Presidential campaign donations under scrutiny

In reviewing the Floridians that have donated the full $2,800 amount to a presidential candidate, you’ll find few of the megadonors that raise the hackles of partisans.

No Sheldon Adelsons or Koch brothers for liberals to gnash their teeth over. No George Soro ses for conservatives to bend conspiracy

■ See Floridians who contributed $2,800 to

2020 presidential candidates in database at SunSentinel.com/Politics. theories around.

No Stephen Ross, though the Miami Dolphins owner is in hot water over his planned high-dollar fundraiser for President

Donald Trump, with customers of Ross’s Equinox Fitness threatening a boycott and Dolphins player Kenny Stills speaking out against the team owner’s association with Trump and subsequently receiving death threats and a frustrated response from caught-in-the-middle head coach Brian Flores, who has been on the job just half a year.

No, folks like that don’t give

$2,800 to presidential campaigns. They give far more money to PACs that support these campaigns, where campaign finance laws are a little more lax and they can get away with far greater amounts of giving, far greater levels of influence.

For example, while many of these donations were flowing in in June of this year, Ross gave

$35,500 to the Republican National Committee and $33,600 to the National Republican Senate Committee. Records show, though, that he has donated to campaigns in previous cycles, usually to Republicans, though a few Democrats, including West Palm Beach’s U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, have also seen maximum, $2,800 donations from Ross.

What you will find generally among Florida’s $2,800 donors are a lot of the local business owners and behind-the-scenes wealth that got called out Monday by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, in a tweet that went viral and caused as much controversy as Ross’ fundraiser.

Castro was subsequently lambasted by conservatives who said his post would cause conservative-owned businesses to be targeted for boycotts or even violence, while some liberals countered that campaign finance laws that require disclosure of campaign donors were written to provide accountability.

If economic hardship comes from political giving, the thinking goes, that’s all just part of the process.

Really, it’s not hard to do what Castro did. Federal political campaigns must turn over campaign finance reports to the Federal Election Commission, an independent regulatory agency, which then makes these reports available online.

In the spirit of transparency and accountability, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reviewed all of these reports filed through the second quarter of 2019, the latest period for which data is available. We looked narrowly at donations of the maximum $2,800 amount from Floridians to 2020 presidential candidates who have raised at least $1 million. All of these Floridians can be found in an online search that can be accessed at Sun Sentinel.com/politics.

A few caveats.

While the media mostly reports on the one Republican and currently 24 Democrats running for the office, there are in fact dozens more candidates who are far more obscure. That’s why we limited the search to only those candidates who had raised $1 million by the second-quarter filling deadline, which came June 30. But that also means Democratic candidates Tim Ryan and Wayne Messam are not on the list.

Also missing are Democrats Joe Sestak and Tom Steyer, who entered the race too late to file a campaign finance report for the period.

You also won’t find Seth Moulton, Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang or John Delaney. While they all have raised more than $1 million, none of them have received the maximum individual contribution of $2,800 from a Florida resident.

The man with the most donors is, unsurprisingly, President Donald Trump. It’s hardly surprising for several reasons. First, Trump is a part-time Florida resident with lots of Palm Beach friends to draw on. Additionally, the Democrats are dividing wealthy donors among them, while Trump is getting all the Republicans. We found few instances in which a Democrat donated the maximum amount to several candidates. One exception is state Sen. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach, who along with his wife Amy gave $2,800 to both Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand.

He’s not the only local politician in the mix. For example, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis gave $2,800 to Pete Buttigieg on June 22, two days before Trantalis introduced and endorsed the South Bend mayor at an event in Fort Lauderdale.

But all those donations pale in comparison to the money bestowed on Trump by Palm Beach residents and small-business owners around the state. Palm Beachers who have contributed the maximum amount to the campaign include financiers such as Duke Buchan, one of the earliest Wall Street supporters of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and even the artist Ezra Hubbard.

Outside of the town that includes the president’s part-time home, other maximum donors include major developers such as E. Llwyd Ecclestone of West Palm Beach and Anthony Nicholson of Nicholson Homes in Winter Park. Three heirs to the Publix supermarket chain fortune, including Julie Fancelli, daughter of Publix founder George Jenkins, have donated the maximum amount. There’s also Cherna Moskowitz of Miami Beach, a major philanthropist and Republican donor who operates the foundation named after her late husband, Irving Moskowitz. And there’s Kyle Messner, who called his Boca Raton-based math tutoring service Make America Math Again.