In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
On June 6, 1944, my late paratrooper Father parachuted into France and helped liberate the first French town from the Nazis, before the sun even rose that day.
My Dad taught me, as JFK's dad taught me him, that "you have to stand up to people with power, or else they walk all over you."
In his spirit, my Mother helped organize the employees of Camden County College in Blackwood, N.J. into what became International Union of Electrical Workers Local 440. Mom got some 40 union cards signed in an hour in 1970. The clerical and custodial employees prevailed.
One of my law professors in Memphis told a mutual friend that I was a "natural born attorney." My Mother said, "I always knew you were an S.O.B."
My late mentor, the Honorable Nahum Litt, was the Chief Administrative Law Judge of the United Staes Department of Labor, 1979-1995.
Chief Judge Litt stood like Horatius at the bridge, protecting the independence of hearings in whistleblower and workers compensation cases for Black Lung disease sufferers from the coalfields.
Judge Litt helped me to understand. We worked to understand administrative law's perversion of justice by rich and powerful corporations.
I later wrote about ACUS for Common Cause Magazine. In response, Congress defunded a federal agency from 1995-2010: the prestigious Administrative Conference of the United States lost funding because it wasted federal tax dollars on worthless studies by pro-agency law professors. ACUS sought to inflict Alternative Dispute Resolution on workers and corporations. ACUS sought to defang and declaw the Freedom of Information Act. ACUS sought to stifle lawyer representation of workers in cases against powerful employers, while encouraging non-lawyer representatives.
My Mother, my Father, and Chief Judge Litt taught me valuable lessons.
Here in St. Johns County, we're learning what happens when soulless corporations control and contaminate our governments.
Deforestation.
Flooding.
Unplanned overdevelopment.
Overcrowded schools with hundreds of unsafe portable classrooms.
Since 1981, I've investigated and helped expose corruption in our country.
I've lived in St. Augustine since November 5, 1999.
We've seen the murder of a Sheriff deputy's girlfriend reported in The New York Times and PBS Frontline,
My Mother had decades of experience in purchasing for Camden County College and corporations like F.W. Woolworth.
When I learned that our Mosquito Control Commission bought a $1.8 million no-bid helicopter, I asked my Mother if she would buy a helicopter withoutn competitive bidding: "absolutely not."
Working with the late Robin Nadeau, John Sundeman,Jeanne Moeller, Don Girvan, and other community leaders,
We, the People helped persuade our Mosquito Control District to cancel the no-bid contract. Taxpayers won a full refund of our MCD's 10% deposit.
Chief Judge Litt was tight as a tick with government money. Judge Litt taught me that any government budget can be cut by 10%. Here in St. Johns County, we have a $4.5 million mosquito museum, with 41% cost overruns. There's too much waste in government.
Mosquito-borne diseases kill one million people annually. My Father was bitten by a mosquito in Sicily in 1943 as an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper.
I believe in miracles. They called me a "miracle baby."
Likely due to my Father's suffering from malaria, it took my patents a dozen years, praying to Saint Jude, (patron Saint of hopeless causes), before they were able to have their only child (me). Mom said the chances of my being born were less than one in 100,000.
We've achieved dozens of public interest victories.
We can control pestiferous mosquitoes.
We can control corruption.
Help me help you save money and save lives.
I would be honored to have your vote to serve on the board of the Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission. Vote on or before November 3, 2026.
Byron and Erika Donalds, a longtime married couple and potent political force, are determined to remake Florida’s education system if he wins the Republican primary and then is elected governor in November. (Photo courtesy of the Byron Donalds for Governor Campaign)
Byron and Erika Donalds are a Florida power couple if ever there was one.
Long before the Republican congressman from Naples became a rising star in the GOP and a go-to cable news surrogate for President Donald Trump, he and his wife both made their political names opening the door to Florida’s explosive school choice industry.
An education freedom evangelist and entrepreneur, Erika has built a national platform in her own right, climbing her way into the highest levels of conservative education policy circles – and building her school choice businesses as her then-state lawmaker husband pushed legislation to create a regulatory environment where they could thrive.
Underpinning it all, the Donaldses say, is the guiding principle that parents, not the government, should be directing their children’s education – and the belief that they as Christians are called to “be active and influential across all of public life.”
“Faith is the foundation of everything my husband and I do,” Erika said in a statement to The Florida Trib.
Now, the couple is poised to ascend to their greatest positions of authority yet, with Byron the Republican frontrunner to become the state’s next governor, and Erika at the culmination of a yearslong mission to “break the public school monopoly.” It’s a campaign backed by some of the richest people on the planet.
Drowned out by the cacophony of insults and attack ads between Donalds and chief rivals, investor James Fishback, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, is that the clear favorite stands to fundamentally change the state’s public education system as we know it, further fracturing a choice-driven school environment that critics argue is unequal and unconstitutional.
Agents of ‘godly change’
On Valentine’s Day in 2021, the Donaldses decided to share the special evening not simply cloistered away in a romantic restaurant, but surrounded by other worshipers at New Hope Ministries in their hometown of Naples, where the faithful had gathered to learn how they as Christians could reform the nation according to their vision of God’s will.
The event was hosted by Colorado-based televangelist Andrew Wommack, who through his Truth & Liberty Foundation preaches what is known as the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on Christians to take dominion over seven key spheres of society: religion, family, education, government, media, arts, and business.
Reporting by ProPublica has found that some of the wealthiest Christian conservative political donors in the country have been spending millions to quietly advance the Seven Mountains theology, reflecting the influence of Christian nationalism in American politics. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, a core tenet of Christian nationalism is the belief that God has called Christians to “exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”
At the Valentine’s Day event in Naples, faith leaders called on their followers to act as agents of “godly change” in their communities.
“In our sphere of influence, we have dominion and authority. Do you believe that or is that just a quote that we read?” said Paul Lodato of the Christian Television Network, revving up the crowd. “We got to quit singing, ‘Kumbaya, My Lord’ and start doing something about it. I think Byron said it: Faith without works is dead.”
Speakers exhorted attendees on the importance of Christians being “in control of our schools” and stepping up to run for city council, and coached parents on how their kids can qualify for a private school scholarship paid for by taxpayer funds, a precursor to the state’s now-universal voucher program, created by a bill that Donalds shepherded when he was a state legislator.
“All they have to do is say, ‘I’m getting bullied’ and guess what? They can go to a good Christian school, amen? And get a biblical worldview education. That’s what we need,” Lodato said.
When Congressman Donalds and his wife took the stage, Erika spoke first.
“We will use that freedom that we have in Christ to not just pray for our president and those in authority,” said Donalds, a former school board member herself, “not just pray for them, but rise up as the most powerful voting bloc and political force in the entire world as Christians.”
Five years later, the couple is preparing to scale the highest levels of Florida government, with Byron enjoying a massive lead in the race to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a state where there are now 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats. A slate of polls shows Donalds outpacing the other Republican candidates by about 40 points on average, and holding an edge of five points over David Jolly, the former Republican congressman-turned-Democrat considered the frontrunner for his new party’s nomination.
Should that advantage bear out on Election Day, the Donaldses’ vision for education may well become Florida’s future.
Breaking the ‘public school monopoly’
While it’s Byron who went on to become a next-generation face of the GOP, it was Erika who was first elected to public office, as the couple playfully reminds listeners in joint interviews.
Erika won a seat on the Collier County School Board back in 2014, two years before her husband was elected to the state Legislature, following his failed bid for Congress in 2012.
The couple says they were first swept into politics by the rising tide of the Tea Party — and an awakening that came when they said their local public school told them the solution for their middle son’s academic struggles was to put him on medication.
In 2014, they helped open Mason Classical Academy in Naples, a charter school affiliated with Hillsdale College – a private Christian college that has become a braintrust for the conservative remaking of public education.
Erika, frustrated by what she said was her inability to make change as a school board member, opted not to run for re-election. Instead, she devoted herself to school choice, going on to launch a nonprofit foundation that advocates for public funding of privatized education and advises school entrepreneurs, and two for-profit charter school management companies, OptimaEd and Optima Management Solutions.
For years, the Donaldses have railed against the failures of a public school system that leaves nearly half of American teens unable to meet national benchmarks for reading. Instead, the couple has spread the gospel of what they call education freedom, urging conservative leaders across the country to untether taxpayer funds from public schools, to be used as parents see fit. Byron himself is a product of private religious schools.
As her then-state representative husband worked to pass legislation to create new charter schools and new public funding streams for school choice options, Erika, a former investment firm executive, was poised to reap the benefits. Her companies have taken in millions of dollars of management contracts from taxpayer-funded charter schools, according to an analysis by the Florida Bulldog.
In the process, Erika has “hacked the government funding as much as possible” to deliver services to students. Her professional work has raised questions about conflicts of interest around how Byron’s family may be profiting from the policies he shaped as a lawmaker. In a statement, Erika said she doesn’t do business with the state of Florida and never has, adding that she’s built her career on “ethics, accountability, and transparency.”
Other controversies have emerged as well – parents in Fort Myers were left scrambling after a planned Optima school enrolled hundreds of students but failed to open. The couple has also faced lawsuits filed by a founder of Mason Classical Academy related to disputes over their involvement in the school’s launch.
As Byron’s star has risen, so has Erika’s – becoming a cable news commentator, an advisor to Moms for Liberty and the chair of education opportunity at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. She was even floated to be Trump’s secretary of education. When the U.S. Supreme Court heard a major case on whether taxpayer funds can go to religious charter schools, Erika was there to support what she called the “free market of education.”
And as the couple’s political power has grown, so has Florida’s school choice program. In a state long heralded as a conservative laboratory for reinventing education, state lawmakers and DeSantis in 2023 ushered in a seismic change years in the making: creating a universal voucher program that allows any Florida child to receive a taxpayer-funded scholarship equivalent to the state’s per-pupil allocation – regardless of family income and no matter if the student was already enrolled in private school.
In May, the Florida Education Association, a public school union that represents 120,000 educators across the state, filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s choice-driven education system as unequal and unconstitutional, with vastly different requirements for public schools and private ones. Neighborhood schools across the state are facing closures due to a post-pandemic enrollment crisis that’s been supercharged by universal school vouchers. In June, the FEA endorsed Jolly, the Democrat.
“This election is our chance to end profiteering by out-of-state, billionaire-backed special interests and elect a governor who puts Florida’s children, families, and workers first,” said FEA President Andrew Spar.
With Byron angling to take the state’s top political post, and Erika planning to continue working professionally if he is elected, the question becomes: Where do they want to take Florida’s multibillion-dollar school choice industry next?
A pair of billionaires and a meeting at a state college conference room shed some light.
The billionaire school choice backers behind Donalds
Throughout his gubernatorial campaign, Donalds has been a prodigious fundraiser, pulling in more than $100 million. But his single-largest donors are not Tallahassee powerbrokers or Washington lobbyists, but two of the world’s wealthiest men – who have spent a considerable chunk of their vast fortunes promoting school choice.
Ken Griffin, a hedge fund manager who in recent years relocated to Miami from Chicago, has now given the PAC supporting Donalds’ candidacy an eye-popping $10 million, while Jeff Yass, a bespectacled TikTok investor from suburban Pennsylvania, has dropped $7.5 million. Yass is currently ranked #28 on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people while Griffin clocks in at #35.
:U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds was part of the warm-up for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at an October 2024 rally at Madison Square Garden. He has enjoyed Trump’s support as he seeks to become Florida’s next governor. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Griffin’s Citadel Enterprise Americas has already helped lay the groundwork to transform the state’s public school landscape. Working alongside a major charter network in New York City, Griffin’s firm successfully pushed to expand a law, first co-sponsored by Donalds, allowing charter schools to “co-locate” inside traditional public schools, a measure that state legislators slipped into a budget package on the 105th and final day of what was supposed to be a 60-day session.
The expanded “schools of hope” program allows publicly funded but privately run charter schools to set up shop within the walls of public schools – which are compelled to provide them a host of services from transportation to school security to classroom space, all rent-free.
Opponents have called the policy “parasitic” – and one they fear will create a glidepath for profit-seeking charter school management companies to wrest control of the vast real estate portfolios of public school districts, which are among the largest property owners in communities like Griffin’s adopted hometown of Miami.
Yass, a one-time professional poker player and early adopter of computer-assisted financial trades, has his own vision for the future of education. For years, he has been shelling out millions of dollars in bets on candidates committed to school choice – including Democrats.
For a decade, Yass has been making a radical pitch to fundamentally restructure public education: Take 100% of per-pupil taxpayer funding out of the government’s control and give it directly to parents, allowing them to spend it on tuition at a private school or elsewhere – and to invest it in a dedicated savings account that he estimates could net students a six-figure payout by the time they graduate high school.
At a recent awards banquet put on by the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, Yass made the pitch again, this time aimed at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who Yass says owes his political ascendency to decades of effort by the teachers union to “indoctrinate children” against capitalism.
“Give $300,000 to a graduate who can do math and read and write and, ‘Adios, affordability crisis.’ No more need for $30 million government grocery stores, free buses or rent control,” Yass said.
“That’s it,” Yass said, after detailing the numbers in an interview with The Washington Post. “Every single nickel I’ve ever given is based on that.”
Asked about his contributions to Donalds, a representative for Yass said simply: “Donalds is a school choice warrior.”
‘Profit is not going to be a bad word’
This March, Byron and Erika Donalds gathered with state lawmakers, school board members, charter school executives and parents at Miami Dade College’s Doral campus to lay out their collective vision for the future of education in Florida – one where parents are in control.
“One guiding principle that’s always been in our hearts and in our minds is that we want parents to be at the head of the table when it comes to making decisions for the future of their children,” Byron said.
Under their leadership, Erika said, Florida will become “even more the model state for school choice,” laying out the red carpet for private enterprise and making today’s education landscape look as outdated as a 1980s-era cell phone the size of a brick.
“We cannot imagine, when we unleash the capitalism, free-market competition in education,” she said.
The couple painted a picture of an education system fueled by artificial intelligence and other ed-tech advancements, and talked up an overhaul of Florida’s system of yearly standardized tests and the A-through-F rubric that grades public schools. They shared plans to shake up the state’s teaching standards in grades 6-12, making education modular and customizable, with all students getting individualized education plans that today are typically reserved for students with special needs.
In their vision of Florida’s education future, parents are customers and schools are competitors in a marketplace where families decide “how and when and by whom and with what materials their children are educated” and public funding follows students wherever they go.
“We want an economy of education where parents have the purchasing power and the ability to find the academic environment that best suits their child,” Byron said.
Erika put it plainly: In their education economy, there’s money to be made.
“Profit is not going to be a bad word when it comes to the education industry,” Erika told the crowd.
In response to questions from The Florida Trib about the role the billionaire donors may have played in Byron’s school choice policies, he said his long record on the issue speaks for itself.
“Donors do not set my agenda – the people of Florida do,” Donalds said in a statement.
“No donor has asked me to pursue school choice as governor because they don’t have to,” Donalds added. “I’ve been in this fight my whole career.”
Three days after that speech in Doral, Jeff Yass inked his latest check for $2.5 million, raising his total support to $7.5 million, upping the ante on what the longtime poker player has called the surest bet he’s ever made – school freedom.
Kate Payne is The Florida Trib’s state government reporter. She can be reached at kate.payne@floridatrib.org.
Backers of these 3 Florida data centers giving big to politicians
Beth Fisher, 67, holds an anti-data-center poster at a DeSoto County Commission meeting about a data center moratorium on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Arcadia, Florida. (Ashley Neyra/Tampa Bay Times/TNS)
By Emily L. Mahoney and Ashley Borja, Tampa Bay Times
TAMPA, Fla. — For years, the big political donors in Florida politics were a familiar group: the sugar industry, Disney, Publix and the like.
But in the 2026 election cycle, a new crop of would-be kingmakers has emerged connected to artificial intelligence as the industry works to turn Florida into a foothold.
Tens of millions of dollars have poured into Florida campaigns from companies with visions of transforming vast stretches of land in the state’s rural pockets into warehouses. Among the donors are billionaire investors, tech companies and utilities like Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy and Tampa Electric, which have always given big but now stand to profit from data centers’ hunger for electricity. Much of the pro-data center money has flowed to U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican front-runner for governor.
But a Tampa Bay Times analysis found he’s not the only one to receive their support. And of the roughly dozen high-profile proposals for data centers throughout the state, three stand out for how much their backers have invested into state politicians.
The state-level officials in this list aren’t responsible for those zoning and land use decisions, which fall to local governments. But they help set the agenda for how data centers will be regulated and accepted in Florida.
The state Legislature, for example, passed a law this year that set guardrails for data center companies but allowed them to continue signing non-disclosure agreements with public officials. The regulators who enforce that law — and decide how strictly data centers will bear their electricity costs — are all appointed by the governor.
Here are the projects linked to the most campaign contributions:
. Project Tango in Palm Beach County
In about a year and a half, two companies behind the failed push to build a 200-acre data center campus in Palm Beach County called Project Tango contributed more than $1.2 million to state politicians, the Times found.
The company responsible for the majority of that money, a Tennessee construction firm called Phillips Infrastructure Corp., had largely stayed out of Florida elections previously, aside from two donations in 2018. The other, Palm Beach Aggregates, is a rock-mining company whose donations have been more consistent.
Executives from both formed PBA Holdings, which led the data center proposal. But a swell of backlash among locals led county officials to reject Project Tango on July 15.
The biggest beneficiary of the Project Tango donations was Donalds. His political committee received $350,000.
Donalds has become a darling of the AI industry, drawing millions in support from an industry super PAC, which prompted criticism from his rivals. A recent poll by the University of North Florida found that 68% of Floridians — across party lines — don’t want data centers in their communities.
Donalds has since tempered some of his support, introducing federal legislation that would require data centers to get their electricity and water from private sources. Several of his Republican opponents have accused him of shifting with the political winds and have instead called for a statewide data center moratorium.
“Byron Donalds has been very clear: no protections for ratepayers and Florida’s natural resources means no data centers,” wrote Gates McGavick, a spokesperson for the campaign, in an email. “He believes that Florida can lead the nation in technological innovation without asking Florida families to foot the bill.”
Neither Phillips Infrastructure nor Palm Beach Aggregates responded to emails or voicemails seeking comment.
The main political committee supporting Republicans in the state Senate has received $100,000 from Project Tango backers. Additionally, the companies gave $25,000 to another committee in October called Panhandle Prosperity that has only funneled money to the same Senate Republican PAC since then.
That committee is led by Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, who’s the incoming Senate president. He didn’t respond to text messages asking about the contributions.
Senate Republicans have also received thousands in in-kind contributions, like having their lodging, travel, food and “entertainment” paid for by Phillips Infrastructure, records show. State documents don’t include details on where the politicians traveled or what the company bought them.
The Project Tango companies also donated to a long list of other state lawmakers’ campaigns, including $5,000 to Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco, who is running for Senate as a Republican.
Nocco’s campaign didn’t respond to messages left with the treasurer of his political committee.
2. Martin County data center proposals
A short drive north from the Palm Beach County project is Indiantown in Martin County, where multiple companies are jockeying to build a data center. One New Jersey firm, Ferreira Construction, has given more than half a million dollars through company accounts and its executive, Nelson Ferreira.
Neither had ever donated anything close to these amounts before in state elections.
Donalds received $500,000, while another $30,000 went to the political committee for Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, who’s running to keep his job.
But Ferreira withdrew his proposal for the data center earlier this year, according to TCPalm.
When asked about the contributions, Ingoglia’s campaign manager, John Wallace, referred a reporter to Ingoglia’s recent comments saying large-scale data centers don’t belong in Florida.
“They want our tax dollars. They want our energy. They want our water, then they want our labor,” Ingoglia said at a news conference. “All so they can create AI to take all of our jobs. I don’t get it.”
Ferreira Construction didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
Other proposals are still active. Town officials voted in May to rezone about 5,700 acres owned by Florida Power & Light for possible data center development.
Florida Power & Light is one of the state’s most prolific campaign donors. The utility and its parent company, NextEra Energy, have contributed more than $5 million this election cycle, according to the Times analysis.
Andrew Sutton, a spokesperson for the utility, noted that the rezoning vote did not approve any specific project.
“What was established is the community’s ability to set the terms for whatever comes next,” Sutton said in an email. If a data center opened there, it would fall under the utility’s large load rate structure, he said, which requires data center companies to “fund 100% of the cost of new power generation required.”
3. St. Lucie County data center
Also on Florida’s east coast is another project called Sentinel Grove, whose developer has donated more than $230,000 to Florida politicians this cycle.
That level of giving represented a significant escalation for the Texas company, Timberline Real Estate Partners. The Sentinel Grove data center would span about 1,200 acres over former citrus groves.
Timberline has donated at least $35,000 to a political committee called Honest Leadership, which has disbursed money to a number of politicians since then, making the eventual destination difficult to track. One of its recipients has been Attorney General James Uthmeier.
Timberline Real Estate has also given at least $28,000 to Uthmeier directly, plus at least $34,000 to Donalds.
“We appreciate donations from anyone who believes James should continue his historic work as Florida’s Attorney General,” said Kayla Little, a spokesperson for Uthmeier’s campaign, in a statement. “He’s breaking records for prosecutions, holding bad corporate actors such as OpenAI accountable, and delivering the highest return on investment of any state agency.”
Timberline did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Honorable mention: Fort Meade, Polk County
Maryland company Stonebridge Development is working to build a 1,300-acre data center in the small Polk County town of Fort Meade, whose City Council approved the project.
A corporation registered to the same address as Stonebridge, called Fort Meade LLC, donated $10,000 to Donalds.
It also contributed $31,500 to an ambiguous political committee, People for Honor Project, which has yet to make any contributions to candidates.
Stonebridge did not respond to two voicemails seeking comment.
This is the first Florida election cycle in which Fort Meade LLC or Stonebridge Development has written any checks. The project has hit a snag over its water use, which must be approved by the local water management district.
The members of the water management board are all appointed by the governor.
