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Democratic Greenacres Mayor Joel Flores final quarter greater than doubled the marketing campaign money he has readily available to flip the District 7 seat on the Palm Seashore County Fee blue this November.
Between Oct. 1 and New 12 months’s Eve, Flores amassed $117,400 between his campaign account and political committee, Friends of Joel Flores.
After simply over $500 in spending, all of it on donation-processing charges, he entered 2024 with greater than $235,000.
His incumbent Republican opponent Michael Barnett, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to the seven-person panel in January 2023, raised lower than half what Flores collected within the fourth quarter.
By the 12 months’s finish, his struggle chest was about 41% the dimensions of his challenger.
In an announcement expressing “deep appreciation” for the help he’s acquired up to now, Flores attributed his comparatively massive fourth-quarter positive aspects to “widespread enthusiasm” for his marketing campaign.
“The generosity of our neighborhood speaks volumes about our shared dedication to a greater future for Palm Seashore County,” he mentioned. “We’re simply getting began and collectively, we’re constructing a motion that displays the various voices and views of our district.”
Thirty-one folks, seven companies and two political committees gave to Flores’ marketing campaign in This autumn.
His greatest private test was for $1,500 from Gary Peters, President of the nonprofit Boca Serving to Fingers.
However really, he owed his end-of-the-year haul to at least one supply: Citizens for Law Order and Ethics, a PC that will get its donations from police unions, hospitality firms, actual property companies and different pursuits.
Within the final 4 years, its greatest contributions got here from Palm Seashore Sheriff Ric Bradshaw and Flagler Realty & Growth Inc., which gave $200,000 and $40,000, respectively.
The PC, chaired by political marketing consultant Rick Asnani of Cornerstone Options, gave Flores’ marketing campaign a pair of $50,000 donations in November and December.
Barnett, a lawyer and former Chair of the Palm Seashore GOP, raised simply shy of $59,000 in This autumn by his marketing campaign account and PC, Associates of Michael Barnett.
Thirty-eight companies, 32 folks and 12 political committees chipped in.
His largest private test was for $5,000. It got here from medical tech CEO Lewis Stahl, who in 2018 pled responsible to tax evasion on greater than $21 million in enterprise earnings and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He left jail after simply eight months on April 24, 2020, in the course of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roughly two years later, Stahl rejoined the Broward Sheriff’s Advisory Council as Vice Chair. Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony, one other DeSantis appointee to whom Stahl’s NextGen Administration firm donated $10,000 in August 2019, reinstated him to the board, whose members pay initiation and membership charges.
Campus Free Speech — a PC chaired by Barnett’s Treasurer, David Ramba, that derives a lot of its funding from Florida chambers of commerce, actual property, insurance coverage and power curiosity — gave Barnett $5,000 as properly.
Firefighter FACT PAC, a West Palm Seashore-based PC chaired by native police union President Jeffrey Newsome, contributed $1,000. So did the PC of Stuart Republican Rep. John Snyder.
Barnett spent near $24,000. Almost all of it went to consulting firms, together with $13,300 to Tampa-based Yost Methods, $7,000 to Jupiter-based Public Ideas and $1,000 to Electioneering Consulting Inc. in Tallahassee.
He additionally donated $1,000 to the marketing campaign of Delray Seashore mayoral candidate Tom Carney and acquired a $500 fundraising occasion ticket from Palm Seashore State Faculty.
Palm Seashore County Fee members accepted new boundaries for District 3 in 2021 to create a majority-Hispanic district. They succeeded; Census knowledge exhibits greater than 51% of the inhabitants there may be Hispanic.
Flores mentioned on the time that he and others locally had been “very pleased with the world that’s truly going to be the Hispanic district.”
District 3 covers an inland portion of Palm Seashore between Florida’s Turnpike and Interstate 95 and from a part of Southern Boulevard to Hypoluxo Highway. The district consists of Cloud Lake, Greenacres, Glen Ridge, Lake Clarke Shores, Lake Price Seashore, Palm Springs and a few unincorporated neighborhoods.
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