The Six Million Dollar Man

Throughout American history, restrictions have been put in place to limit campaign donations in local, state and federal elections. The idea is to prevent those with the gold from making the rules.

When wealthy people exert excessive influence on our government through their campaign donations, the democratic focus of American government declines. The US Constitution begins “We the People”. Our founders intended that the government would serve the people, not the interests of a special few.

The Supreme Court’s 2010 “Citizens United vs. FEC” decision effectively blew the roof off of US campaign finance rules. The controversial 5-4 decision says money is “free speech” and corporations are people. In a related 2010 court decision, “SpeechNow.org vs. FEC”, the Citizens United decision was cited when a U.S. Court of Appeals struck down limits on the amount of money that individuals can give to organizations that support political candidates. With that ruling, our dark money political action committee (PAC) problems began.

In Sarasota and Manatee counties, a handful of developers are exploiting their ability to legally bankroll campaigns. Some of these developers claim they are succeeding in a “free market”. False. Local government approvals and investments are always involved in their development projects, so these developers aren’t really operating in a “free market”. They are taking advantage of their (now legal) ability to use lavish donations to support friendly candidate campaigns and rig the system in their favor. When these developers successfully game the system with PAC money to get their preferred candidates elected, “We the People” get a bought government

Pat Neal is one such developer. Mr. Neal is a former Florida state legislator who embarked on the family business - residential development - after serving 12 years in the state legislature. After a review of his state campaign contributions, I like to call him the Six Million Dollar Man.

The Neal contributions I’ve gathered are contributions to State candidates and state political committees. It isn’t easy to gather information on contributions from Mr. Neal and his corporate and family affiliates. I can document all the donations included here, but I cannot rule out that there may be more donations that I missed.

The majority of the Neal donations I found - $4,655,661.74 - are made by Mr. Neal in his name. Most of those funds go to various political committees, and the vast majority of Mr. Neal’s donations were made since the 2010 Citizen’s United decision. The rest of the donations I found - $1,072,265.36 - were made by various corporate affiliates of Mr. Neal’s, located at his corporate addresses and administered by his firm’s corporate executives. The total - $5, 727.927.10 - is quite a lot of money for a local builder to be pumping into political campaigns. And note: this does not include Mr. Neal’s considerable contributions to local County and City candidates. Those numbers must be gathered report by report, candidate by candidate. For instance, Neal affiliates have donated at least $10,500 to one current candidate for Sarasota County Commissioner (that’s from scouring just two of her submitted campaign finance reports). Our County Supervisors of Elections don’t make it easy to search for information by donor. They should.

Mr. Neal must believe his $6 million investment in political campaigns is good for his business.. Ask anyone who has paid close attention to local government in Sarasota and Manatee Counties about this, and they will tell you: he is right.