Every number in this report comes from a filing that Florida law required someone to make. We downloaded Miami-Dade County's complete campaign-finance exports — 189,704 contribution rows and 77,888 expenditure rows covering 723 candidates and committees across 156 offices — and read them together.

Miami-Dade is Florida's largest county by population, and by campaign money it is larger still: its $171.3 million is more than five times the $31.2 million we mapped in Orange County in Report 02. But the interesting difference is not scale. It is architecture. Orange County's money is substantially retail, and 14.5% of it sits in the committee layer. In Miami-Dade the committee layer holds 60.1%, and the reason is written into the rules.

The scale

Two channels, one donor base

A Miami-Dade candidate may accept $1,000 from a given donor per election. A Miami-Dade political committee may accept any amount. Both are lawful. The filings record which one the money used.

The difference is not a rounding artefact of a few outsized gifts. 96.3% of committee money — $99,224,715 across 11,741 gifts — arrived in amounts larger than a candidate would have been permitted to accept.

694 committee gifts of $25,000 or more — 0.37% of all gift rows in the county — supplied $38,899,361, or 22.7% of every dollar raised in Miami-Dade over thirteen years.

The signature of a binding cap

Caps leave a shape in data. If a limit is non-binding, gifts cluster below it and taper. If it binds, they pile up exactly on it. In Miami-Dade's candidate channel, 36,090 gifts were for precisely $1,000 — 23.9% of candidate gifts by count, but 52.9% of all candidate money. More than half the money in the capped channel sits on the ceiling.

Compliance with the cap is close to total. Of 37,808 monetary gifts to Mayor filers, 14 exceeded $1,000 — 0.0%. In County Commission District 08, one gift of 6,695. For Sheriff, six of 4,487. For Property Appraiser, two of 2,541.

The same donors, both ways

The clearest evidence that this is one donor base making a channel choice, rather than two separate constituencies, is the overlap. 6,984 donors gave in both channels. Those same people and firms routed $24,677,993 through the capped channel and $61,328,785 through the uncapped one — 2.5 times as much where no ceiling applied.

At the level of individual firms the ratios are starker, and they are the firms whose business the county decides. MasTec, the Mas family infrastructure group, reported $834,825 in total, of which $828,825 went through committees and $6,000 to candidates — a ratio of 138 to one. B & B Professional Consultants: $482,250 uncapped against $3,000 capped, 161 to one. SG Manager LLC: $333,000 against $1,500, 222 to one. PRH Investments, in the Related Group family: $360,150 against $2,500, 144 to one. One donor, Eduardo Fernandez, filed $500,000 uncapped and $52 capped.

  DONOR
    │
    ├──────────────► CANDIDATE CAMPAIGN            capped at $1,000 / election
    │                $68,267,431 · 39.9%           150,718 gifts · mean $453
    │                36,090 gifts sit exactly
    │                on the $1,000 ceiling
    │
    └──────────────► POLITICAL COMMITTEE / ECO     no statutory limit
                     PARTY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
                     $103,041,186 · 60.1%          37,828 gifts · mean $2,724
                     96.3% of it above $1,000
                               │
                               ├──► 13.2% arrives from other committees
                               │    ($13,614,565) — some dollars counted twice
                               │
                               └──► consultants, media, party transfers
                                    $92,273,651 spent

The trend, and its one reversal

The committee share is not static. It has risen by cycle, with a pronounced exception in 2018.

Where the large money lands

County-wide, 870 gifts — half of one percent of all rows — supplied 30.7% of the money: 131 gifts of $100,000 or more accounted for $26,618,716 (15.5%), and 739 gifts between $25,000 and $99,999 for $26,000,888 (15.2%). At the other end, 51,436 gifts under $50 — 27.3% of all gift rows — supplied $798,830, or 0.5%.

Aggregated across all cycles, the Political Committee category alone — 185 filers — raised $82,513,982. That is more than every elected office in Miami-Dade combined. Of 156 offices in the export, the three committee and party categories account for $103,041,186 while all 153 actual elected offices share $68,267,431.

Committees that exist for one cycle

Seventeen committees that raised $250,000 or more were active in a single cycle only, together accounting for $20,401,353. The sharpest example in the record is Residents for Watson Park.

It raised $1,600,000 in eight gifts between 23 September and 31 October 2024. Its filings disclose exactly two funders, both real-estate entities: ECORE Siliency Miami LLC of Coconut Grove, $800,000 across four gifts, and ESJ JI Leasehold LLC of Aventura, $800,000 across four gifts. It spent $1,099,265 — 69% of everything it raised — with the consultancy Miranda Advocacy, and $309,175 with Edge Communications. Then it stopped filing. Neither funder has a meaningful presence elsewhere in the county records: ECORE appears for $1,011 outside this committee, ESJ affiliates for $7,000.

The consulting layer

Miami-Dade's spending concentrates into a small number of political-consulting firms. The top eighteen such payees combined for $51,309,939 — 32.2% of all $159.5 million in reported spending — reaching 286 distinct filers across 75 offices.

Edge Communications alone received 7.0% of every dollar spent by every campaign in the county over thirteen years. The channel pattern repeats inside its receipts: $7,669,071 of its $11.1 million — 69% — was paid by committees rather than candidates, including $3,343,337 from Our Democracy. The uncapped channel does not only raise differently; it spends differently, and at larger unit size.

Who gives, by sector

Classified sector blocs account for $66,389,730, or 38.8% of all money. The remaining 61.2% — $104,918,887 — is unclassified, chiefly individuals whose filed name and occupation carry no sector signal. Bloc totals are therefore floors, not ceilings.

Real estate is the largest identifiable bloc, and it uses the uncapped channel: $15,117,176 of its $24.1 million — 62.7% — went to political committees, with a further $2,121,722 to ECOs, against $1,192,593 to Mayor filers. It supplies 20.7% of all ECO money and 18.3% of all political-committee money. Construction and engineering routed 55.4% of its giving through committees; health care 59.1%.

Law and lobbying has the broadest reach of any bloc — 430 campaigns, 9,970 entities — and a distinct concentration in judicial races: $758,779 to County Court Judge Group 19 and $609,374 to Group 21. Unions are the only bloc for which party executive committees are a leading destination, at $294,615.

Forty-four named corporate families combined for $7,451,416, 4.3% of county money. Their common feature is channel choice: Turnberry/Soffer routed 94.1% of its giving via committees, Bilzin Sumberg 93.1%, Housing Trust Group 90.5%, Potamkin auto 89.5%, 13th Floor Investments 88.9%, Related Group 88.8%, Braman Motors 84.6%, and MasTec 96.8%.

The counter-pattern

The channel preference is not universal, and the exceptions are instructive. The law firms with the broadest candidate reach use the capped channel most. Rubin Turnbull gave $24,000 across 19 campaigns with 0.0% through committees. Becker & Poliakoff gave $102,092 across 79 campaigns at 39.3% via committees. Akerman $150,500 across 69 campaigns at 55.1%. Presidente Supermarkets, 30.3%.

Broad small-dollar candidate giving and concentrated committee giving are distinguishable strategies in these records, and both are in active use. Nothing in the data compels a donor to prefer the uncapped channel; most of the money does, but a substantial minority does not.

The seats, and where money did not decide

The marquee contests were not funding mismatches. In sixteen offices the top two filers were within 75% of each other, including Mayor at 82% parity, District 08 at 97%, District 09 at 96%, District 06 at 95%, School Board District 04 at 92%, Property Appraiser at 86% and Sheriff at 82%. District 04 was a 1:1 spread — an effective tie in money. District 06's top-to-bottom spread was only 28:1 and District 01's only 12:1. Concentration in Miami-Dade is real in aggregate and uneven by seat.

Several filers ran overwhelmingly on small money. Sybrina Denise Fulton drew 72.2% of her $545,452 from gifts under $250, across 14,832 gifts. Alex Otaola drew 63.6% of $312,179 across 14,304 gifts. Marlon Hill 34.0%, Gepsie Metellus 28.7%, Luisa Santos 20.3%, Maxeme Tuchman 18.9%. Even the county's largest candidate fundraiser relies partly on small donors: Daniella Levine Cava's $4,368,249 arrived across 16,817 gifts — the most individual gifts of any filer — 15.2% of it in amounts under $250.

Judicial races are a distinct ecosystem with the narrowest funding gaps in the dataset: County Court Judge Group 19 raised $1,096,200 across seven filers at a 12:1 spread, Group 35 $666,928 at 3:1, Group 28 $644,779 at 3:1.

Who funds whom, together

Shared-donor analysis finds 1,864 pairs of candidate campaigns sharing 25 or more distinct donors, among the 259 campaigns with 40 or more donors. The densest overlap is Daniella Levine Cava and Eileen Higgins, at 680 shared donors.

More striking is that the pool funds both sides of the county's marquee contest. Levine Cava and Carlos Gimenez — 2020 mayoral opponents — share 409 donors. Gimenez and Alex Penelas, mayors a generation apart, share 267. Rebeca Sosa and Jose "Pepe" Diaz share 237 at a Jaccard coefficient of 0.189, the highest proportional overlap of any major pair.

The state layer

Miami-Dade's donors are also present in Tallahassee, and at a different order of magnitude. 3,006 Miami-Dade donors also appear as $1,000-or-more donors to Florida state political committees. They gave $48,239,873 inside Miami-Dade and $516,986,109 to state committees. Those crossover donors account for 20.4% of all state committee money measured, out of a state dataset holding $2,531,244,381 across 64,629 distinct normalised donor keys.

Two patterns sit side by side. Firms like US Sugar and Trulieve have an enormous state presence and a nominal local one. Firms like MasTec, Florida East Coast Industries, LSN Partners and 13th Floor Investments are roughly balanced between layers — and these are the firms with the broadest local reach. School Development HC Finance, LLC is the most locally significant: $457,500 across 70 Miami-Dade campaigns, 37 committees plus 33 candidates, the widest recipient reach of any donor in the county, alongside a seven-figure state presence.

When the money arrives

Giving clusters hard against election day. October 2024 alone drew $10,202,153, the single largest month in the thirteen-year window. September and October 2020 together drew $12,891,901. The uncapped channel is structurally suited to this: a committee can absorb a seven-figure gift in the final fortnight, where a candidate would need a thousand donors to raise the same sum.

What we did not find

• No criminal referral, indictment, charge or conviction involving anyone named.
• No Commission on Ethics finding of probable cause.
• No undisclosed contribution — everything here was filed as required.
• No evidence of a quid pro quo, and no agreement to exchange anything of value for official action.
• No evidence that any contribution influenced any official act, vote, rezoning or procurement.
• No evidence that any contract was awarded improperly, and no finding about any county procurement.
• No violation of the $1,000 candidate cap established by these records; the 702 candidate gifts above it are consistent with filers subject to different statutory limits.
• No election irregularity of any kind.

Filers also return money, which is evidence of active compliance review rather than passive acceptance: 1,158 rows typed "Refund" total −$587,285, led by Daniella Levine Cava at −$60,738 across 152 rows and Freddy Ramirez at −$58,778 across 211 rows.

The finding

Miami-Dade decided that $1,000 was the most any one donor should give a candidate. Florida decided that no limit applies to a committee. Given both rules, 60.1% of the county's money took the second route — and 81.0% did so in 2026. The cap was obeyed. It was also, in aggregate, bypassed, lawfully and on the record.

The second finding concerns what a local contribution limit can achieve on its own. A cap that binds a candidate but not a committee does not reduce the money in a county's politics; the evidence here is that it redirects it into a channel with larger unit sizes, greater donor concentration, shorter-lived vehicles and an additional layer of committee-to-committee transfer. The same 6,984 donors used both channels and put 2.5 times as much through the one without a ceiling. Whether that is a defect or a feature is a question for voters and legislators. It is not a question these records can answer.

The third finding applies to anyone using this data. Aggregate totals taken straight from the county portal are systematically too low, because the same vendors and donors file under many spellings — one consultancy was understated by 24.8% on its most common spelling alone. Any analysis that skips reconciliation will understate concentration everywhere.

Corrections and challenges to any figure in this report: corrections@florida.institute. We publish corrections in full.