Leonard Spencer boasts more party support than Carolina Amesty, but trails in available cash

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In the midst of high-profile legal challenges for the GOP incumbent, state Democrats have provided triple the support to Leonard Spencer than Republicans offered to Republican Rep. Carolina Amesty in House District 45.

That may be the clearest sign of Democrats’ confidence they can flip the seat from red to blue. Spencer is also competitive with Amesty in terms of his own cash on hand for the campaign’s final weeks, but still trails the incumbent.

Spencer through Sept. 6 collected almost $56,000 to challenge the troubled incumbent in the battleground seat, a total that includes a $15,000 candidate loan. Amesty, meanwhile, has raised $98,000 for her re-election campaign.

But Amesty also has spent considerably more. Most recently, that included $6,000 in media consulting payments to Giancarlo Soppo. That was her only major expenditure in the last 14-day reporting period, which spanned Aug. 24 through Sept. 6 and included an Aug. 28 indictment and her Aug. 29 surrender to law enforcement.

She closed the period with more than $28,000 in cash on hand. By comparison, Leonard at the same time had more than $45,000.

But importantly, Amesty’s political committee has more in its coffers than a new committee recently formed for Spencer.

Friends of Carolina Amesty has collected almost $125,000 over the course of the election cycle, and still had more than $55,000 cash on hand at the end of the last reporting period. That was after covering nearly $8,700 in various legal costs from February through July.

By comparison, Friends of Leonard Spencer raised more than $26,000, and has spent little of it. The committee still had almost $22,000 of it left as of Sept. 6.

In total, that leaves Amesty with more than $83,000 in cash available to help her campaign. Spencer had upward of $67,000 under his control.

In both cases, those are smaller sums than many candidates in battleground seats are reporting at this stage of the campaign. Amesty won her seat in 2022 with 53% of the vote over Democrat Allie Braswell. But in the 2020 Presidential Election, 52% of voters in the district supported Democrat Joe Biden while less than 47% backed Republican Donald Trump.

The race has drawn more attention since Amesty was charged by the State Attorney’s Office with forgery and illegal use of public notary powers but has denied any wrongdoing. Her arraignment was set for today, Sept. 17.

Both major political parties have offered substantial support to the candidates.

The Republican Party of Florida has delivered more than $21,000 in in-kind support, most recently in $2,580 worth of staff assistance in late August.

But the Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee has already provided upward of $66,000 worth of support to Spencer, chiefly through consulting but also by covering almost $35,000 in polling.