
Running for president is expensive. Few candidates want to pay for all that excitement. Instead, they like to have the campaign pay. In fact, almost anyone who will pay is welcome.
That provides great opportunities. Friends with private jets who wish to cultivate influence find the campaign trail the perfect place to schmooze at 40,000 feet. If they claim that the plane was going to Iowa anyway, then they need not even report the donation. That reduces the risk of publicity.
When you are the governor of a major state, people wonder about all your travels. They could ask questions about your rich buddies providing posh travel. This is particularly true when you are followed by state police traveling separately at public expense. The state police cost money and occasionally, a nosy reporter will want to know how much the campaign costs the taxpayers.
Corporate-jet owners can purchase influence or support the campaign by carrying the candidate in luxury. The problem is that the state security detail need to travel separately to the campaign rallies. Influence-purchasers do not cover that cost.
It might be embarrassing for the governor if the public could find out how much all this was costing them. Worse, there is a risk that the public might see who was buying influence with their corporate jets. This causes major feelings of insecurity for an already nervous governor.
The Legislature has it under control. This spring, they enacted Ch. 2023- 58. It exempts all information about the governor’s travel, and its cost, and travel by the governor’s friends, and the cost of that travel. These costs have become state secrets.
The Florida Constitution requires a justification for public-records exemptions. Here, the justification is the governor’s feeling of insecurity about people seeing how much it costs the state when he goes to campaign out of state.
You can understand those feelings. There are Floridians who do not want their tax money to fund the governor’s campaign. That is why it is a public necessity that the costs be exempt from public-records disclosure. Would you want people knowing how much you mooch from shady influence-buyers?
Some taxpayers say that Floridians are shortchanged when “Ron DeStracted” spends so much time visiting the 99 counties of Iowa. But you know what the Legislature could be thinking — Florida benefits by having Ron DeSantis out of state.
— Andrews is a DeLand-area attorney and a longtime government critic. For purposes of the column, he finds it convenient that there is so much government to criticize.
Well said!