Who gives the most political money to Miami-Dade’s mayor and county commissioners?

To raise more than $6 million for their political committees last year, the elected officials running Miami-Dade’s government relied on developers and county vendors for most of their largest contributions.

A Miami Herald analysis of more than 1,500 campaign-finance entries found that the top donors last year include the Miami real estate mogul planning a marina complex on the county-owned Seaquarium site, companies hired to manage Miami-Dade streetlights and traffic signals, and an affordable housing developer building a massive mixed-use project that includes county housing complexes.

Even though no county politician was on the ballot in 2025, the 13 commissioners and Miami-Dade’s mayor kept up a steady fundraising pace, with $6.7 million coming into the political committees linked to them in mandated disclosure forms. Of the 10 top donors on the Herald’s list, seven gave to at least six of those committees.

Veterans of the county’s political fundraising circuit say they’re getting more requests to give than they did in past decades. One reason: Voter-imposed term limits that took effect in 2020 ushered in a set of commissioners forced to leave office after eight years. The capped tenures mean more commissioners are contemplating political life after their time on the board — be it a run for Congress, mayor or other local office — once their terms expire.

“They’re very aggressive. More than before,” said Ralph Garcia-Toledo, a longtime county contractor who served as finance chair for U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez when he was Miami-Dade mayor between 2011 and 2020. “The dynamics have really changed with term limits. … I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. It’s just reality.”

The undisputed leader in fundraising last year was Anthony Rodriguez, a first-term commissioner who serves as chair of the County Commission. A former Republican state representative, Rodriguez has control over the commission’s agenda, committee assignments and other decisions that come with being elected chair by fellow board members.

His political committee, A Bolder Florida, took in $2 million last year, more than double the second-place finisher in the Herald’s fundraising tally. That adds to Rodriguez’s already considerable war chest as he faces reelection in August and considers a 2028 run to succeed the county’s current term-limited mayor, Daniella Levine Cava.

The Herald sifted through the electronic filings of 15 political committees linked to Levine Cava and the 13 commissioners in office at the end of the year. Committees for two former commissioners who left for other posts — Eileen Higgins, now the mayor of Miami, and Kevin Cabrera, who was named U.S. ambassador to Panama — weren’t included in the tally.

Then the Herald used business records, news reports and interviews to link the obscure corporate entities and shell companies often used for political donations to the actual well-known players on the county’s donor circuit.

Those tallies were then combined to get a master list of who gave the most to incumbents last year, creating a fuller picture of who politicians can rely on for their political cash. County office holders typically rely on the same set of donors for the money needed to fund both reelection campaigns and other political needs.

While Levine Cava can’t run again for mayor in 2028, the 70-year-old Democrat who presides over the county’s purchasing and zoning staff still raised over $500,000 last year for her political committee, Our Democracy.

Here are some notable findings from the Herald’s analysis:

Top developer? Swerdlow

Michael Swerdlow came out on top among developers who gave big to Miami-Dade’s elected officials. Corporate entities linked to his Coconut Grove development company, the Swerdlow Group, gave a combined $185,000 to Levine Cava and nine of the 13 commissioners.

Swerdlow is a veteran developer who focuses on deals using government land for large mixed-use projects that often include affordable housing. That includes his $3 billion Little River venture, which will revamp county public housing complexes as part of a new community with shopping and transit options and 5,700 residential units renting at affordable or workforce prices.

In an interview, Swerdlow said he never feels pressure to give but is a reliable donor because he wants to keep dealing with the politicians he knows.

“I never give money to get a project. I give it because I want to maintain stability on the commission,” he said, adding that a constant fight for his development firm is getting the Miami-Dade bureaucracy to follow the pro-housing agenda of the county’s elected officials. “The only way you can get those departments to behave themselves is to keep the commissioners kicking the s--- out of those departments.”

Rodriguez has the most cash on hand

Along with leading the way in fundraising last year, Commission Chair Rodriguez also dominates when it comes to the all-important “cash on hand” metric. In fact, he has so much money in his political committee — $3.7 million as of Dec. 31 — that A Bolder Florida’s top contributor in 2025 was Regions Bank. That wasn’t through donations. Instead, the committee earned $69,000 in interest revenue.

Which county vendors donate the most?

County contractors earning money from Miami-Dade also are top donors to the elected officials in charge of those contracts.

Transportation America, a Miami company that runs the county’s transit shuttle program for people physically unable to take buses or trains, finished fourth on the Herald’s list, with $146,000 in contributions.

Horsepower Electric and AUM Construction, two county contractors led by members of the same family, collectively gave $135,500. In 2024, commissioners awarded Horsepower a contested contract to update the county’s traffic-light system, and the company also recently secured a contract to fix county streetlights, too.

CDR Maguire, an emergency management firm that ran county testing centers at the start of the COVID pandemic, rounded out the Herald’s list with $90,000 in donations.

Other top developers

David Martin, a developer with multiple county development deals in the works, finished just behind Swerdlow in the Herald’s donations tally. Corporate entities linked to Terra, the Martin development firm with offices about a block from Swerdlow’s in Coconut Grove, gave $162,500 last year. Martin is best known now for planning a $100 million redevelopment of the waterfront Seaquarium property, with county-approved plans for an aquarium, restaurants, dry-dock boat storage and a marina.

Another developer on the Herald’s list, GL Homes, is pursuing county approval of a residential project on the shuttered Calusa golf course in West Kendall. GL Homes gave $102,500.

MasTec money

A company pushing to build Miami-Dade’s new garbage incinerator was a major donor last year. MasTec, whose owners are David Beckham’s partners in his new Miami soccer stadium, gave $145,000 to county incumbents last year. The Coral Gables-based company is part of a partnership led by Spain’s FCC Environmental Services hoping to get a county contract to build an incinerator to replace the one in Doral that was shut down by a fire in 2023.

Committees supporting committees

Political committees can be large donors, too. The top donor on the Herald’s list was a political committee backing the chair of the Miami City Commission, Christine King. King is a close ally of Miami-Dade Commissioner Keon Hardemon, himself a former city commissioner in Miami.

On Oct. 1 — three weeks before King won reelection to a second term with almost 85% of the vote — the political committee backing her, Community First, donated $400,000 to All Miami-Dade. That’s a political committee backing Hardemon, who was reelected to a second term on the County Commission in 2024. It’s not known why Community First made the donation. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Community First’s chair, lawyer Vincent Brown, also did not share a reason for the donation during a brief interview with the Herald.

Hardemon registered to raise money for All Miami-Dade in 2024 but said in a recent interview that he couldn’t confirm the money received by All Miami-Dade last year was supporting him. “I don’t know how much they raised for me,” he said.

The committee’s filing paperwork lists a cousin of the commissioner as chair of the committee, and its address as the West Park office of the political consultancy of Barbara Hardemon, the county commissioner’s aunt.

Donations for the commission chair and potential future chair

A Stronger Florida is a political committee chaired by Celeste Camm, director of operations for the Rubin, Turnbull & Associates lobbying firm in Tallahassee. While the firm does not appear to have lobbyists registered in Miami-Dade, Rubin Turnbull is active in Tallahassee.

A Stronger Florida gave $50,000 to two commissioners: Rodriguez and Danielle Cohen Higgins, who is considered a leading contender to succeed him as chair at the end of this year. Camm did not respond to a request for comment.

The $100,000 in contributions put the Rubin Turnbull committee in eighth place on the Herald’s list.

More committees

Ninth place went to a collection of political committees — Young Professionals in Florida, Voters for Truth, Actions Matter — that collectively donated $97,950 to Miami-Dade incumbents.

The Herald is counting them as a single donor in the list because each has listed as its chair Fort Lauderdale lawyer Jason Haber. Haber did not respond to a request for comment.