Take a bow Jack Shifrel. No matter what happens in tomorrow's election, you've already made over $15,000 across eight county and state judicial races. Of course, Shifrel won't be keeping all of that loot. Some of it surely goes to the condo commandos who make sure that a candidate's name appears on the palm card distributed in Broward's biggest senior residential complexes.
But Shifrel's winnings are modest compared to those of other campaign operatives. After the jump, we'll analyze spending in every judicial contest to see what operatives are backing which candidates.
Let's start with the big spenders in the Broward Circuit Court races. Judge Jack Luzzo, running in Group 24, spent a whopping $73,000 to hire Dynamic Strategies, from Coral Springs. I'm trying to get more information about who's behind the group -- it's registered to a Michael Kaplan.
He made bank in this election season. Judge Carlos Rebollo, the incumbent in Group 22, paid Dynamic $59,000. Group 52 Judge Sandra Perlman spent $31,000 on Dynamic. Barbara Anne McCarthy, the incumbent in Group 23 dropped $29,000. And Group 2 incumbent Judge Kenneth Gillespie paid $11,000 for Dynamic's help in keeping his seat. That makes Dynamic the biggest winner in the local judicial races, with over $200,000 in revenue. UPDATE: Dynamic Strategies appears to be a direct mail company -- not a consultant.
Fort Lauderdale operative Dan Lewis, the man behind Strategic Technologies Research, did quite well, especially with Judge Lisa Porter, who's trying to defend her Group 47 seat against a challenge by former Broward Health general counsel Laura Seidman. Porter paid Lewis' group $58,000. Gillespie chipped in about $10,000 to Lewis' firm.
Sunstream Strategies is another Fort Lauderdale outfit, organized by Obama campaign activists Ashley Walker and Jackie Lee. Rebollo paid that firm $17,000. Ken Gottlieb, running in Group 23 of the county court race, paid Sunstream about $4,000.
Amy Rose of Coconut Creek runs Win on the Ground. She rounded up $15,000 in judicial campaign work, thanks to business from Luzzo ($6,000), McCarthy ($5,000) and Sandra Perlman ($5,000).
Local Democratic activist Ron Mills is the man behind FootPrint Strategies, which does robo-calls. Between seven state and county races, he made $14,000.
Stay tuned for updates.
