Sugar, citrus money powers $10K reporting period for Audrey Gibson

Sen. Audrey Gibson has few details on a big city ask in her district. She wonders why.

Senate Democratic Leader-designate Audrey Gibson avoided a primary challenge when her fellow Democrat, Jacksonville City Councilman Reggie Brown, was indicted on a federal scheme to defraud in June.

However, Gibson was not assured of Brown’s decision not to run until three weeks into the month, and the Senator raised money from the kind of deep pocketed interests who typically don’t give to Northeast Florida Democrats.

Gibson brought in $10,508 from some interesting donors, with $5,000 of the haul coming in five $1,000 checks from Clewiston.

Four of those checks were related to Southern Gardens citrus processing; a fifth came from United States Sugar, an interesting donation given that a hot topic in the Democratic primary for Governor has to do with the inappropriateness of taking money from Big Sugar.

Another interesting $1,000 contributor: Duke Energy.

Gibson also had $2,426 in in-kind contributions via the Florida Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee for payroll.

Now elected officially after drawing no competition, she won’t need that kind of help.

Gibson has $141,000 in her campaign account, and it’s reasonable to expect that she will invest a significant portion of those funds into helping strengthen the position of Senate Democrats as she readies to lead the party.