Light May fundraising for Governor, Cabinet political committees

Cabinet in Israel.

In May, fundraising was not a priority for political committees associated with the Governor or the Cabinet, with coronavirus apparently dampening the mood.

Friends of Ron DeSantis, the Governor’s political committee, actually refunded money in May, while not raising money at all.

A total of $12,241 went back to donors, with almost $10,000 more spent. This continued a sluggish fundraising pattern from April.

The Governor’s political committee has nearly $7 million on hand.

The Attorney General has her own eponymous political committee, and Friends of Ashley Moody likewise did nothing in May, the same story as April.

Moody’s committee has roughly $400,000 on hand.

This spring wasn’t the first sabbatical for the first-term AG. In 2019, Moody’s committee went five months without fundraising.

The other two Cabinet members saw a little more action, but nothing that spoke to anything approaching an election season fundraising effort.

Treasure Florida, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis‘s political committee, stayed over $1 million cash on hand, but raised just $3,050 last month off 18 contributions, mostly small dollar and from people from the CFO’s Panhandle backyard in the Panama City area.

The Patronis committee had taken a couple of months off from fundraising in March and April, but even those checks in May pointed to a larger trend of sitting back and waiting for the pandemic to shake out before getting back to the rituals of the political campaign season.

The strongest fundraising of the four, relatively speaking, was from the committee associated with the lone Democrat on the Cabinet.

Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried‘s political committee. Florida Consumers First. raised $6,000 off two checks. A $5,000 donation came from the CEO of SLA Management, a K-12 food service company.

The committee has nearly $800,000 on hand.

None of the four has yet to open campaign accounts for 2022, so committee fundraising is the best vantage point into what these incumbents’ political machines are doing.