Q: Jacksonville Today reader Henry T. received a political mailer that caught his eye in late June. In Henry’s eyes, its message against District 3 Duval County School Board incumbent Cindy Pearson was “over-the-top scaremongering.” A second anti-Pearson card soon followed.

Henry wrote to us, asking for info on who sent the mailers, which is listed on them as a political action committee called Educated Professionals for Jacksonville. And, he asks: 

“Is there a trend of top-down money entering local, low-stakes races?”

A: Whether you agree with Henry that School Board is considered “low-stakes,” the short answer to his question is: yes, money is flowing into local races from outside the city, and it’s not simple to track.

Florida campaign laws limit the kind and amount of donations candidates can receive. In local elections, individuals and organizations are mostly limited to donating $1,000 per candidate. 

But political action committees can receive and spend unlimited money to act in support of their preferred candidates. Political parties can also accept unlimited donations and act in support of candidates — even in school board races, which have been nonpartisan in Florida since 1998.

Duval GOP Chair Dean Black tells Jacksonville Today his party decided a few years ago to treat school board races as partisan anyway. The Republican Party is endorsing one candidate in each of Duval’s four school board races this year and is supporting them in a coordinated, strategic way designed to create a “solid, conservative Republican majority” on the School Board, he says.

”We’re doing the things that you would expect a well-developed, well-oiled political machine to do in furtherance of electing its nominees,” he said. “We do everything in our power — which is considerable — to elect Republicans in school board races.”

Black, who also serves in the Florida House representing part of Jacksonville, helped sponsor a resolution last year that will place a constitutional amendment on Florida voters’ ballots this November that, if approved, will make school board elections partisan beginning in 2026.

On the other hand, Duval County Democratic Party Chair Daniel Henry tells Jacksonville Today his party does not officially endorse candidates in nonpartisan races. (The Duval Democrats’ website does, however list “the right choice” in three of the four Duval School Board races.) He says his party does provide voter education support — like text messaging, phone banks and neighborhood canvassing to encourage residents to vote and tell them about what’s on the ballot. Individual candidates manage their own advertising efforts, though.

“I think they’re the best messengers to be able to advocate for themselves,” Henry says. “I think most voters want to hear directly from the candidate about the issues and the reason why they’re voting.”

Those District 3 mailers

In the case of the District 3 postcards, a PAC called Educated Professionals for Jacksonville footed the bill. Records show the group formed on May 20 of this year and quickly received two contributions of roughly $8,700 each, which it spent immediately on printing, which it classified as “voter education” expenses in state filings. 

PACs are obligated to report the money they spend, but their financial reports can lack detail, Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland tells Jacksonville Today in an email. 

“Many times it won’t be that specific as to say a mailer,” Holland says. “Rather, funds to a consultant who might be hired to send out such a mailer.”

The District 3 school board race has two candidates: incumbent Cindy Pearson and challenger Rebecca Nathanson. The Educated Professionals PAC does not explicitly support Nathanson — and the postcards don’t name her — but a number of dots connect her to the messages.

Educated Professionals lists Jacksonville resident Pamela Burton as its chairperson. The address on the PAC’s filing corresponds to the law office of Francis Shea, who lives with Burton, according to state voting records. Burton declined to comment for this article.

The donations that Educated Professionals received in June both came from a company formed in mid-2022 called PWR Consulting, which is registered to Pamela Burton’s daughter-in-law Megan Burton. 

PWR Consulting donated $1,000 — the maximum allowed — to Nathanson’s campaign on the first day she received donations in her current race last year. Since May, Nathanson’s campaign has spent more than $3,000 on consulting services from PWR and more than $5,000 on printing services from the same local printing company that produced Educated Professionals’ postcards. Pamela Burton has also personally donated to Nathanson’s campaign.

PWR, which does not have an online presence, also donated to school board candidates Reggie Blount and Melody Ann Bolduc this year. According to Supervisor of Elections records, in the last 18 months, PWR has received about $70,000 from various local candidates — including several school board candidates and District 5 City Council member Joe Carlucci, who paid PWR a $750 “campaign win bonus” in March 2023.

The most PAC money so far

When it comes to support from PACs, Nathanson is not alone. With over a month left until election day, most of the Duval school board candidates have received at least one donation from at least one PAC. Nathanson and District 7 candidate Melody Ann Bolduc, though, have received far more than the rest.

Nathanson’s opponent, Pearson, has so far received $2,000 in contributions from political committees: $1,000 each from the local teachers’ union and firefighters’ association. Sarah Ann Mannion, Bolduc’s opponent, has received one $500 contribution from a PAC called Jacksonville NOW, a relatively small PAC associated with the Jacksonville chapter of the National Organization for Women and funded by an array of mostly small donations from area retirees. 

“From what I’ve seen from candidates that we’re supporting in this race for school board, many of them have received a lot of funding from friends, family, community — grassroots-related support,” Henry says.

Some of the PACs that are supporting Nathanson, Bolduc and other candidates are headquartered in Jacksonville, but others are in Tallahassee and other cities around Florida and across the U.S. Many of the PACs involved in funding Duval’s local candidates are traceable back to the same handful of people in Tallahassee and Gainesville, and many of them are five years old or less.

Those PACs have a well-established record of contributing funds to each other — often in the form of a very large, multi-million-dollar PAC giving to medium-sized PACs, which in turn give to small PACs, which donate to candidates — thus creating a network of funds that becomes difficult to track. The larger PACs also regularly spend tens of thousands of dollars on “consulting,” “research,” and other activities that could be in direct support of a candidate. 

Because corporations often donate to large PACs, some of this year’s Duval County school board candidates are indirectly supported by companies like Publix, Florida Power & Light, the Jacksonville Jaguars, Gate, and an extensive list of smaller local companies, including some that have interests in charter school construction.

Still, one of the largest players in the game is the Republican party itself. PACs of all sizes regularly donate big bucks to the party’s various official groups and receive infusions of cash from it.

“We care very much about our school board races,” Black said. “We are all in to elect Republicans, and that is a part of a concerted effort.”

---

Updated: This story was corrected to reflect the amount of Jacksonville NOW’s donation to Sarah Mannion’s campaign. It was also updated to clarify the Duval Democrats’ support for School Board candidates. And, it was updated to reflect that the official position of the Duval GOP is to not endorse a candidate in the District 3 race because both candidates are registered Republicans. Dean Black personally endorses Nathanson in his capacity as a Florida state representative.