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Deep Pockets: Top Florida Political Donors
As the dust settled after the 2010 elections, Florida Trend used the Florida Division of Elections campaign finance database to compile a list of the state's top 25 political contributors — and they're not all from nearby. The state's top political givers this year range from well-known Florida entrepreneurs and attorneys to a Connecticut hedge fund manager. Our analysis includes only direct donations to state candidates and the state's two major political party committees. Donations to federal candidates' campaigns, political action committees and other groups including 527s were excluded from our analysis but are highlighted in our "Top 10" summaries. See the list of this year's Deep Pockets.
» See also: Top 10 Business ContributorsThe Fresh Diet: Recipe for Sizzling Growth
Zalmi Duchman never went to college, financed his business on his credit card, and can’t even taste the food his company delivers, because he keeps kosher.
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How State Farm Cashed in on a Crisis
When State Farm stepped up its march out of Florida, it loudly and publicly claimed hurricanes were pushing it toward financial disaster. The company argued it had to leave the Florida coast -- and drop nearly half a million customers -- because it could not profit in a state wracked by so many storms. But State Farm never really left Florida. A Herald-Tribune investigation finds Florida's largest insurer has instead found an easier way to profit from homeowners desperate for coverage. And the desperation State Farm helped create allows it to command some of the highest rates in the world. The conduit for this back-door insurance is DaVinci Reinsurance Ltd., an offshore company with no physical office or employees of its own that sells policies to insurers to cover their storm losses. [Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune]
Hard-hit Madoff Investors Cry Foul as Repayment Demands
Two years after his life savings were obliterated by Bernard Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme, retired ophthalmologist Gerald Blumenthal thought he had endured the worst of the financial upheaval. He and his wife sold their Boca Raton home for a more affordable one in Boynton Beach. At 78, he got a job as a security guard in Broward County until the drive and late hours became too much. To pick up the slack, his 76-year-old wife heads to work each day as a preschool teacher. While not the retirement they envisioned, they were getting by. Then, last week, he got a phone call from his lawyer. The court-appointed trustee who is liquidating Madoff's phony financial empire is demanding that Blumenthal pay back the money he withdrew from the IRA account he established with the once-revered financial manager decades ago. "I guess they want me to be destitute," he said. Having lost the lion's share of another Madoff account, he said can't afford to repay the money. More galling, is that he withdrew the money because he had to. Under IRS rules, people have to begin tapping their IRAs six months after their 70th birthdays. [Source: Palm Beach Post]
High-End Homes Selling Again, at a Discount
Joe Varner couldn't buy a luxury home in South Tampa until he sold his plush spread in Ocala.
He listed the 8,000-square-foot Ocala home in the summer of 2009 for $1.8 million. He expected the sale to take years. Then he lowered the price. The home sold in July for $1.2 million.
A month later, he bought a five-bedroom home in Tampa for $1.25 million. The rather quick turnaround in a once-frozen high-end market surprised him.
"We were pleased," the 39-year-old said. "We felt very, very fortunate."
The sales of million-dollar-plus homes and condos aren't skyrocketing, but they are selling again at a discount. Sales are up 22 percent in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties, according to the Pinellas Realtor Organization. Through October, 192 have sold, compared with 157 for the same period last year.
Real estate professionals credit the improving economy and stock market, price slashing and low interest rates for the uptick in sales. High-end buyers have plenty of choices. Currently, more than 400 homes and condos are selling at $1 million or more in the bay area.
[Source: St. Petersburg Times]
ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:
› Clearwater Investor Fights to Recover "Flash Crash" Losses
Early on the afternoon of May 6, the financial world watched in horror as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 600 points in five minutes.
At the same time, Wesley "Skip" Shepherd's stock in Philip Morris International was plummeting from $48.58 a share to $28.68.
Within a few harrowing minutes, the market recovered and Philip Morris bounced back to $47. But it was too late for Shepherd. The sudden price drop had triggered an automatic sell order and his shares sold for $42.35 — $8 a share less than what he paid for them and far less than they are worth now.
The market's wild ride that day quickly became known as the "flash crash." And as federal regulators tried to figure out what caused it, Shepherd, a 67-year-old seasonal Clearwater resident, began filling a three-ring binder with complaints to his brokerage firm, the Securities and Exchange Commission and anyone else he could think of.
› 50 Years After Baby-Selling in Gainesville, Pain Lingers
On Nov. 24, 1958, teenager Barbara Johnson held the daughter she had just given birth to at a doctor's office in Williston, looked into her blue eyes and said, "Some day, you will come find me. I know you will — you've got to."
Today, 70-year-old Barbara Johnson Weeks Rainey is living in Alabama and still waiting to find the daughter she gave life to and then gave up to what she thought was a legitimate adoption agency in Gainesville. What she says she later discovered was that "Col." Robert Ryan, the man running Gainesville's Southern Rescue Workers' maternity home — the unlicensed facility where Barbara lived during her pregnancy — was actually selling the babies born of the mothers living there.
In an era when the societal stigma against giving birth to a child outside of wedlock was strong, unmarried pregnant girls were sent away to homes like the Southern Rescue Workers facility so their reputations — and their families' — would not be ruined.
And Robert Ryan learned he could take advantage of the situation by exploiting the girls and extorting the potential adoptive parents.
› Miami Dade College President Sees Opportunity for One and All
We're at a bakery on Coral Way in The Roads, having a morning cafecito, when a poised young Caribbean woman comes to our table. ``Sorry to interrupt,'' she says. ``But I have to shake your hand and thank you, Dr. Padrón.''
On a crisp Sunday afternoon at the Miami Book Fair International, a group of giggly college students run up to him as if this professorial bespectacled grandfather were a rock star. They give him a peck on the cheek, chat for a bit about the fair's offerings, then one pleads, ``Would you take a picture with us?''
Miami Dade College President Eduardo Padrón isn't just our local educational star with friends in high places -- from five U.S. presidents to such MDC alums as Emilio Estefan and Andy Garcia. He's also an international celeb of sorts, bestowed the title of Commandeur in the Ordre des Palms Académiques in France, tapped as an honorary soldier for the poor in San Martin's order in Argentina and knighted by Spain as a foreign diplomat of sorts in Queen Isabella's order. This year he was named among the "10 Best College Presidents'' by Time magazine and Floridian of the Year by Florida Trend magazine.
Not bad for a Cuban refugee who arrived via the Pedro Pan program at age 15 and after graduating high school in 1963 couldn't find a college that would take him except for the ``Chicken Coop College,'' as MDC's first buildings were dubbed.
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Eduardo Padrón, Floridian of the Year
› FARO Technologies Sees Turnaround
With sales, profits and stock price soaring, laser-system maker FARO Technologies Inc. could be the region's comeback player of the year in 2010.
The Lake Mary company has regained its footing after a dismal 2009, during which sales plummeted 30 percent and losses totaled nearly $11 million amid the global economic downturn. FARO also laid off hundreds of workers, shedding a third of its global work force, including dozens of people at its Seminole County headquarters.
Now sales and profits have rebounded at double-digit percentage rates. Its stock price has risen more than 50 percent since September. And the company is benefiting from the nationwide uptick in manufacturing, which economists have credited with pulling the country out of recession.
FARO is even hiring back a few people, though at a very slow and cautious pace.
› Stimulus Pumped Millions into Road Projects
When President Barack Obama signed the federal stimulus bill early last year, he announced it would represent the largest investment in the nation's infrastructure since the development of the interstate system in the 1950s.
While it would be difficult to argue that the stimulus, or American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, lived up to those lofty expectations locally, the federal funding did get a series of area road projects off the drawing board and under construction. Alachua County and Gainesville officials said the federal monies got several projects moving that otherwise would have lacked funding and, in doing so, freed up money for other construction projects.
The stimulus pumped approximately $14.8 million into transportation-related infrastructure projects and public transportation, according to information from the Florida Department of Transportation, Alachua County and the city of Gainesville.
› Navy Veterans Former Lawyer: "I Was Duped"
Until now, retired Capt. Samuel F. Wright, legal counsel and political lobbyist for the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, has declined to speak publicly about the nonprofit charity that has been revealed to be a spectacular scam.
"I feel terrible about the whole thing,'' Wright said in breaking his silence in a 90-minute interview last week. "I feel embarrassed. I guess we live and learn."
Wright said he blamed himself for accepting Bobby Thompson's "cockamamy'' explanations. He believed the Navy Veterans was a genuine nonprofit, he said, and its pony-tailed founder a wealthy if eccentric retired intelligence officer who poured his own cash into right-wing causes.
Instead, the Navy Veterans network of national offices and roster of tens of thousands of members were an elaborate invention, as was Thompson himself. He had stolen his identity, adopted the guise of a Navy lieutenant commander and operated his bogus charity from a roach-infested duplex in one of Tampa's tougher neighborhoods.
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Business Beat - Week of May 10th
