Maxwell: Special interests shower $14 million on Florida legislators in one day
The members of Florida's legislature have a long-standing rule that says they can’t solicit campaign donations during their legislative session.
It's supposed to be an ethical guardrail. Really, though, it's just a bunch of bogus-optics bunk.
Lawmakers may not take money while they're actually voting on bills, but they take it when they're drafting and submitting the bills in the months and weeks beforehand, sometimes filing bills that their donors literally wrote.
Still, lobbyists want to make sure legislators remember their sugar-daddies right before the voting starts. So one of the grossest traditions in Tallahassee is the annual writing of the checks on the eve of session.
This year's special-interest slopfest checked in at a whopping $14 million. Yes, $14 million in a single day. It's like Christmas, except the only ones getting gifts are money-grubbing pols.
The tally was tabulated by my friend and former colleague, Jason Garcia, who runs the Seeking Rents Substack that tracks money in Florida politics. (Great site. Odd name.)
Most of the money went to Republicans, since they control every lever of government in Florida. But some Democrats also got financial stocking stuffers.
And some of the donations look blatantly transactional.
For instance, one of the major session-eve donors was the gun company Sig Sauer, which has been trying to get Florida lawmakers to pass a bill that would shield the company from lawsuits.
As I wrote last month, Sig Sauer is facing accusations from more than 100 gun owners and law-enforcement officers that its Sig Sauer P320 pistol fired when the trigger wasn't pulled. Even President Donald Trump described the firearm as "a dangerous and unpredictable gun … a gun that goes off when people don't know it."
Maxwell: Florida lawmakers take big bucks from gunmaker accused of selling faulty firearms
Sig Sauer says that isn't true. But it still wants Florida lawmakers to pass a law that would make it harder for injured gun owners to sue the company. So on Jan. 12, the eve of session, Sig Sauer cut more than 30 checks - ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 - to various committees, most associated with the very Florida lawmakers whose votes the gun company needed.
One $50,000 check went to a committee controlled by Sen. Jay Trumbull, R-Panama City, who helped sponsor the legislation Sig Sauer wanted in that chamber (SB 1748).
A few weeks earlier, the company had cut a $50,000 check to a committee linked to the bill's sponsor in the other chamber, Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville.
The check-cashing pols usually say there’s no tit for tat; that they're simply advancing legislation they truly believe in and that campaign donations don’t influence them. OK, sure.
Whatever the reason, Sig Sauer got the Florida House to advance the gun company's legislation on a largely party-line vote. The bill stalled in the Florida Senate after getting early support. But lawmakers are coming back to Tallahassee soon. And Trumbull is expected to be the senate president in a few years.
By now, all this talk of $50,000 checks probably has some of you who took Florida civics classes, thinking: “Wait a minute. I thought lawmakers aren't allowed to take more than $1,000."
Well, you're right - but only in theory, since the law that caps donations is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
While Florida law says legislative candidates can’t take more than $1,000 from any individual donor for their official campaign accounts, they can take checks of any size for other political committees they control.
For instance, Senate President Ben Albritton has a committee called the “Friends of Ben Albritton.” And you’d be shocked to learn how many of Albritton’s “Friends” decided to cut checks of $10,000, $25,000 and even $50,000 on the day before session began.
Sig Sauer wasn't the only vested interest pouring money into legislators' political committees at the last possible moment. Development and insurance interests also got in on the action.
One was the new and controversial insurance company, Slide. (For background, see some of my previous columns, like "Floridians forced onto Slide Insurance while CEO gets $21 million.")
Seeking Rents reported that Slide gave more than 40 legislators a combined total of $469,000 on the eve of session.
If you care about the influence of money in politics, you should follow watchdog sites like Seeking Rents, opensecrets.org and the Orlando Sentinel to see who's cashing checks and doing the bidding of their donors.
Floridians often wonder why lawmakers aren't focused on cutting insurance rates, protecting the environment or improving this state's sad-sack SAT scores.
Well, maybe if financially overwhelmed homeowners, polluted bodies of water and struggling students showed up in Tallahassee with millions of dollars on session's eve, things would be different.
Maxwell: In Florida, lobbyists write the bills for puppet politicians
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This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 3:20 PM.