It’s good to have “friends”.
Lee County commissioners have them, and, if you’re not a believer, all you have to do is take a look at the state-level records of local Political Action Committees.
All five Lee County commissioners have their own Super-PACs.
Friends of Kevin Ruane.
Friends of David Mulicka.
Friends of Brian Hamman.
Friends of Trish Petrosky.
And Cecil Pendergrass’ PAC United we Stand SWFL.
Neither Mulicka nor Petrosky responded to emails seeking comment.
Through ‘Super-PACs commissioners fund each other’s campaigns
All the PACs but Pendergrass’ have shuffled cash repeatedly back and forth, with commissioners helping fund each other’s campaigns. Pendergrass was the exception until his PAC handed Petrosky’s campaign $1,000 on June 29.
Craig Ewing is a PhD. and an assistant professor of political science at Florida Gulf Coast University. He says these so-called “super-PACs” can have outsized influence in local elections.
That’s because under the 2010 “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision corporations are people and money is speech.
“Citizens sort of decided all of this,” Ewing said. “So, money not affiliated with a campaign really is affiliated with a campaign.”
The “Citizens” decision birthed the “Super-PACs”.
Citizens United 2010 decision dumped more money into politics
“Money in politics went up massively after 2010,” he said. “It allowed much more money to be infused into the system.”
The four commissioners with “Friends of” PACs all have one thing in common. Pendergrass is the only Lee County commissioner whose campaign is not managed by local consultant Terry Miller.
Ruane’s “Friends Of” has been the busiest, in part because it had a head start. Ruane created his PAC in 2019. Among his “friends” is brewery magnate August Busch, who put the first $20,000 into the PAC. Busch dropped another $10,000 into the kitty in 2020 and another $5,000 in 2021.
Ruane says he is “an open book” when it comes to his political activities. He says he created his PAC when, as mayor of Sanibel, he was fighting with the South Florida Water Management and the Army Corps of Engineers over a new Lake Okeechobee release schedule that would have been damaging to local water quality.
“I was like ‘We’ve got to educate the public’,” he said. “I put in $60,000 of my own money.”
Without the PAC, Ruane said, the west coast situation with lake releases would be worse than it is.
“People don’t understand how important the releases were to us,” he said.
Ruane said he routinely receives support – financial and otherwise – from members of both the developer and the environmental communities.
“I have nothing to hide,” he said. “Politicians aren’t all dirty.”
Ruane said he is fortunate to have the means to support causes he believes in. He is the wealthiest Lee County commissioner with a net worth of just more than $40 million.
“You think $1,000 is going to buy my vote?”
Other notables feeding Ruane’s PAC are giant homebuilders Lennar and Pulte. Lennar dropped $20,000 in August of 2021, and Pulte dropped $10,000 that same month.
Other developers contributing are Kitson Investments of Babcock Ranch, the Ronto Group, the Place at Corkscrew, Sanibel-Captiva Beach Resorts, London Bay, Creighton Construction and Stevens Construction.
Ruane isn’t the only one with friends. Sheriff Carmine Marceno has his own PAC. It threw in $20,000 in 2023 and another $20,000 in March of 2026 to Ruane.
Of course, that money didn’t just sit in the account. Just in the past two years donations have gone to fellow county commissioners David Mulicka, Brian Hamman and the now-late Mike Greenwell. Newly appointed Commissioner Trish Petrosky received $1,000 for her campaign in March.
School board members Bill Ribble, Jada Langford-Fleming and Sam Fisher have also received support. And state office-holders haven’t been left out. Local Representatives Jenna Persons-Mulicka (recently appointed Supervisor of Elections) Tiffany Esposito, Vanessa Oliver, Mike Giallombardo and Adam Botana got in on the act, as did Sen. Jonathan Martin.
Other county office-holders also reaped benefits from Ruane’s “friends”. School Superintendent Denise Carlin, Clerk of Courts Kevin Karnes, Property Appraiser Matt Caldwell, Tax Collector Noelle Branning, State Attorney Amira Fox and even the campaign of Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia got a contribution.
On June 29, Ruane’s PAC gave $25,000 to Friends of Trish Petrosky.
Campaign consultant Miller ‘In a different league’
As for the Terry Miller connection, Ruane said the two have been friends for 20 years, meeting when Miller chaired the local Republican Party. He said there are a few other campaign consultants in the area, but none as good as Miller.
“He’s in a different league,” he said.
Who Miller chooses to represent as a lobbyist doesn’t matter to him, Ruane said, and he’s never been asked to cast his vote or his support one way or another.
“I’m not apologizing for Terry,” he said. “He’s a friend.”
Brian Hamman has had “friends” for a long time, too. He created his Super-PAC in 2022. The first check to hit the account came from Miller’s PAC the Southwest Florida Jobs Alliance. That PAC dropped over $20,000 into the account.
“Anyone who knows me knows I would never trade my principles or my public responsibility for a campaign contribution,” Hamman said. “My vote is not for sale, at any price.”
Hamman said he created his committee so he could support candidates, causes and conservative policies he believes in, and that every dollar raised and spent is disclosed.
Calling his PAC “Friends of Brian Hamman” was very much intentional, he said.
“I could have chosen a vague name that hid who was behind it. Instead, I put my name on it and serve openly as the chair because I want people to know exactly who is involved,” he said.
That, Hamman said, is accountability, not evidence of corruption. He also points out his PAC is separate from county government and uses no taxpayer resources.
Developers, building frequent contributors to commissioners’ PACs
Billionaire homebuilder Pat Neal – the main force driving urban development into rural northeast Lee communities such as Alva – has contributed three times to Hamman’s PAC for a total of $17,000.
“The reason campaign finance rules were implemented in the first place was a hope that nobody could buy influence,” Ewing said. “It’s concerning when there are very large amounts.”
What Neal did, writing a check as an individual and having his companies write them as well, is called “bundling”.
“Bundling is a very powerful way of getting a candidate’s attention,” Ewing said. “It circumvents the intent of the rules. I sometimes quibble with the idea that it buys votes, but I do think they are potentially buying influence.”
Bundling is standard operating practice for the “Friends Of” super-PACs. Into Friends of Brian Hamman, Creighton Construction dropped $12,000. The Cameratta family of developer CamProp – doing the same thing in southeast Lee that Neal is in the northeast with projects such as Kingston – put in $10,000.
That money was spread around as well, much of it to the same campaigns. Receiving campaign help were Commissioners Greenwell, Mulicka, Ruane and Hamman himself. School board members were Ribble, Fisher, Langford-Fleming, Chairman Armor Persons and Vanessa Chaviono, as well as Carlin.
At the county level Karnes and Fox got support. On up the ladder Esposito and Ingoglia got checks, as did the Friends of Byron Donalds to the tune of $5,000.
Mulicka created his Friends of David Mulicka in 2024. As with Hamman, the first check – $8,500 – came into his account from Miller’s Southwest Florida Jobs Alliance.
Seagate Development and London Bay – both developers eyeing Fort Myers Beach for hi-rise development as well as other spots across the county – also dropped checks. Other PACs did too, from the Conservative Legacy Fund to the Conservative Leadership Caucus.
The Conservative Legacy Fund is a PAC chaired by Persons-Mulicka, Mulicka’s wife and Armor Persons’ daughter. It has received money from groups such as sugar giant Florida Crystals and from a lengthy list of other PACs and super-PACs. It disbanded in May, but not before sending cash to Fisher and Langford-Fleming on the school board and Petrosky and Hamman as commissioners.
From Mulicka’s PAC, $24,250 went back to Miller’s Southwest Florida Jobs Alliance, with another, more than $27,000, going to Miller himself. Father-in-law Persons also got campaign support.
Pendergrass’ PAC has gotten checks from some of the same sources. Creighton Construction was the first, in May of 2025, with $10,000. The company later added $6,000 more.
Waste Pro dropped $25,000 a few weeks after the PAC started, with five Camerotta companies adding $2,000 each in September. John Fish, CEO of Suffolk Construction, gave $15,000.
Ronto, ONDA Housing and Redspeed also wrote checks, as did a double handful of firefighters and the firefighter’s union as well as two firefighter PACs.
Build our Future PAC, a national-level PAC linked to former Naples Congressman Francis Rooney, donated $5,000.
United We Stand has raised more than $175,000 and paid out around $7,000.
Pendergrass noted he didn’t create his PAC until last year. He said he saw that all the other commissioners had PACs, and he wants to be able to exert some influence when something important to him comes along.
Pendergrass said he’s always gotten the support of – and been supportive of – local firefighters. Pendergrass was a Fort Myers police officer and head of southwest Florida’s police union.
His PAC had not given money to another commissioner’s campaign until this month, when it gave $1,000 to Petrosky’s campaign.
Petrosky got into the PAC game late. She was appointed by the governor in December. She created her “Friends” PAC in June.
Petrosky’s super-PAC received two checks right away. Both came from Miller’s Southwest Florida Jobs Alliance which wrote a $30,000 check to open the account, then a few weeks later it deposited another $25,000.
Ruane’s PAC gave $25,000 at the end of June. Tiffany for Florida, Rep. Tiffany Esposito’s Pc, dropped $50,000 in early July.
All the distributions from Petrosky’s PAC so far have gone to Miller’s business – just over $70,000.
The habit of one Super-PAC handing money to another is, Ewing said, “a little weird.”
“It may be a way to covertly make it more difficult to track where the money is coming from and where it’s going,” he said.
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Charlie Whitehead covers Lee County and Fort Myers. Reach him at cwhitehead@gannett.com
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This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Lee County commissioners trade super-sized campaign cash via PACs | Exclusive
Reporting by Charlie Whitehead, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Fort Myers News-Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Charlie Whitehead, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News | USA TODAY Network
