The Man and the Date
REPORTED. Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican, was speaker of the Florida House from 2024. The president nominated him as ambassador to Brazil on June 1, 2026. The Senate confirmed him on Aug. 7, 51 to 47, in a single vote on about 74 nominees. His resignation from the House took effect Aug. 21, and on Aug. 25 he took the oath of office at his old high school in Miami. Brazil has not given the formal consent an ambassador needs, so he has not taken up the post. WLRN → CNN Brasil →
DOCUMENTED. Florida's Division of Elections lists Daniel A. Perez as chairperson of two political committees, Conservatives for a Better Florida and Miami United PC. Both share a treasurer, Anthony Fiore, and a suite on Salzedo Street in Coral Gables, and both were still listed as active this week. On Aug. 27, two days after the oath, GOPAC Inc's IRS report records $6,377,850 from the first and $885,000 from the second. Committee record → GOPAC's donors →
Who Paid In
DOCUMENTED. The Florida contribution records for Jan. 1, 2025 through Oct. 20, 2026 show 255 entries to Conservatives for a Better Florida, totaling $6,230,441.92 with bank interest and in-kind items included, and 61 entries to Miami United PC, totaling $763,750. That second figure matches the committee's own report summaries to the dollar. Many of the largest givers to the bigger committee were other Tallahassee political committees, which hides the original donor one more layer down. The companies that gave in their own names include these; each row below was checked by a direct search of the state records for that donor:
| Donor (as filed) | What it does | Gave, 2025–26 |
|---|---|---|
| MasTec | Infrastructure contractor, Coral Gables | $200,000 |
| U.S. Sugar Corp. | Sugar grower | $150,000 (both committees) |
| Associated Industries of Florida committees | Business lobby | $525,000 |
| NextEra Energy Capital Holdings | Parent of Florida Power & Light | $75,000 |
| Centene Management | Medicaid managed care | $75,000 |
| Altria Client Services | Tobacco (Philip Morris USA's parent) | $75,000 |
| RAI Services | Tobacco (Reynolds American) | $70,000 |
| Sig Sauer | Gun maker | $50,000 |
| VGW LuckyLand | Online sweepstakes casino | $50,000 |
| Related Southeast | Real-estate developer | $50,000 (Miami United) |
| The GEO Group | Private prisons and immigrant detention | $35,000 |
| Kalshi Inc. | Prediction market (listed as "financial exchange") | $25,000 |
| Underdog Sports Holdings | Fantasy sports and gaming | $25,000 (Miami United) |
| Brightline Trains Florida | Passenger rail | $25,000 (Miami United) |
| Bitcoin Depot | Bitcoin ATMs | $10,000 |
DOCUMENTED, the date. Many of these gifts are dated Jan. 12, 2026, including Kalshi, Sig Sauer, VGW, RAI, MasTec's second $100,000 and GEO's second check. Gifts of $10,000 or more to Conservatives for a Better Florida that day came to about $1.44 million. REPORTED: Jan. 12 was the day before the 2026 session opened, and Florida legislators may not raise money during session; reporter Jason Garcia counted about $14 million banked by lawmakers that one day, including $50,000 from Sig Sauer to committees Perez controlled. Seeking Rents →
REPORTED, for context only. Bills to ban online sweepstakes casinos failed in that session; in August Florida's attorney general sued VGW over its sweepstakes games in state court. Nothing in the records shows that VGW's gift, or any other, changed a vote. Some of these donors are long-time givers, not new ones: GEO Group has given the committee every year since 2018, and Centene since 2019. AG suit →
DOCUMENTED, the denominator. Conservatives for a Better Florida took in about $6.23 million over those 21 months and gave GOPAC $6.38 million in one day; Miami United took in $763,750 and gave $885,000. Each gift was bigger than everything the committee raised in 2025 and 2026, so part of it was money banked before. Florida's weekly summaries for Aug. 22 to 28 show $6,378,060 and $885,210 leaving the two committees. Every week since, each shows $175. Florida summaries →
Where It Went Next
DOCUMENTED. GOPAC Election Fund filed its October report with the FEC on Oct. 20, covering September. It shows $19.4 million from GOPAC Inc that month: $6 million on Sept. 1, five days after the Florida gifts landed, then $3.87 million, $2.6 million, $4.15 million, $625,000 and $2.18 million. The fund paid out $18.4 million that month, nearly all of it to state committees and candidates. By the recipient's address, the largest sums went to Maryland ($4.8 million), Florida ($3.4 million, including $219,158 to a Tampa media vendor), Minnesota ($3.2 million) and Colorado ($2.1 million). Byron Donalds's PAC, which files from a Massachusetts address, got $1 million more. Counting Florida committees and the Donalds PAC, $4.2 million went back into Florida politics. FEC report →
| Date | GOPAC Election Fund paid | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Sept. 1 | Seniors First Florida (Tallahassee) | $2,500,000 |
| Sept. 2 | Protecting Florida's Progress (Tallahassee) | $665,000 |
| Sept. 2 | Friends of Byron Donalds PAC | $500,000 |
| Sept. 29 | Friends of Byron Donalds PAC | $500,000 |
| Sept. 22 | Brighter Colorado | $500,000 |
| Sept. 22 | Coloradans for Accountable Government | $450,000 |
| Sept. 22 | Colorado Strong | $100,000 |
| Sept. 2, 22, 29 | Senate Majority Fund (Colorado) | $1,040,000 |
DOCUMENTED. Florida's records list "Tom Piccolo" as chairperson of Seniors First Florida and "Thomas Piccolo" of Protecting Florida's Progress; both name Noreen Fenner as treasurer at the same Tallahassee address, so the Old Goat treats them as one person. Friends of Byron Donalds PAC backs Byron Donalds, who won the Republican primary for governor on Aug. 18 (REPORTED). Ballotpedia → REPORTED: the Bradenton Times reported earlier that Perez's two committees had together given $1 million to the same Donalds PAC. Bradenton Times →
INFERENCE. Read together, the records describe a loop. Florida companies and lobbyist committees paid a Florida speaker's committees; on his way out of office those committees handed the balance to a national group in Virginia; that group's election fund then sent millions back into Florida races, including the governor's race Perez's committees had already funded, and more than $2 million into Colorado ballot and legislative fights. The money is pooled with GOPAC's other donors, so the Old Goat cannot say whose dollar went where. A Florida donor who gave to the speaker in January could not have known it might help pay for a Colorado ballot campaign in September.
Why It Matters Here
DOCUMENTED. Three of the donors already sit in this site's files. Kalshi is the prediction market tracked on the Kalshi Markets page. GEO Group is in Detention Inc. RAI and Altria gave to GOPAC Inc directly as well as through Perez, as shown in One Treasurer, Two Checks. Centene, which gave Conservatives for a Better Florida $25,000 each on Feb. 28, 2025, Dec. 4, 2025 and Jan. 12, 2026, is the company whose $10 million payment to the Hope Florida Foundation the Florida House investigated in April 2025, with Perez as speaker (REPORTED, Florida Phoenix); Centene has given the committee regularly since 2019; the site tracks it in Open Investigations. The records show the gifts and the probe side by side; they do not show that one bore on the other. DISCLOSURE: GOPAC Inc's donors also include Anthropic, which makes Claude, the AI system the Old Goat uses to research and draft these dispatches. Anthropic's gift is part of the same pooled money described above.
OPINION. State campaign-finance limits exist so that voters can see who is buying access to whom. A committee that collects from prison operators, gamblers and gun makers on the eve of a session and then sends the balance out of state after its chairman leaves office turns those limits into a relay race. Each hand-off is reported somewhere. No single filing tells a voter in Colorado, or in Florida, who is paying for what they see.