South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Tony reaps big donors; Israel sees stagnation
Appointed sheriff vs. the ousted sheriff he replaced, will be one of Florida’s priciest races
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony’s fundraising for his 2020 election campaign has gone gangbusters in the past three months. At the same time, fundraising for his chief opponent, former Sheriff Scott Israel, has slowed significantly.
The Israel-Tony contest in the August 2020 Democratic primary, featuring the appointed sheriff vs. the ousted sheriff he replaced, will be one of the year’s most expensive county-level races in Florida.
Their combined fundraising has topped $1 million, nine months before voters make a decision, indicating both candidates will have the financial resources to fill voters’ mailboxes with flyers, inundate their phones with automated robocalls, buy advertising on Facebook and elsewhere online, and — possibly — buy cable television advertising time.
Tony has a significant financial advantage over Israel. Thanks largely to a mega contribution of $500,000 from a wealthy supporter, Tony already has most of the money he needs for an effective countywide campaign.
Running a competitive race for Broward sheriff could require spending approaching $1 million, said Cynthia Busch, chairwoman of the Broward Democratic Party,
who is neutral in the contest because of her party position.
Tony has taken in
$783,000.
Early this summer, Israel’s efforts were a fundraising powerhouse. Since then, Tony has been much more successful, outraising Israel in August, September, October and November, even without counting the one big contribution.
Israel has raised in total
$311,000.
Tony
Several months after he was appointed sheriff in January, Tony began courting important people in Broward, including those who can write large campaign checks.
His efforts have borne fruit, campaign reports show, with multiple fivefigure contributions in recent months to his Broward First political committee. The effort received its biggest boost with the $500,000 contribution from financier S. Donald Sussman on Nov. 26.
Like Israel, Tony has been a Republican but is now a Democrat. He was appointed sheriff in January by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who removed Israel from the job at the same time. The Florida Senate upheld DeSantis’ decision in October.
Tony filed paperwork on
Nov. 4, to allow him to raise and spend money as a candidate. From its inception through Nov. 30, Tony’s campaign committee raised about $49,000, records show. Contributions to political committees such as Broward First are unlimited; contributions to campaign committees are capped at $1,000 per election.
From the time Tony started political fundraising in June, he’s raised a total of $783,000.
Israel
The former sheriff started the fundraising race strong.
In July, when he filed paperwork to set up his campaign committee, he raised $76,000 — significantly more than Tony raised for his campaign committee during his first month. The main political committee raising money on his behalf, Committee for a Stronger Broward, took in $150,025.
All but $25 came from six contributors who gave from
$5,000 to $50,000.
As Tony’s fundraising began taking off in August, Israel’s went down.
Israel was sheriff when during the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre and the
2017 Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport mass shooting. DeSantis cited failures on Israel’s part before, during and after the incidents as reasons for removing him as sheriff.
On Oct. 23, the Senate voted to uphold DeSantis’ suspension, and in the weeks leading up to the showdown in Tallahassee, Israel was preparing for the Senate battle. Since then, he’s filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the process that culminated in his removal as unfair.
Israel enjoys a strong reservoir of support among Broward Democrats — especially those who aren’t in the communities of Parkland and Coral Springs, who were most directly affected by the Parkland school shooting. Many Democratic activists don’t like the idea that the Republican governor removed the county’s Democratic sheriff.
Because of the suspension and Senate special session, Israel has devoted some of his fundraising energy to raising money for his
legal defense fund, which isn’t required to disclose who has contributed and how much they’ve given.
From the time Israel started political fundraising in July, he’s raised $311,000.
Mega donor
The biggest name, though not the biggest amount, contributing to Tony so far is the former basketball star and current NBA TV commentator and product pitchman Shaquille O’Neal, who gave $10,000 to Broward First on Sept. 25.
The biggest impact is the contribution from Sussman, a wealthy hedge fund manager, philanthropist, megapolitical donor, and registered Democratic voter in Broward. In December 2015, Sussman bought a home on Harborage Isle Drive in Fort Lauderdale for
$27.5 million, which set a price record in Broward County. A week after the closing, he paid $8.3 million for the home next door and said he planned to tear down the property and build a sculpture garden.
He’s the founder of Paloma Funds and New China Capital Management. He’s also a philanthropist and is an honorary trustee of New York’s Carnegie Hall and a board member of the investigative journalism organization ProPublica.
Sussman has a history of spending big on behalf of Democratic candidates he likes.
In 2018, he gave $1.5 million to gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and
$200,000 to support the campaign of Emma Collum, who ran in the northeast Broward 93rd District state House of Representatives race. Both lost.
Forbes reported he was one of the top 20 donors to Hillary Clinton’s super political action committee. The Washington Post reported in October 2016 that Sussman had given a total of
21 million to the top super PAC supporting Clinton, putting him “on track to be the Democratic nominee’s biggest political backer” of her 2016 presidential campaign. Also in 2016, he contributed $250,000 to the Patriot Majority PAC, which spent $640,000 on behalf of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, when she faced a wellfunded primary challenger.
He’s also contributed $100,000 to the effort to get a referendum banning assault weapons on the November 2020 Florida ballot.
Other candidates
Besides Israel and Tony, there are there are five Democrats, three Republicans and one no party affiliation/independent candidate who have filed paperwork saying they intend to run.
Collectively those nine have raised $115,000.
The top money-raiser among the nine is Democrat Al Pollack, a retired Sheriff ’s Office colonel. Since he formed his campaign committee in March, Pollack has raised $59,200.
But he’s also been spending heavily. Pollack spent
$23,300 through November — just $500 less than Tony and Israel combined.
The next sheriff will effectively be decided by voters in the August 2020 primary. Broward is so overwhelmingly Democratic – with a voter registration of
50% Democratic, 28% no party affiliation/independent, 21% Republican and 1% minor parties — there is almost no chance anyone but the winner of the Democratic primary will go on to win the November election.