Gray Rohrer
As the campaign cycle turns to the November General Election after the primaries, GOP Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis starts out with a large lead in resources over his Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Adam Hattersley of Tampa.
Patronis has nearly $4.5 million cash on hand between his campaign account and his political committee, Treasure Florida, combined. Hattersley didn’t have a Primary opponent and has spent $108,000 as of Aug. 26, state campaign finance records show. He has just $9,000 in his campaign account.
The discrepancy in campaign funds is just one obstacle Hattersley must overcome to defeat Patronis. He’ll also have to reverse a trend stretching back decades, in which no incumbent Florida Cabinet member has lost election.
Patronis was appointed by then-Gov. Rick Scott in 2017 to replace Jeff Atwater, who resigned as CFO to take the CFO position at Florida Atlantic University. Patronis won election in 2018 over former Democratic state Senator Jeremy Ring, who spent $940,000 to Patronis’ $2.4 million in that race.
Hattersley won a GOP-leaning House seat in 2018, but opted to run for Congress in 2020 instead of re-election. He lost a Democratic Primary to Alan Cohn for the District 15 seat. Cohn ultimately lost to Republican Scott Franklin in the General Election.
The CFO oversees the state’s payments and receivables, and has direct oversight of the Department of Financial Services, which includes the Office of Insurance Regulation and the Office of Financial Regulation. The position also acts as the state Fire Marshal, overseeing the Bureau of Fire Prevention and the Bureau of Fire Standards and Training.
Major donors to Treasure Florida, Patronis’ political committee, this election cycle include Allstate ($8,000), American Integrity Insurance Company ($10,000), Associated Industries of Florida ($85,000), health care management company Centene ($40,000), Florida Power & Light and its parent company, NextEra ($60,000), and Tampa Electric Company ($50,000).
Donations to political committees are uncapped, but donations directly to campaigns are capped at $3,000 per individual or business entity.
Hattersley has just two donors who gave the maximum $3,000 contribution to his campaign account: the Democratic Women’s Club of Florida and Jimmie Giles Financial, a financial services company based in Lutz.
So far, Patronis has received $186,492 in public campaign financing from taxpayers. State law allows for public campaign matching funds to be given to candidates for Governor and Cabinet positions. A candidate for Cabinet, though, must raise at least $100,000 to qualify for the funds, and donations from non-Florida residents don’t count toward the total. Hattersley has raised $119,000, but some of the funds have come from out of state residents and hasn’t received any public matching funds yet.
8 comments
Joe Corsin
September 2, 2022 at 9:27 am
If you give a dime to these hogs then you are part of the problem. They don’t care about people who aren’t rich…and are corrupt and self serving. Vote BLUE to have any chance at all to save this shambling husk of a nation.
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Hope
September 2, 2022 at 9:44 am
Democrats can’t make a coherent statement and they have to have hate speech and name calling thinking that they are making their point when they are doing exactly the opposite.
Jimmy Patronis has served us well and win resoundingly in November.
Jimmy Patronis for the win!
Joe Corsin
September 2, 2022 at 10:44 am
Neo nazi MAGA Republicans, maggot Republicans whatever you wanna call them…they started the bullsht so don’t hand me that crap. You people ought to be slapped and slapped good for what you’ve done to the goddamn place. You gonna pay..
Hope
September 2, 2022 at 10:53 am
It must be so frustrating to not be able to communicate in an intelligent manner. Using only hate speech and name calling and unfounded accusations. These haters keep working themselves up into making fools of themselves.
Americans have had enough of the inflation, fentanyl overdoses, unprotected borders, grooming innocent children in our schools under wokeness, enough!
Republicans are the answer to getting America back on track!
Joe Corsin
September 2, 2022 at 11:10 am
You people voting for NEW YORK billionaires who shovel money to the rich as fast as humanly possible and call that making America great again is UNINTELLIGENT. How is shoveling money to the rich going to bring the American dream back huh? You people are aiding and abetting a GD con man you fool!!!!
Ed Cooke
September 2, 2022 at 10:34 pm
The correct reply to the PETRONIS talk is==“GREAT—87000 new IRS agents. —that’s one for each of the 87000 “government contractors”
‘‘—military industrial complex companies WHO HAVE NOT BEEN AUDITED IN 10 YEARS.”….. Why only. 87000—who is going to catch those franchise investors who own the Burger Kings & MacDonalds with their 2 kids in College—-auto and tuition paid—but showing on the IRS tax report the college kids as paid officers of the company—“another form of free College education —but only for the tax-cheat families.!
-SPEAK UP= We Need another extra 10000 IRS agents just to replace those Pres. TRUMP early-on eliminated so that $30 BILLION Dollars due was not collected on his watch.” Pres. BIDEN’s “87000 agents” was NOT Enough.” We WANT MORE IRS AGENTS!!!
Terry
September 3, 2022 at 8:05 pm
Patronis has NO individual authority over OFR nor OIR. They are independent agencies that fall under the Financial Services Commission made up of the Gov, CFO, AG, and Ag Commissioner. Their only supervisory authority is to appoint the Commissioner of each agency and approve the rule promulgations. I grow weary of the implied authority of Patronis over these two agencies. On their organizational charts there is a dotted line from both agencies to DFS which provides administrative services and technology. If not for Tom Gallagher, the first CFO, participating in the reorganization of the old Department of Banking and Finance and the Department of Insurance, the authority of DFS over the licensing of insurance agents and companies would reside within OIR just like all licensing for OFR regulated entities is vested in OFR. Ask why, DFS does this? Because without that function the CFO would have no constituency from which to raise campaign funds. The fiscal function of the State is not particularly exciting.
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