A $200,000 Check and More Than $3 Million: Outside Money Floods Tallahassee's City Hall Races in the Final Days
A national climate advocacy group's $200,000 check to Jeremy Matlow's political committee - reported as possibly the largest single check ever in a Tallahassee municipal election - tops a money race that has passed $3 million across the local ballot.
The fight for City Hall will be decided on Tuesday, Nov. 3, and the closing days of the campaign are being fought with the largest checks Tallahassee municipal politics has seen. The Tallahassee Democrat reported from newly filed campaign finance records that the Green Advocacy Project, a national climate advocacy organization, wrote a $200,000 check dated Oct. 19 to Friends of Jeremy Matlow, the political committee of the mayoral candidate and city commissioner - a contribution the Democrat reported may be the single largest check ever dropped into a Tallahassee municipal election. The same group gave $150,000 to Matlow's One Tallahassee committee during the 2024 cycle.
The money is not one-sided, and it is not only in the mayor's race between Matlow and former state lawmaker Loranne Ausley. Across the city, county, school board and county judge races, candidates raised a combined $2.58 million and spent $2.27 million this election year - figures that pass $3 million once political committees and parties are counted, according to the Democrat's tally. Tallahassee United, the committee behind mailers and texts attacking Matlow and Dot Inman-Johnson, raised $447,750 and spent $414,000, with Ghazvini-family development companies giving at least $175,000. Matlow, in an email reported by the Democrat, said the Green Advocacy contribution was meant to counter the Ghazvini family's spending against his slate. In the candidate accounts themselves, Ausley led local fundraising with $587,583 through Oct. 16, followed by Matlow at $313,374, Tom Derzypolski at $243,518, Dianne Williams-Cox at $195,542, P.J. Perez at $125,237 and Inman-Johnson at $50,293.
All of it is chasing an electorate that is already turning out at a midterm pace Tallahassee has not seen since 2018. As of 9 a.m. Saturday, 66,321 of Leon County's 184,523 registered voters - nearly 36 percent - had cast mail or early ballots, a number that grew through the final day of early voting on Sunday. Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley told the Democrat turnout was trending on the high side for a midterm and projected it would land around 65 percent, roughly on par with 2018. Three City Commission contests, including the mayor's race, will settle which side holds the 3-2 majority that has controlled City Hall for eight years.
