A new accounting: Lenny Curry PAC pays Jaguars for a change

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry‘s state-level political committee (Build Something that Lasts) has benefited greatly from the generosity of the Jacksonville Jaguars and owner Shad Khan in recent years.

The committee has raised $1.79 million in total. Of that sum, Khan has ponied up $175,000 and the Jaguars have ponied up another $35,000.

(That isn’t all they’ve donated: among other disbursements, Khan has also donated $25,000 to the Mayor’s re-election committee, and the Jacksonville Jaguars also poured $200,000 into the “Yes for Jacksonville” pension reform referendum push.)

But between Sept. 15 and 21, the money went the other way. Build Something that Lasts doled out about $7,300 to the Jaguars on four invoices for fundraising expenses.

Fundraisers hadn’t been invoiced before (except one Nov. 2015 event at $750), so we asked why the change.

Those invoices include a London trip and fundraiser, and another fundraiser, according to the committee’s Tim Baker.

Baker noted that they could have made the fundraisers in-kind contributions, but the committee is “paying for everything instead of in-kinds for election year.”

The committee had paid “Iguana Investments,” another Shad Khan business concern, $1,416 for travel in August 2017 — payment for a three-city trip Curry took on Khan’s jet that summer, looking at sports-entertainment districts in different cities, exploring ideas for future development in Jacksonville.

The committee has received $4,458 in in-kind contributions since its inception; none of them were for fundraisers at the stadium, however, raising questions as to where the in-kinds were invoiced.

We’ve yet to get full clarity on that; however, the symbiosis between the Curry machine and Khan and the Jaguars is well-known.

The apparent accounting change comes as the Jacksonville city elections are less than six months away, though Curry has yet to draw a serious challenger.

Curry has raised over $2.5 million for his re-election bid next year, after $221,000 in August receipts between his campaign account and that of his Jacksonville on the Rise re-election committee.

Though this number is strong, we are told the September numbers will eclipse it.

Expectations were that Councilwoman Anna Brosche would finally file to run, so major donors re-upped, and some new names were added to the list of supporters.

Qualifying is in January, and Brosche has said she has until then to make a decision.