in Tallahassee call it “the shakedown.”
In the days before the start of the annual legislative session, lawmakers are filling lobbyists’ inboxes with texts, calls and emails begging for money. The pleas intensify because rules prohibit soliciting or accepting money during the 60-day session that begins Tuesday, Jan. 11.
At a time when many Floridians struggle with the costs of housing, insurance, food and other necessities, their elected representatives and senators can literally dine at the trough of well-heeled political donors. It’s unethical. It’s unseemly. It’s also unlimited — and it must end.
State law prohibits lobbyists and their clients from buying a meal for a legislator, and the law caps individual “hard money” contributions to campaigns at $1,000 per election, or $3,000 for statewide candidates such as governor. Those limits have lost all meaning. A grotesque loophole allows officeholders to also operate political committees, or PCs, that can accept “soft money,” in any amount. They operate as personal slush funds, and the money can be spent on polling, consultants, travel, meals, charity events, youth sports, legal fees — you name it.
The sky’s the limit. The result is an open sewer of special interest influence with no boundaries.
Individual elected officials control tens of millions of dollars from a spigot that’s a who’s who of influence: U.S. Sugar, Seminole Tribe of Florida, Florida Blue, GEO Group, Publix, Walmart, Florida Power & Light, labor unions, insurance companies, Big Tobacco, car dealers, casinos, HMOs and others. The largest political committee, Friends of Ron DeSantis, has raised $111 million and has $67 million in the bank nearly a year before the 2022 election.
Both parties to blame
It’s legal. It’s obscene. Both political parties are guilty.
Raising money is obviously necessary in America’s political system, but it should be done with reasonable contribution limits and maximum transparency. Florida’s Capitol is like a house of ill repute where everybody knows what’s going on but nobody will say or do anything about it.
Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, is listed as having ties to six political committees that have raised more than $28 million combined, according to state records. The money helped preserve the Republican Senate majority in recent elections and will aid Simpson’s campaign for statewide office next fall. U.S. Sugar has contributed at least $650,000 to Simpson’s biggest committee, Jobs for Florida, which is helping him chase his next job as state agriculture commissioner. If Simpson wins the Cabinet post, does anyone doubt whose side he will be on when Big Sugar’s interests are at stake?
FPL has written multiple checks totaling nearly $500,000 to Simpson’s committee. The utility needs Senate goodwill more than ever amid persistent and troubling questions over its well-documented role in a “ghost” candidate scheme to rig election outcomes, which remains under criminal investigation. Simpson’s office did not respond to two requests for pre-session interviews on this and other topics.
Worse, the unlimited cash cows perpetuate state-sanctioned money laundering. Committees make six-figure cash transfers between and among themselves to disguise the origins of influence. David Ramba, a lobbyist who keeps records for many PCs, has bluntly told us that the transfers are “to make it more difficult for you guys [reporters] to figure it out.”
The result is a system far beyond the financial reach of most people and controlled by mega-donors looking out for themselves. Is it any wonder that Tallahassee pays so little attention to the real-life problems of real people?
That word: ‘unlimited’
This corrupting practice of lawmaker-controlled slush funds is so deeply ingrained into the system that political novices, running for the first time, are creating them. Dozens of PCs formed in 2021 alone, and they will keep proliferating. Even former lawmakers, long out of office, continue to live off the largesse they stockpiled when they were casting votes affecting special interests.
Fundraising come-ons routinely use the word “unlimited” on invitations, as Simpson did for a November event. In that month alone, the Friends of Wilton Simpson committee got 16 checks of $10,000 to $50,000 each, six of which were from other committees. His smallest November check was for $2,000.
Florida lawmakers could begin to clean up this sordid mess by taking three simple steps. They should immediately prohibit the practice of unlimited contributions to political committees, impose sensible limits on how much money any committee can contribute, and ban the untraceable money laundering of cash transfers between committees.
Sen. Joe Gruters of Sarasota, targeted by hidden money in a 2016 race, is the rare lawmaker who has tried repeatedly to restrict the money laundering. Even though Gruters also chairs the Republican Party of Florida, his proposal was resolutely ignored and could not even get a hearing in a Republican-controlled Senate in 2019 or 2020. Gruters tried to break the code, but his colleagues wouldn’t let him.
Florida’s campaign finance system is broken, and every legislator who benefits is responsible. Their collective shame is — what’s the word? — unlimited.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.