Pay-to-Play

by benacquistorecord

Pay-to-Play

Upon winning the Senate seat and quickly rising to a leadership post, Benacquisto became hooked into the special-interest fundraising machine. The News-Press noted in August 2011 her campaign coffers were “bolstered by Tallahassee interest groups” after she was named to leadership.

“Benacquisto’s is around $240,000, bolstered by Tallahassee interest groups”: David Simmons of Maitland – got reinforcements this week, as Senate President Mike Haridopolos chose Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto of Fort Myers for the position he created of deputy majority leader. . . . Take a look at their campaign accounts: Benacquisto’s is around $240,000, bolstered by Tallahasseeinterest groups whose success can ride on reading leadership tea leaves.
(The News-Press, Betty Parker Column, August 6, 2011)

“Benacquisto had strong statewide support from a variety of sources – 10 PACs, several Tallahassee law firms”: Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers was again one of the biggest fundraisers among the state’s legislators, according to the latest filings with the Department of State. . . . Benacquisto had strong statewide support from a variety of sources – 10 PACs, several Tallahassee law firms and even one fellow state senator, John Thrasher, a Republican from St. Augustine.
(The News-Press, October 13, 2011)

According to contemporaneous news sources, Benacquisto has been associated with and/or controlled three Committees of Continuous Existence — Alliance for a Strong Economy, Protect Our Liberty, and The Treasure Coast Alliance. These committees can accept unlimited contributions and funnel money to candidates and parties to fund attack ads.

Benacquisto’s Affliated CCEs:

Alliance for a Strong Economy: Alliance for a Strong Economy [is] controlled by Senate budget chairman Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican vying for the Senate presidency in 2016, and Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers.
(Orlando Sentinel, April 19, 2013)

Protect Our Liberty: Name Total contributions Legislator(s)
Protect Our Liberty $1.3 million Sens. Andy Gardiner, Lizbeth Benacquisto, David Simmons, Anitere Flores, Joe Negron and Garrett Richter
(Tampa Bay Times, November 3, 2012)

The Treasure Coast Alliance: The Treasure Coast Alliance, which started raising money in November, also lists on its website Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, and Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, as being associated with the committee.
(Sun-Sentinel, December 18, 2013)

Florida campaign finance and political transparency critics deride the state’s Committees of Continuous Existence as slush funds for lawmakers. Those CCEs were eliminated in a 2013 Benacquisto supported campaign finance reform. The reform, though, created candidate political committees that can accept unlimited donations and spend directly on political advertising.

Criticism of CCEs — “decried by critics as slush funds”: Florida legislators have padded their personal political committees with more than $20 million in special interest donations this election cycle, using the funds to buy attack ads, help colleagues win races and, occasionally, pay for travel, meals and perks. More and more, special interest groups are sending five- and six-figure campaign checks to lawmakers through committees as a way to avoid the usual $500 cap on individual donations, a Times/Herald analysis shows. . . .Disney donated $190,000 to another GOP- controlled group, Protect our Liberty. . . .Decried by critics as slush funds, these “committees of continuous existence,” or CCEs, allow powerful lawmakers to amass huge campaign treasure chests and spend the money with broad latitude. Each day, thousands of dollars course through the political system, flowing between CCEs, interest groups, consultants and lawmakers. By the time the money reaches voters in the form of a campaign ad, it can be difficult to know the true source of the funding. . . . Spending by CCEs ranges from the typical $500 contribution for a legislative candidate to five-figure checks made out to the Republican Party and payments for political ads and attack mailers. Meals, plane tickets, consultants and “staffing” can also be found among the list of expenditures. “It’s making everything less transparent and less accountable,” said Ben Wilcox, research director of Integrity Florida, a group that advocates for tougher ethics laws. “By moving the money back and forth between groups, you lose the ability to be able to point the finger and say, ‘Here’s who paid for this ad.’
(Tampa Bay Times, November 3, 2012)

2013 Florida Campaign Finance Reform: Another new law enacted this week will impose more frequent reporting deadlines on candidates for political office and raises maximum contribution limits. [The current limit of $500] will increase to $3,000 for statewide candidates and to $1,000 for all other candidates. . . .The legislation eliminates Committees of Continuous Existence, or CCEs, which could collect unlimited campaign contributions, but were banned from spending the money directly on campaigns. So CCEs turned into lawmakers’ slush funds for entertainment and travel. No more. Still, what lawmakers took with one hand, they rewarded themselves with the other, granting themselves the ability to create new political committees that can accept unlimited contributions. Ugh.
(The Miami Herald, Editorial, May 2, 2013; Florida Senate, April 24, 2013, HB 569, Overall vote: 37-2, Benacquisto vote: Yes)

Pay-to-Play Scheme

While many news agencies have covered the dark money in Florida politics, some of the stories, excerpted below, have specifically dealt with money flowing to Benacquisto-affiliated CCE’s.

November 2012 — Tampa Bay Times highlights the Protect Our Liberty CCE and its heavy corporate donors: More and more, special interest groups are sending five- and six-figure campaign checks to lawmakers through committees as a way to avoid the usual $500 cap on individual donations, a Times/Herald analysis shows. . . .Disney donated $190,000 to another GOP- controlled group,Protect our Liberty. . . .Decried by critics as slush funds, these “committees of continuous existence,” or CCEs, allow powerful lawmakers to amass huge campaign treasure chests and spend the money with broad latitude.

Committees of continuous existence
Top five legislator-controlled political committees:
Name Total contributions Legislator(s)
Protect Our Liberty $1.3 million Sens. Andy Gardiner, Lizbeth Benacquisto, David Simmons, Anitere Flores, Joe Negron and Garrett Richter
(Tampa Bay Times, November 3, 2012)

April 2013 — Orlando Sentinel highlights the biggest givers, including the Miami Dolphins and Disney, leading up to the passage of legislation banning CCE groups. In the two months leading up to a legislative session billed as an ethical house-cleaning, Florida legislators raised $662,000 from special interests through the funds they hope to outlaw during the next two weeks. The biggest givers: the Miami Dolphins ownership seeking tax breaks for Sun Life Stadium; optometrists seeking greater medical authority; public-employee unions vying to preserve their pensions; sugar concerns hoping to lower their Everglades cleanup costs; and
 Realtors. . . . Before the March 5 start of the session, a host of lawmakers filled their CCEs with special-interest cash — including dollars from former legislators such as Dean Cannon, the Winter Park Republican who now lobbies on behalf of, among others, The Villages and Walt Disney World. Cannon’s CCE gave $15,000 to a group called Alliance for a Strong Economy that is controlled by Senate budget chairman Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican vying for the Senate presidency in 2016, and Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers.
(Orlando Sentinel, April 19, 2013)

August 2013 — The Stuart News highlighted the impact and breadth of Big Sugar’s fundraising as each member on the lagoon committee — including Benacquisto — significantly benefitted from Big Surgar donations. Each Florida senator tasked with addressing the policies that pollute the Indian River Lagoon has benefitted from Big Sugar donations. Within their past two elections, all eight members of a new state Senate panel on the harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges into the St. Lucie Estuary have accepted campaign cash from the sugar industry’s biggest players. Sen. Joe Negron, a Stuart Republican who convened and will chair the panel, is the committee’s biggest beneficiary of sugar industry donations. . . .The Select Committee on Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee Basin is tasked with writing a report on potential policy and budget changes to aid the ailing lagoon. Those suggestions could end up in a bill or the budget next legislative session, which starts in March. . . .U.S. Sugar Corp. and Florida Crystals Corp., the two biggest sugar industry players, gave candidates, committees and parties millions of dollars in 2012 through various related companies, subsidiaries and executives. . . . Negron and Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, share two fundraising groups that brought in $405,000 combined from the sugar industry since 2010. A Negron committee accepted the biggest single check, $150,000 from U.S. Sugar. Benacquisto, who represents a Gulf Coast region similarly bombarded by lake releases, received at least $23,750 in sugar money last election. The Senate majority leader’s campaign account total is the highest on the lagoon committee. Here is how much sugar money state senators on the Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee committee have received:
(The Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News, August 4, 2013)

In addition to Benacquisto’s aforementioned pay-to-play schemes, the Tampa Bay Times jumped on a dinner between Senate Republican leaders, a top Tallahassee lobbyist, and a major contributor to highlight the undo-insider influence that exists in the state’s capital. According to the paper, Benacquisto dismissed the dinner as a social gathering and the group did not discuss the major piece of legislation the lobbyist and donor wanted the Senate to pass. Only in Tallahassee, the Potemkin Village of prevarication, could you put six state senators, a fancy-pants lobbyist and a Daddy Warbucks political contributor in a swanky restaurant’s private dining room and have the whole sordid scene dismissed as an innocent social gathering where there was not a single improper utterance regarding pending legislation of keen interest to all the happy revelers. But there they were: Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, Fort Myers, along with her Senate Republican chow line mates, Aaron Bean of Ponte Vedra Beach, Anitere Flores of Miami, Andy Gardiner of Orlando, Denise Grimsley of Sebring and Garrett Richter of Naples. Over the pricey vittles at the capital’s Shula’s 347 Grill, the half-dozen were joined by lobbyist Dave Ramba, who is more wired than the space shuttle, and Bradenton optometrist Dr. Kenneth Lawson, who heads the Florida Optometric Association. You can rest assured no open- face sandwiches were ordered by anyone. With enough winking and nodding to resemble a bobble-head doll, Benacquisto explained to Mary Ellen Klas of the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau on Wednesday night that everyone had simply gathered to thank Lawson for being the generous and productive fundraiser for the state Republican Party. You may proceed with your spit-take. With a tut-tut here and a harrumph-harrumph there, Benacquisto insisted that even though Ramba and Lawson have been pushing for legislation that would permit optometrists to prescribe oral medications – a measure zealously opposed by the Florida Medical Association and especially ophthalmologists – not a peep, not a murmur, not even a sotto voce whisper relating to the bill came up during the repast. Baghdad Bob had more credibility. . . .Why would anyone think of something untoward? Merely because Richter is the sponsor of the optometrist bill? And Flores and Grimsley are on the Senate Health Policy Committee, chaired by Bean, that is considering the measure? How could anyone arrive at the cynical conclusion that just because all the parties involved in expanding the optometrists’ authority were together in a private meeting at a high-roller restaurant with the Senate majority leader that this might look a bit hinky? Benacquisto revealed that the talk pretty much revolved around Shula’s to-die-for creme brulee – which may or may not cause near-sightedness requiring a drug prescription to cure. . . .For this sort of private meeting is a major no-no under Florida’s wide-ranging yet often regarded as quaint Sunshine Laws. The law states that any time three or more elected members meet in private to discuss legislative business, the meeting must be open to the public. None of that happened here. Dear President Gaetz, two words: refresher course? It’s just a thought. In order to believe that no Sunshine Law violations occurred you have to buy into the canard that six powerful members of the Florida Senate broke bread with a clout-filled lobbyist and his influential client – who has a bill at play this legislative session and is a major GOP sugar daddy – and not one sentence relating to official business passed anyone’s lips. Let’s take a vote. No surprise there: six yeas to 19 million nays. For the sake of absurdity, suppose Benacquisto is telling the truth. If she is, for the senators not to recognize the opticsof the dinner would make them the six most addled members of the Legislature. That’s no small accomplishment.
(Tampa Bay Times, February 8, 2013)

BROKEN CAMPAIGN PROMISE: As a candidate for State Senate in 2010, Benacquisto ran an outsider style ad in which she told voters: “Politicians take more of our money, and make government bigger. They sell out to special interests, raise our taxes, cut jobs, and threaten the American Dream.” (VoteLizbeth2010, Campaign Ad, Accessed via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bolxa27FaUo)