If you wanted a graphic illustration of how “dirty money” works, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything more egregious — obnoxious — than the Destin land deal.

In September 2025, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Florida cabinet — including Attorney General James Uthmeier — decided to purchase four acres in the Panhandle town of Destin for an astonishing $83 million. State legislators had paved the way for the purchase earlier in the year; just hours before approving the state budget, Republican leaders in Tallahassee “slipped a sentence into the spending plan authorizing state officials to acquire” the land.

Why were these four acres so important? Officials claimed the land was needed to expand a neighboring park; if the state didn’t buy it, it would be developed.

And normally, that might be a sound reason for the state to purchase land — though not for $20 million an acre.

But there may have been another reason state officials were so generous. The property owners were a pair of LLCs: Pointe Resort LLC and Pointe Mezzanine LLC, both of which are majority owned by Robert Guidry, a Louisiana developer who does business in Florida — and who regularly showers state and local politicians with campaign cash.

State records show Guidry, individually and through the LLCs he controls, has given more than $725,000 since 2018 to Florida politicians and political action committees, most of them Republican.

Few have benefitted from his largesse as much as Gov. DeSantis. State records show that in 2018, Guidry gave two donations totaling $250,000 to DeSantis’s “Empower Parents” political action committee.

He also seems to have had a fondness for the former Florida Attorney General, now U.S. Senator Ashley Moody. Between 2018 and 2021 he and his LLCs made 14 donations to Moody or her political campaign Friends of Ashley Moody, totaling $74,000.

In February 2025 Guidry’s Superior Waterfront Properties LLC gave $25,000 to current Attorney General James Uthmeier’s Friends of James Uthmeier PAC. Uthmeier, remember, was one of three cabinet members who voted “yes” on the Destin land deal.

Perhaps he found the argument persuasive. Or maybe it was just the dirty money.

Uthmeier wasn’t the only Cabinet member to benefit from Guidry’s generosity. On August 15, 2025, a Guidry company called Okaloosa Island Prime Properties gave $25,000 to the Right Solutions Florida political committee. Three days later, Right Solutions Florida gave $25,000 to the Friends of Blaise Ingoglia PAC; and in December Ingoglia got another donation from Right Solutions Florida, this time for $10,000

Though Ingoglia, like Uthmeier, voted for the Destin land deal, he at least expressed some misgivings during the Sept. 30 cabinet meeting. Ingoglia, of course, has since been touring the state probing local governments for “wasteful spending.”

You literally can’t make this stuff up.

Other notable donations by Guidry and/or the companies he controls:

• $100,000 to the Central Florida Solutions political committee in March 2025: A small PAC that gets the vast majority of its funding from other PACs; over the past two years the PAC has made donations to Ashley Perez-Biliskov, Republican candidate for Florida House District 116; Lori Tolland, a candidate for Mayor of Ormond Beach; and Jon Maples, the GOP candidate who lost the special general election for Florida House District 87 on March 24, but who is running again this fall.
• $100,000 to the Safer Florida PAC, another small PAC that has supported Maples and Florida Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-29.
• Three donations totaling $85,000 to the Republican Party of Florida
• $50,000 to the Associated Industries of Florida PAC, one of numerous “polluter PACs” identified by VoteWater as receiving a significant portion of its funding from polluting industries like Big Sugar. In 2018 he also gave $25,000 to the Florida Prosperity Fund, another AIF-linked PAC.
• Five donations of $1,000 apiece to the 2025 campaign of Rep. Nathan Boyes, a Republican from Okaloosa County who won a special House election last year.
• And all this is just at the state level; in 2024 the Midbay News website reported that Guidry had “poured $38,000 into the campaigns of several candidates for (Okaloosa) County Commissioner, Sheriff and School Boards.”

Bottom line: Guidry spreads the “dirty money” around, and in this particular case his “generosity” to specific officials who were in a position to vote for the land deal — along with the fact that he’s a major Republican donor in general — helped push the Destin land deal across the finish line despite press scrutiny and public outcry.

That’s how dirty money works and it DID work, for Guidry.

For the Florida taxpayer? Not so much.