Jesse Scheckner
Republican Daniel Perez had another solid round of fundraising last month, when his campaign and political committees raised more than $51,000 for his still unopposed run to keep his Florida House seat representing District 116.
But because he spent more than he earned, the future House Speaker has slightly less money with which to work — $1.135 million — than he did in June, data filed with the Florida Division of Elections shows.
Perez’s committees spent big supporting other GOP candidates and interests.
Miami United PC, the smaller of Perez’s two political committees, which has nearly $400,000 to spend, took in just $2,500 in July while spending three times that amount. The money came from one donor, a political committee called Citizens for a Better Central Florida, which the Florida Division of Elections lists as “closed” despite spending money as recently as May, when it gave Miami United another $2,500.
The Division of Elections lists no such July contribution on its page for Citizens for a Better Central Florida, which political consultant Michael Millner runs. That leaves the $2,500 donation Miami United said it got from the committee currently unreconciled.
Anthony Fiore, who is treasurer for five active political committees, including both of Perez’s, told Florida Politics on Monday that Millner’s committee filed for closure two weeks after Perez’s PC received the donation. Fiore said he couldn’t say why the donation isn’t reflected in Citizens for a Better Florida’s ledger on the Florida Division of Elections website.
The Florida Division of Elections did not immediately respond to an information request. A call to Millner’s Jensen Beach office went unreturned.
In July, Miami United PC spent all but $475 for accounting work on reelecting seven fellow Florida House Republicans.
The committee made $1,000 donations to Elizabeth Fetterhoff, Fred Hawkins, Michelle Lynn Salzman, David Smith and Ardian Zika, as well as Republican Committee Whip Rep. Robert Andrade and Linda Chaney, who share identical campaign addresses with Millner.
The $45,000 haul by Perez’s larger and older committee, Conservatives for a Better Florida, came from just five sources: a $15,000 check from Sarasota-based insurance firm FCCI Insurance Group, $10,000 from ABC Liquors, $10,000 from community association managers group CEOMC Florida, $5,000 from Tallahassee government consulting firm Ramba Consulting Group and $5,000 from Bill Austin, the billionaire owner of Minnesota-based hearing aid manufacturing company Starkey Hearing Technologies.
Perez has proven himself a strong fundraiser partly due to the broad range of industries to which he’s succeeded in appealing and the ease with which he’s embraced campaign financing. Other big-ticket donors this year have included Uber, the Big Easy Casino, Florida Pet Retailers Inc. and health care corporation Centene.
But as he did with his other PC, Perez outspent what he earned in July. Of more than $57,000 Conservatives for a Better Florida spent last month, more than half went to two companies: Miami-based Red Road Consulting, to which the committee has given $111,400 this year alone, and Tampa-based political consulting firm Strategic Image Management, known colloquially as SIMWINS.
The committee gave another $1,000 each to Fetterhoff, Hawkins, Salzman, Smith, Zika, Andrade and Chaney, plus donations in the same amount to the reelection campaigns of Vance Aloupis in HD 115 and Judge Elisabeth Espinosa, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to Miami-Dade’s 11th Judicial Circuit Court in 2019.
All $3,000 donated directly to Perez’s campaign came from police unions. The Broward County Police Benevolent Association (PBA), Dade County PBA and a political committee By the People, for the People, which South Florida PBA and Dade PBA President Steadman Stahl runs, gave $1,000 apiece.
After spending about $1,000 on consulting and accounting services, Perez’s campaign proper has about $36,000 on hand.
Perez, a lawyer in private life, won his Florida House seat representing southwest Miami-Dade — including parts of Doral and the unincorporated neighborhoods of Kendall, Sunset, Westwood Lakes, Westchester, University Park and Fontainebleau — in a September 2017 Special Election. He won reelection the following year.
In 2019, he locked up a race to serve as House Speaker in 2024 as long as he keeps his seat until then and there is a Republican majority in the House.
