Billionaire Ken Griffin was 2024’s top political donor in Miami-Dade County government

In a year that saw Miami-Dade County’s mayor and commissioners raise $11 million for their political committees, no individual gave more than a Miami newcomer: billionaire Ken Griffin.

His $500,000 donation in June to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s successful reelection campaign was the top check for a county incumbent in a year when seven commissioners also won four more years in office and the six others took in political donations, too.

For this story, the Miami Herald analyzed more than 2,000 donations made since Jan. 1, 2024, for political committees linked to the 14 incumbents in Miami-Dade government: Levine Cava and the 13 commissioners.

The analysis didn’t include donations for other elected posts in the county, including state attorney and the recently created offices of sheriff, elections supervisor and tax collector.

The Herald then attempted to match individual donations with known donors, such as linking the Related Group development firm with the $38,500 that RUDG LLC gave to political committees backing seven commissioners.

Both entities share an address and corporate officers. That made up a small portion of the roughly $185,000 Related gave to incumbents in the government that has awarded Related multiple deals to build affordable and public housing.

The list won’t be comprehensive, given the volume of donations and the difficulty of matching some entities with the corporate or political interests behind the donated dollars.

Every incumbent up for election last year won in the August primary except for Commissioner Raquel Regalado, who won a second term in a November runoff race. Candidates raised significant sums in 2023 for the August elections, so regular donors not on the Herald’s 2024 list may have given the bulk of their money the prior year.

Even so, the ranking presented in the accompanying chart offers a look at familiar players in county races. The list includes a lobbying firm, multiple developers, wealthy individual donors and county vendors.

The top donors include:

Ken Griffin, top GOP donor and hedge fund titan

Griffin’s $500,000 donation to Levine Cava, a Democrat, in her race against a field of mostly Republican challengers drew national attention in June because of his standing as a top GOP donor nationally.

The head of Citadel, a hedge fund that moved its headquarters from Chicago to Miami, is building a high-rise in Miami’s Brickell Avenue office district that needs county approvals. While developers tend to give broadly, Griffin’s only county donation in 2024 was to Levine Cava and not the 13 commissioners who have the power to cause trouble on zoning votes.

In a statement released to media after the donation, Griffin described his Levine Cava support as a nonpartisan endorsement of her record on public safety and other issues.

“Mayor Levine Cava is an accomplished and proactive leader for the people of Miami-Dade County,” the statement read. “I am proud to support Mayor Levine Cava’s leadership and endorse her reelection.”

Christian Ulvert’s political committees

While Griffin was the top single donor in 2024, Ulvert could be considered the top source of dollars for the year. The longtime Democratic campaign operative controls three political committees that funneled nearly $1 million into Levine Cava’s own committee, Our Democracy. His committees made the contributions after Levine Cava won a second term in the nonpartisan race for county mayor.

At the time, Levine Cava and Ulvert were trying to elect the Democratic candidates for sheriff, election supervisor and other partisan races for posts independent of the county government under the mayor and commission.

With Our Democracy backing the Democratic candidates, Ulvert’s political committees received big donations from state and national groups aimed at helping left-leaning candidates and causes, including Floridians Protecting Freedom in Sarasota and Global Impact in Virginia.

The Ulvert committees then gave $990,000 to Levine Cava’s Our Democracy. Despite raising more, the Democratic candidates backed by Ulvert and Levine Cava lost in November as President-elect Donald Trump flipped Miami-Dade red with a double-digit win.

Southern Group lobbying firm

The Southern Group has offices across Florida, and its political committees spent heavily supporting county commissioners in 2024. County Hall regulars Oscar Braynon II and Edgar Castro work out of Southern’s Miami office, and their clients include Doral (a city trying to get Miami-Dade to move its garbage incinerator elsewhere), Horsepower Electric (which recently won a smart-light contract from the county) and Infinity Gardens (an apartment project requiring a slight expansion of the Urban Development Boundary to start construction in South Miami-Dade).

The Southern Group gave about $305,000 to county incumbents, mostly to commissioner committees, according to the Herald tally.

MasTec, the company behind David Beckham’s Miami soccer venture

Jorge Mas may be best known now as an owner of InterMiami, the soccer franchise launched by David Beckham and boasting Lionel Messi as its star player. But Mas and his brother Jose, another Beckham partner, also own MasTec, an infrastructure company in Coral Gables that, along with subsidiary Lemartec, has county contracts.

And while InterMiami plans to play in a stadium on land owned by the city of Miami, the soccer venture secured changes in county zoning laws around the nearby Miami International Airport to make construction possible. MasTec gave about $260,000 to incumbents in 2024, mostly to commissioner committees.

Triple Five, the developer behind the mega-mall plan

Triple Five, the owner of Minnesota’s Mall of America, wants to build a retail theme park in North Miami-Dade called American Dream Miami. Executives had hoped to win a law change in 2024 that would lift a ban on certain county subsidies for the project, but that effort stalled in September when its sponsor asked for a delay on the vote. Triple Five gave about $125,000, mostly to support commissioners.

Terra, one of Miami’s top developers

A development firm in Miami run by David Martin, Terra has multiple deals in front of Miami-Dade. It recently won a $75 million county subsidy for the hotel it is building for the Miami Beach Convention Center. The company built a retail and residential complex around the county’s Coconut Grove Metrorail station, and Martin also is pitching an incinerator site in western Miami-Dade as an alternative to the Levine Cava plan to rebuild the trash-burning facility in Doral. Terra gave $90,000, mostly to commissioner committees.

This story was originally published January 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.