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Plate I · Both sides of a betting fight paid Donalds’s PAC the same day
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The Lead · Politics · Tallahassee
Donalds's PAC, a political committee that takes donations, got $500,000 from the tribe and $250,000 from Kalshi on Oct. 13. Five days earlier, the tribe backed New Jersey against Kalshi at the Supreme Court.
Kalshi, a New York company where people wager money on who wins elections, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida both paid Byron Donalds's PAC on Oct. 13. Donalds is the Republican candidate for governor in the Nov. 3 election, and the two givers are on opposite sides of a Supreme Court fight. President Donald Trump and outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis have endorsed Donalds, the Naples Republican, the Miami Herald reports. State campaign finance records and the PAC's own list of donations show both checks. No record ties either check to any vote, contract or other act by a public official.
Why it matters: Only the tribe can run sports betting in Florida under its gambling deal with the state, the Herald reports. The tribe paid the state about $1 billion under that deal last budget year. Kalshi can operate outside Florida's gambling laws, the Herald also reports, as long as federal law treats it as a financial exchange, a trading market like a futures exchange. New Jersey wants the Supreme Court to let states apply their gambling laws to Kalshi, and the Court has not said whether it will hear the case.
The story so far: On Oct. 7, 39 states and Washington, D.C., asked the Supreme Court to take up New Jersey's case against Kalshi. Florida did not join. On Oct. 8, 145 tribes and tribal groups, the Seminole Tribe among them, asked the Court to take the case and decide it this term. Five days later, Kalshi and the tribe paid the same PAC.
What's new: Kalshi's check was $250,000 and the tribe's was $500,000, both dated Oct. 13. Neither is the committee's biggest check since Oct. 9; Miami hedge fund executive Ken Griffin gave $5 million on Oct. 15.
What's next: Kalshi's response at the Supreme Court is due Nov. 9, six days after the Nov. 3 election.
Old Florida Money desk · Mon Oct 26 · Sources: Florida Division of Elections; Friends of Byron Donalds PAC contribution list; U.S. Supreme Court (docket 26-299; amici briefs of Oct. 7 and Oct. 8); Miami Herald; CDC Gaming Reports; Next Event Horizon; Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research; CBS12; Bitcoin.com News; NOTUS; The Ledger; Jax Today
Read the full story
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Plate II · Brightline’s Miami-to-Orlando trains keep running while a judge weighs the rescue
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Money Pulse
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Brightline's parent companies are in bankruptcy, but its trains run. A judge weighs the rescue Oct. 29
Brightline's parent companies filed for bankruptcy Sept. 24, but Florida's private Miami-to-Orlando trains keep running. A federal judge holds the final hearing Oct. 29 on a rescue loan to the company that runs the trains. About $4.4 billion of muni bonds sit behind the line. The companies in bankruptcy are holding companies, which mainly own other Brightline companies, the train company's chief executive told the court. The one that runs the trains, Brightline Trains Florida, is not in bankruptcy. Entities managed by an arm of the investment firm Fortress Investment Group indirectly own most of
the bankrupt companies, the companies told the court. Bloomberg reports that billionaire Wes Edens, a Fortress co-founder, conceived the railroad in 2012.
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Miami's Virginia Key marina lease on the ballot lets the promised plans change
Miami voters decide Nov. 3 whether to lease two city marinas on Virginia Key to a new operator. The lease's own text says the developer's plan will change. By our reading, it never uses the word baywalk, for the public waterfront walkway the developers call their biggest public amenity. The would-be tenant is owned half by Suntex Marinas, the Texas company that runs the Miami Beach Marina, and half by Connecticut-based RCI Group, WLRN reports. Since July, Suntex has put $2.35 million into the Yes campaign, city filings show. Rickenbacker Marina Corp, which runs the private Rickenbacker Marina there now,
has put $1.1 million into the No, the filings show.
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Rep. Salazar's donor is charged in Honduras, and she has not answered
U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar's fundraising committee took $100,000 in May from Lenir Pérez, a businessman charged in Honduras over a mine in a national park. Salazar, a Miami Republican, faces voters Nov. 3 in a district that takes in Coral Gables, South Miami, Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay. Pérez is a Central American industrialist with a $10 million equestrian estate in Wellington, the Miami Herald reports. Her Democratic rival, Eliott Rodriguez, wants the money returned. Salazar has made no public statement about Pérez or his money, reports WLRN, South Florida's public radio news
station. No record ties the money to anything Salazar did. Pérez maintains his innocence, the Herald reports.
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Miami Beach nearly halves Art Basel's rent over Norman Braman's objection
Miami Beach commissioners voted Oct. 14 to cut Art Basel's convention center rent nearly in half to keep the fair through 2031. Eric Carpenter, the city manager who negotiated the deal, puts the city's cost at about $650,000 a year. Norman Braman, the billionaire auto dealer widely credited with bringing the fair to Miami Beach, told commissioners, "It's not up to taxpayers to subsidize private enterprise."
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That is the edition. Every story above, with its records, is on the site.
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About
Old Florida Money is Oaktree Reserve’s public Florida capital brief: the named checks behind houses, teams, races, and public votes across the state.
Illustrations are Old Florida Money editorial art. Portraits of public figures are caricature, not photographs. Each image carries its credit.
Drawn after reference photographs: Plate I, Rochambeau1783, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0); Tim Ross, Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Plate II, kitmasterbloke, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0); kitmasterbloke, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). St. Petersburg · Est. MMXXV
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