Methodology

Our database was assembled via publicly available online data. For federal candidates we utilized the Federal Election Commission Campaign Finance Data page. For state candidates, data came from the Florida Department of State Campaign Finance Database. For county commission candidates, data came from individual counties’ Supervisor of Elections websites.

Date range of the data we compiled was 1/1/2018 to present. Data will continue to be updated.

For this project, we examined data only for elected officials, not candidates who sought election and lost or non-incumbents who are currently seeking office.

Due to the sheer volume of data, only donations of $500 and above were listed for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

All data for the project was downloaded, cut and pasted into Google Sheets spreadsheets or a similar data processing platform.

After downloading the data we ran searches to identify contributions from the following sectors and individual organizations/donors:

Sugar industry

Search terms: U.S. Sugar/United States Sugar; Florida Crystals; Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative; Florida Sugar Cane League PAC; American Sugar Cane League of the USA; American Crystal Sugar Company Political Action Committee; Western Sugar Cooperative PAC; Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative Sugar PAC; Amalgamated Sugar Company Political Action Committee; Michigan Sugar Company Growers Political Action Committee; Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative Political Action Committee; American Sugarbeet Growers Association PAC; and individual sugar farms and industry executives.

Agriculture industry

Search terms: Advancing Florida Agriculture PAC; Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association PAC; Florida Farmers & Ranchers United; Florida COW PAC; and individual growers/agricultural operations.

Phosphate mining

Search terms: Mosaic/Mosaic Global Sales LLC; United Phosphorus Inc.; Florida Phosphate Political Committee

Utilities

Search terms: NextEra Energy/Florida Power & Light; Duke Energy; Teco Energy

Sprawl

Search terms: Associated Builders & Contractors, including regional chapters; Associated General Contractors; Florida Home Builders Association PAC; Local Home Builders PAC; Regional building association PACs; Florida’s largest homebuilders, including Lennar Homes, Pulte Group, D.R. Horton, Kolter Homes, Minto Communities and Mattamy Homes. We did not identify other individual developers, builders, contractors or other development-related firms unless they are known to have been involved in specific controversial/potentially harmful proposals.

Polluter PACs

These are PACs that receive a significant portion of their overall funding from donors listed above, and/or from other Polluter PACs.

Search terms include: 21st Century Public Servant; Advancing Florida Agriculture; Associated Industries of Florida; Building on Your Dreams PAC; Business Political Action Committee of Palm Beach County; CCC; Conservative Florida; Conservatives for a Better Florida; Conservatives for Clean Water; Conservatives for Good Government; Conservatives for Principled Leadership; Conservatives for Rural Florida; EC-PAC; Ethics and Honesty in Government; Fight for Florida; Fighting for Florida’s Families; Florida Accountability Project; Florida Alliance for Better Government; Florida Chamber of Commerce PAC; Florida Chamber of Commerce Alliance; Florida Conservative Committee; Florida Conservatives United; Florida Foundation for Liberty; Florida Jobs PAC; Florida Prosperity Fund; Floridians for Conservative Values; Floridians for Economic Advancement; Floridians for Limited Government; Floridians for a Stronger Democracy; Floridians for Liberty and Prosperity; Florida Foundation for Liberty; Floridians United for our Children’s Future; Focused on Florida’s Future; Honest Leadership; Living Life With Purpose; Protect Our Florida Values; Sunshine State Conservatives; Voice of Florida Business PAC; Working Together for Florida.

Stetson contribution

Our partners at the Jacobs Public Interest Law Clinic for Democracy and the Environment at the Stetson University College of Law were engaged to track donations from selected corporate sources, and to track those sources’ contributions to political action committees. 

The Stetson team asked to track donations from Publix, and did so in their report. They also tracked donations from cement firm CEMEX, initially chosen as a proxy for the “sprawl” industry, but those donations were comparably small and not subsequently tracked as part of the overall project.

A note about county-level data

In addition to the search terms listed above, individual or organizational donors at the county level were flagged where we identified they were involved in specific development proposals or other projects that could have an impact on clean water.

But in some counties we're unfamiliar with local special interests, and likely missed some "dirty" donations that should be flagged. If you see something we missed, please email us at in**@vo*******.org and let us know.