Follow the Money: How to Search Florida Campaign Finance Records
Every candidate, political committee and electioneering group in Florida state and local races must report who gives them money and how they spend it. Those reports are public, and the Florida Division of Elections puts them in a searchable database. Disclosures must include each donor's name and address, plus occupation for gifts over $100. Federal races, such as Congress, are reported separately to the Federal Election Commission.
How much one donor can give
Limits are set in Section 106.08 of Florida Statutes:
Statewide candidates, such as governor or Cabinet, and Supreme Court justices facing retention: $3,000 per election.
Legislative, countywide and multicounty candidates, plus trial and appeals judges: $1,000 per election.
Races smaller than countywide, such as city or district seats: $1,000 per election.
The primary and general count as separate elections, so a donor can usually give the limit in each unless the candidate is unopposed. The same statute bars counties and cities from setting their own limits.
Committees and ECOs
Candidate limits do not tell the whole story. Under Section 106.011, a group that raises or spends more than $500 in a calendar year to influence elections counts as a political committee. Apart from a narrow cap tied to certain ballot-initiative committees, Section 106.08 sets no general limit on gifts to these committees. An electioneering communications organization, or ECO, is a group whose election work is limited to ads that name a candidate without explicitly saying vote for or against. Those ads count as electioneering communications if they run within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of other elections.
How to search a donor
Open the state's contribution records search.
Enter a contributor name. Choose whether the name should contain, start with, or sound like your text.
Narrow by city or ZIP code, occupation, amount or election year.
Choose candidates, committees or both, then submit.
Download results as a tab-delimited file to sort in a spreadsheet.
According to the database instructions, committee records go back to January 1, 1996, and candidate records begin with the 1996 election. Separate searches cover expenditures and transfers between committees, which is often where money moves out of sight of the first donor list.
How we reported this: This explainer was drafted with AI assistance from the sources linked above, and every fact was checked against those sources. See an error? Contact us and we'll correct it.
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