A former Democratic megadonor just raised $1 million for a top Florida Republican

Records show new Senate President Ben Albritton just pocketed $1 million from people and businesses linked to Morgan & Morgan, the giant personal-injury law firm.

Photo credit: John Sullivan

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The new Republican president of the Florida Senate has raised roughly $1 million since last week from people and businesses linked to Morgan & Morgan, the giant personal-injury law firm run by former Democratic Party megadonor.

Firm founder John Morgan said the cash is connected to a fundraiser he’s planning to host at his central Florida home for Ben Albritton, a Republican from Wauchula who formally took control of the 40-member state Senate last month.

Records show that about 100 attorneys at Morgan & Morgan have collectively written more than $600,000 worth of checks over the past 10 days to “Friends of Ben Albritton.” That’s a fundraising committee controlled by the new Senate president, who is one of the three most powerful people in state government.

An assortment of people and businesses that work with personal-injury firms — including chiropractors, spinal surgery centers, auto accident injury clinics, private investigators, and jury consultants — bundled roughly $400,000 more to Albritton over the same period.

Morgan — who was once one of Florida’s biggest Democratic Party fundraisers — called the donations the “best way” to buy a seat at the decision-making table in Tallahassee, where Republicans control all three branches of government and wield a supermajority in the state Legislature. “In Tallahassee, it’s important to be able to sit down and explain your position,” he said.

Records show Morgan’s law firm also gave $100,000 just before the Nov. 5 election to a fundraising committee led by new Republican state House Speaker Danny Perez of Miami.

The cash gifts for the new leaders of the Florida Legislature follow a two-year period in which the previous presiding officers and Gov. Ron DeSantis worked hand-in-hand with insurance industry lobbyists to pass a series of laws have made it far harder for homeowners to sue insurance companies that unfairly deny or delay claims.

Such suits are a major source of business for personal-injury firms — like Morgan & Morgan.

Among the changes: Florida homeowners who win a lawsuit against an insurance company used to be able to make the insurer pay their legal bills, too. But now homeowners must pay for attorneys out of their own pockets, which usually means taking money out of the proceeds they won from the insurance company — money that is meant to pay for expenses like home repairs.

Florida’s new industry-favoring insurance laws are also forcing many homeowners to pay higher prices for their home insurance. In many cases, Florida is now shoving homeowners out of a state-run nonprofit insurance company and into private policies that are as much as 20 percent more expensive.

Albritton and Perez were both a part of Florida Republican leadership when those changes were made. And Albritton just helped the House member who sponsored these new insurance laws win election to the Senate — backing former state Rep. Tom Leek (R-Ormond Beach) over a competing Republican candidate financed by Morgan and the larger injury-lawyer lobby.

Still, the new Senate president and House speaker have both suggested that they may get tougher on insurance companies now that they are fully in charge of the Florida Legislature.

During a speech following his swearing-in ceremony last month, Albritton promised that “we are watching” insurance company behavior following another busy hurricane season.

“We’ve made changes insurance companies said they needed to improve competition and stabilize rates,” Albritton said. “The proof will be in the results. I’m not going to sit idly by if legitimate claims get denied while rates continue to rise. Period.”

Perez, meanwhile, said in his own swearing-in speech that Floridians “don’t’ want our state’s insurance laws to be written by insurance companies” — a line that drew loud applause inside the House chamber.

Then again, we’ve all heard plenty of this kind of talk before in Tallahassee — only to watch it turn into empty rhetoric amid insurance industry lobbying.

Two years ago, for instance, state insurance regulators asked lawmakers for more power to stop insurance companies from using financial shell games to dodge rules against excessive profiteering at homeowners’ expense.

The Florida Senate put the proposal into a big insurance “accountability” package —only to quietly remove it shortly before the bill passed.

Earlier this year, lawmakers retreated from a tough proposal that would have made it harder for insurance companies to cancel coverage on homes damaged by flooding.

And when a bipartisan bill was filed that would have given all Floridians the option to buy hurricane insurance from a public non-profit, the Republican leader of the House would not allow a vote on it.

Morgan, of course, wants lawmakers to re-empower homeowners so they can sue an insurance company that tries to drag out and grind down a claim. “There needs to be a fix so that all of the advantages are not to the insurance company but some of the advantage is going to the people who actually pay these premiums,” he said.

The point here is that if Albritton and Perez are really serious about standing up to insurance companies — if this is all more than just populist pandering and fundraising off a transactional trial lawyer lobby — they’ve already got plenty of options on the table.