A billionaire is showering cash on Florida politicians

Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Dec 15, 2024

This is Seeking Rents, a newsletter and podcast devoted to producing original journalism — and lifting up the work of others — about Florida politics, with an emphasis on the ways that big businesses and other special interests influence public policy in the state. Seeking Rents is produced by veteran investigative journalist Jason Garcia, and it is free to all. But please consider a voluntary paid subscription, if you can afford one, to help support our work. And check out our video channel, too.

Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.

With an estimated net worth of more than $40 billion, Ken Griffin, the hedge-fund manager who moved to Miami in 2022, is the 22nd richest person in America, according to Forbes — and the second-richest in Florida, after Amazon founder and tax-avoiding transplant Jeff Bezos.

Griffin is now Florida’s largest individual campaign donor, too.

Records show the ultrarich investor spent more than $28 million on state and local elections in Florida during the 2024 election cycle.

Griffin’s biggest gift was a $12 million donation to a group led by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff that raised money to oppose a ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana in Florida.

Defeating the marijuana initiative — and stopping a second ballot measure that would have overturned Florida’s near-total abortion ban — were top priorities for DeSantis this election cycle.

The eight-figure assist from Griffin could be meant to repair a relationship that seemed to become strained after the billionaire — once DeSantis’ biggest donor — refused to support the Florida governor’s failed presidential campaign, apparently because of concerns with DeSantis’ extreme culture-warring.

But that’s not nearly all of it. Griffin also gave $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida in the closing days of the 2024 campaign. And he gave $4 million each to Republican leaders in the state House and Senate — money that helped the GOP strengthen its legislative supermajority in Tallahassee.

Griffin also spent nearly $2 million on local politicians — including $1 million for Miami Mayor Francis Suarez; $500,000 for Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, and $70,000 for Gloria Branch, a public-relations executive who laments “today’s anti-Christian political movement” and just won election to the Palm Beach County School Board. (Not all his candidates won, though: Griffin also spent another $350,000 backing losing candidates for Miami sheriff and Palm Beach state attorney.)

Griffin’s influence on public policy in Florida is already apparent.

Not long after Griffin announced he was moving his hedge fund Citadel from Chicago to Miami, Citadel hired a lobbying firm in Tallahassee run by one of DeSantis’ top fundraisers. His lobbyists then persuaded Florida leaders to slip a carveout meant to help Citadel into a law making it harder for Chinese citizens to buy property in Florida, according to reporting by Bloomberg.

To put Griffin’s largesse into context: According to a Seeking Rents analysis of state campaign finance data, this one billionaire spent more on Florida campaign contributions during the 2024 elections than Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy, U.S. Sugar, Florida Crystals, and Publix Super Markets — combined. (This only includes publicly disclosed campaign contributions; it doesn’t account for donations filtered through dark-money groups.)

And there may be no limit to how much Griffin is willing to spend in order to get what he wants.

For instance, Griffin spent $54 million on a 2020 campaign in Illinois — about $18 for every voter in the state — to stop a proposed tax increase on the state’s richest residents. The ultimately unsuccessful ballot measure could have forced Griffin to pay an estimated $50 million or more a year in higher taxes.

That’s according to an investigation from nonprofit news outlet ProPublica, which obtained a secret trove of tax information covering thousands of America’s wealthiest individuals — documents that revealed many of the strategies that America’s superrich use to avoid taxes.

Griffin then sued the IRS over the leak.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.