Three separate Florida political committees
Protect Local Power examined Friends of Kim Amontree, Friends of Danny Nix and Friends of Vanessa Oliver. Together, they accepted more money from outside Charlotte, DeSoto, Lee and Sarasota counties than from within the four-county region.
Where the committee money came from
The committee-card totals cover the available filings from each committee’s inception through the October 3–9 reports. “Local” means Charlotte, DeSoto, Lee and Sarasota counties. Known sources elsewhere are grouped together here; the full committee records preserve the Florida and out-of-state distinctions.
Charlotte County Commission, District 4
Florida political committee
$157,260 monetary · $0 in-kind
$79,000 came from three Tallahassee political committees that reported the same address.
Florida House, District 75
Florida political committee
$319,200 monetary · $800 in-kind
Early concentration: A single donor supplied $30,000—one of the committee’s first five contributions.
Florida House, District 76
Florida political committee · updated
$340,800 monetary · $4,075.25 in-kind
$5,000 from SIG Sauer: The New Hampshire gunmaker was facing lawsuits alleging problems with its P320 pistol.
Calculated finding
Disciplined Leadership ($29,000), Citizens Against Wasteful Spending ($26,000) and Taxpayers for Better Schools ($24,000) supplied a combined $79,000. The three reported the same Tallahassee address and telephone number and overlapping officers or agents. Shared administrative information does not, by itself, prove common control or improper coordination.
Reported spending included $71,518.13 to TM Strategic Consulting for purposes described in the filings as polling, direct mail and political consulting. The preceding G4 report includes $19,413.85 to that Fort Myers firm for direct mail.
Latest G4A, October 3–9: $7,235 in ten contributions, all with addresses in the four-county region. The local share of inception-to-date contribution value is now 40.7%. The committee reported $674.81 in expenditures: $500 to Gary Butler’s Punta Gorda City Council campaign account and $174.81 in Anedot service charges. This is outgoing committee support for another candidate; the corresponding receipt will be checked against Butler’s city filing. It is not added to his campaign totals here.
Official G4A activity: select October 3–9 ↗
Read the new cross-race contribution story → · October 2 filing analysis →
Official G4 contributions ↗ · Official G4 expenditures ↗The candidates’ latest campaign-account filings are reported in the filing history.
Reported fact · inception to date
Friends of Danny Nix reported receiving $30,000 from Anthony Dubbaneh on September 14, 2023. The filing identifies him as an attorney and lists a Port Charlotte address. The contribution arrived less than two months after the committee’s first reported receipts. The committee now reports $320,000 in inception-to-date contribution value: $319,200 monetary and $800 in-kind.
Of that total, $147,500 was reported from January 1, 2025, through October 9, 2026. The committee entered that narrower period with an estimated $67,759.83 in cash carried forward from earlier activity.
Latest G4A, October 3–9: $1,500 from Friends of Sammi in Tampa, classified as Other Florida political-committee funding. Expenditures total $4,055.61: $3,000 to Friends of Byron Donalds, $1,000 to the Dan Weldon campaign and a $55.61 reimbursement for checking supplies. The reimbursement’s underlying distribution detail is not added again as new spending. The Donalds payee name and address are preserved as filed; the filing alone does not resolve the current recipient account. The Dan Weldon payment is identified as a candidate-campaign contribution.
Official G4A activity: select October 3–9 ↗
Official G4 contributions ↗ · Official G4 expenditures ↗Reported fact and legislative context
Friends of Vanessa Oliver reported receiving $5,000 from SIG Sauer on January 12, 2026. The company was facing lawsuits alleging its P320 pistol could fire without a trigger pull—an allegation SIG Sauer disputes. Oliver later voted for HB 1551, which would have limited certain product-liability claims against gunmakers based on safety features not required under federal law. The records establish the contribution and the vote; they do not establish that one caused the other.
Latest G4A, October 3–9: $22,500 in nine monetary contributions, none from the four-county region: $19,000 from elsewhere in Florida and $3,500 from outside Florida. The report includes two separate October 8 contributions from A Stronger Florida—$2,500 and $5,000—preserved as separate entries, plus $2,500 from JUUL Labs in Washington, D.C. Expenditures total $23,605: two SimWins text-message payments totaling $22,605 and $1,000 to the Dan Weldon campaign. That campaign contribution is outgoing committee spending, not money received by Oliver’s candidate account.
Official G4A activity: select October 3–9 ↗
Read the new outside-contribution story →
October 7 reconciliation: A July 18 $150 in-kind food-and-beverage entry from RSA Consulting, LLC of Tampa was missing from our prior searchable ledger. It is now included as Other Florida contribution value, not cash received.
Official G4 contributions ↗ Official G4 expenditures ↗ Official campaign-finance activity Official House vote Legislative context from Florida Politics2025–26 comparison: From January 1, 2025, through the reporting period ending October 9, the three committees reported $589,335.25 in contribution value; 71.8% came from known sources outside the four-county region. The cards above use inception-to-date totals.
Candidate photographs are from campaign websites and are used to identify the candidates whose names the committees bear. The photographs do not establish ownership, control or coordination.
Follow the money · PAC contributions
$294,000 from outside our region — 92.2% of the PAC money received by these three committees.
Local: Charlotte, DeSoto, Lee and Sarasota counties
| Committee | Outside region | Local |
|---|---|---|
| Friends of Kim Amontree | $81,000 (79.4%) | $21,000 |
| Friends of Danny Nix | $72,000 (97.3%) | $2,000 |
| Friends of Vanessa Oliver | $141,000 (98.6%) | $2,000 |
PAC monetary contributions since inception through October 9, 2026; $319,000 total. Geography reflects filed donor addresses. These are the separately filed “Friends of” committees, not candidate campaign accounts. In-kind support and political-party contributions are excluded. Separate donor-name entries are preserved where identity reconciliation remains unresolved.
We are comparing two ways of showing these figures. Anonymous counts record the presentation shown and whether readers view the section or open donor records. Names, contact details and search terms are not collected.
Inspect the official records
The explorer contains the all-date contribution and expenditure results reconciled for the three committees—474 records, checked October 16, 2026. Search names, addresses, occupations, purposes, descriptions and report types.
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Campaign Finance 101
Florida’s campaign-finance system permits two very different fundraising structures to operate alongside each other.
Candidate campaign account
A candidate campaign account is established for a person seeking a particular office.
For the state legislative and local offices examined by Protect Local Power, most donors may contribute no more than $1,000 per election directly to a candidate. Primary and general elections ordinarily have separate limits. Candidates may contribute or lend their own money without that limit.
Candidate accounts are tied to an election and are subject to rules governing what happens to remaining funds afterward.
Separate political committee
A political committee is a separate organization with its own chair, treasurer, bank account and campaign-finance reports.
Political committees generally may accept contributions far larger than the $1,000 permitted for a direct contribution to one of these candidates. They may remain active across multiple elections, retain money and make expenditures or contributions under the rules governing political committees.
A committee may bear a candidate’s name—such as Friends of Kim Amontree, Friends of Danny Nix or Friends of Vanessa Oliver—but its transactions are not entries in that candidate’s campaign account.
The candidate’s name alone also does not prove who legally controls the committee. Protect Local Power describes relationships only when they are supported by official records or other documented evidence.
A donor who could give only $1,000 directly to a candidate may be able to give tens of thousands of dollars to a separate political committee bearing that candidate’s name.
That does not prove that the donor purchased a vote, controlled the candidate or received anything in return. It does show how political committees can give large donors—including corporations and other political committees—a financial presence that would not be possible through the candidate account alone.
Political committees may also carry money from one election into another, contribute to other political organizations and pay consultants whose work can influence multiple contests.
Our purpose is to make the system understandable—and to let readers examine the evidence for themselves.
Florida contribution limits statuteA separate local report
This report examines the candidate campaign accounts filed by Janis Denton, Gary Butler, Jeannine Polk and George Williamson. These accounts operate under different rules and are not combined with the political committees examined above.
Separate state committee: One $16,500 check to Friends of George Williamson is about 56% of the $29,441 in monetary contributions his city campaign reported through G4. The separate committee reports $16,750 in contributions and $5,445.24 in direct-mail spending through October 9; its latest October 3–9 report is a zero-activity waiver. The check came from Southwest Florida Jobs Alliance, a Fort Myers political committee and therefore local under our four-county rule. Its money is not included in the four city candidate totals. Read the report →
Four candidate campaign accounts
Updated through G4: Filings through October 2, 2026, reconciled October 9. Candidate loans and in-kind contributions are identified separately in the full report.
Why Protect Local Power exists
Local voters participate in funding campaigns, while political committees, corporations and other interests outside the community also provide substantial financial support. Protect Local Power organizes the filed records so readers can see who supplied the money, how concentrated the support was and where the financial network extended.
A contribution documents financial support. Standing alone, it does not prove control, coordination, a changed position or an official act.
The searchable committee ledger is drawn from the Florida Division of Elections' all-date transaction results, including the three October 3–9, 2026 G4A reports. Known transactions and published totals were reconciled October 16. G4A is a scheduled reporting period, not an amendment. Names and addresses preserve the state display, including truncation or apparent address inconsistencies.
Use records filed with the responsible government agency.
Separate reporting periods, amendments, carryover and unresolved entries.
Apply the published geography and source rules consistently.
Link every central figure to the official record and show the calculation.
What a filer disclosed.
A total, percentage or comparison computed by Protect Local Power.
What the documented pattern may mean.
Disclosure and corrections
Jim Blue was the 2024 Democratic nominee for Florida House District 76; Vanessa Oliver was his opponent. He remains active in local Democratic Party work. Blue conducted and financed Protect Local Power independently and is solely responsible for its analysis, classifications and editorial judgments.
The three political committees were not contacted for comment before publication. Protect Local Power welcomes documented corrections and will promptly correct substantial errors.
If a filing, classification or calculation is materially wrong, identify the transaction and source record. Substantial errors will be corrected promptly, and material corrections will be dated and explained so readers can see what changed.
Sept. 26 reconciliation: The current state result no longer returned an earlier $1,000 Friends of Vanessa Oliver expenditure to Ashley Perez Biliskov. It was removed from this ledger before the September 12–18 G3 transactions were added.
Oct. 7 correction: Our earlier Friends of Vanessa Oliver contribution value and searchable ledger omitted a July 18 $150 in-kind food-and-beverage entry from RSA Consulting in Tampa. We added it, increasing Oliver’s inception-to-date contribution value from $312,725.25 to $312,875.25 and updating the geographic and combined totals above. This entry does not increase cash received.
jim@jimblue.com