Cathy Antunes of ‘The Detail’ lays out dark money’s reach in Sarasota and Manatee politics.
By Mark Warriner
Original Air Date: July 26, 2024
Host: Elections are looming, and you can be sure your mailbox will soon be stuffed with campaign mailers, and your phone will be ringing off the hook with robocalls. You can thank obscure Political Action Committees for most of them. Rule of thumb: If it’s an attack ad, it’s almost 100% sure the product of a PAC. One citizen journalist in Sarasota is doggedly pursuing information about these political power tools, and WSLR News reporter Mark Warriner was at a recent presentation that put the spotlight on this shady area of local politics.
Mark Warriner: The amount of local developer money directly spent on political campaigns is fairly well known, and can be found in a simple search on the Supervisor of Elections website. But it’s a different story with the millions of dollars of “dark money” boosting Manatee and Sarasota political campaigns. The amounts commandeered by these anonymous Political Action Committees, otherwise known as PACs, have grown exponentially since 2010 .
This labyrinth of dark money has grown into a cottage industry and lucrative business for a handful of consultants. .
Cathy Antunes
All this is documented in the research of Cathy Antunes, a former realtor and pharmaceutical industry executive, and current host of The Detail show on WSLR. The complexity of these constantly morphing political money networks is hard for the average citizen to understand and near-impossible to track.
A small but knowledgeable group came to Antunes’ presentation on the subject at the Fruitville Library Wednesday night. The event, titled “Local Dark Money: Citizens United Meets Main Street”, was hosted by Sarasota County Action Network, a coalition of anti-development groups. . Antunes was often applauded for her work. In one audience member’s opinion, the topic is “painful”. Another called the PAC system a “serpent.”
Antunes attributes the dramatic increase in dark money to Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed for PACs to be created. It triggered the exponential rise of attack ads, robocalls, mailbox stuffing, social media, and text messaging campaigns, which have been very effective in winning elections.
The “traditional” dark money comes from developers – mostly those who buy cheap agricultural land and then need it to be re-zoned to build and make a profit. But a new breed of dark-money funders is emerging: Businesses in the for-profit school industry are beginning to fund school board and state legislators’ campaigns.
Cathy Antunes: Why are they spending so much money, some of them, to influence local races? Well, there’s more than one reason. I’m just going to share two that I think are two major reasons why.
The first is, we have a handful of developers whose business model — not the only one but part of it — is to buy cheap rural land. Because rural land where you can’t build on it isn’t really worth a whole lot, right? I mean, it is in terms of its value, what you can grow on it, but financially it doesn’t usually cost that much money. So if you can buy that land and then you can bankroll the city commission or the county commission, the decision makers, about that land, and then if you can get a friendly commission to change the land use designation, you can — there’s two ways. You can increase the value of the land by changing its designation and what can be built on it. And you can reduce your costs by offloading infrastructure to taxpayers. It’s very profitable for these folks. So they care very deeply about who is sitting in those chairs.
The second profit center that we’re seeing these days, and this is nationally, but Florida, with the approval of universal vouchers, is this corporate charter school. And I want to make a distinction. We have local charter schools, like Sarasota Military Academy, like the Sarasota School of Arts and Sciences. They are homegrown. They came up through the community. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about Charter Schools USA, Imagine Schools, where these folks are really looking at fluffing up their bottom line. And what they will do, for one example, there’s more than one way that they profit. They’ll set up a school — Imagine Schools, I’m going to talk about that example — and then they’ll set up a separate real estate corporation. And that real estate corporation will charge the school up to 40% of the school budget. The typical rate is like 14% for a year of building. But a corporate charter school may go 40%. I’ve heard 43%; There’s one school in Miami that charges that much. These leases are then bundled for real estate investment trusts. And they’re sold on Wall Street, and Wall Street is always looking for the guaranteed, low risk, return on investment. So, getting your fingers into the pie of a local school budget to pay for the building is a pretty low risk investment.
MW: Since the Republican Party dominates elections in Sarasota and Florida, it is not surprising that local political PACs are mostly Republican. That dark money has contributed to the election of many Republican candidates in Manatee and Sarasota County, and these officials, in turn, have enabled the spread of suburban sprawl.
Antunes’ presentation
One example of a current local candidate involved in the PAC business is Teresa Mast, who is running for Sarasota County Commission. She is the chairperson of a PAC created by her husband Jon Mast, president of the local Building Industry Association.
Another current county commission candidate benefiting from dark money is Neil Rainford. Rainford is in the middle of what’s shaping up as probably the most expensive and dirtiest race between two Republican candidates in this area. His opponent Tom Knight, the former Sarasota County Sheriff, recently produced a video. In it, Knight attacks Rainford’s reliance on PACs, their dirt-slinging ads – which portray him as a closet liberal – and the participation of his handpicked successor in all this.
Another notable PAC is called Friends of Bridget. It is actually chaired by Sarasota School Board member Bridget Ziegler, which is legally questionable. In other questionable actions, her PAC paid a company owned by her husband, and it accepted money from a gun store during the height of school shootings.
The money flows in from one shadow source and then into another obscure account. Laws are not being enforced regarding these shadow accounts. Complaints are ignored at the state level, says Antunes.
CA: Here’s the thing: this is a closed committee now, and Jason Fisher wasn’t even running for office. When he was in his last term, he wasn’t even running for office. Only $34,000 was spent, and yet this committee closed with a remaining balance of about $780,000, with no accounting for where that money went. None. And it’s not the only example, but it’s one of the most egregious examples I’ve seen. I think we have a right to know. Where is that $780,000?
MW: Sarasota voters have defeated dark money twice by upholding single-member districts for county commission. Antunes believes that awareness is key to fighting dark money.
This is Mark Warriner, reporting for WSLR News.
Host: Just one more tidbit from Cathy Antunes, and I quote her: “People on both sides are not happy when they learn about the situation and how far the corruption game has gone. People need a disaster for them to act, and this is a disaster.”
If you want to listen to the whole presentation of Cathy Antunes, go to the Facebook page of WSLR News.
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