Maxwell: Florida lawmakers exempted themselves from stock-trading crackdown

By now, you’ve probably read a lot about the voter-ID aspects of Florida’s new election law.

I'm betting, though, you've heard much less about a little-known provision within that law that purports to crack down on stock trading for politicians.

Well, that’s probably because the Republican lawmakers who passed the law don't want you to know that they exempted themselves from their own crackdown.

Yes, they want “integrity” when it comes to stock-trading … but only for other people.

The language in "SAVE Act" states that only candidates “seeking federal office” must adhere to new rules requiring candidates to declare whether they intend to trade stocks while in office.

How discerning of them.

I was wondering if any of them could possibly justify this selective crackdown. So I sent emails weeks ago to four of the House Republicans who co-sponsored the bill - Adam Anderson, Jeff Holcomb, Jenna Persons-Mulicka and Dana Trabulsy - asking whether any of them wanted to explain the double standard. None did.

Honestly, their new trading disclosure is weaker than a Shirley Temple. It doesn't ban stock trades or even restrict them. It only asks candidates to state whether they plan to do so or have done so before. Yet this weak-sauce provision was apparently too much for legislators to impose upon themselves … and you have to wonder why.

One reason might be because Florida lawmakers do, in fact, buy and sell stocks - including stock in companies whose bottom lines they impact.

Take Disney, for instance. A few years ago, when Republicans were going after Disney for supporting LGBTQ rights in the infamous "Don't Say Gay"/"Parental Rights" debate, some lawmakers were very candid that they were trying to hurt Disney financially.

"Go woke, go broke," was a catchphrase parroted by the governor's office and others. And one of those who was most vocal in going after Disney in 2023 was then-Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, who's now the state's unelected CFO.

Back then, Ingoglia was leading the charge to strip Disney of longstanding special privileges he and other leaders had long indulged. So he made a show of telling Business Insider that he’d recently sold his Disney stock because he was a “principled, consistent conservative.” The outlet wrote about it in a piece entitled: "GOP lawmaker leading Florida legislature’s effort to rein in Disney was a company stock-holder until the DeSantis feud."

Well, that made me wonder how Ingoglia had been treating Disney back when he proudly held the company’s stock.

Much better, it turns out. In fact, back then, Ingoglia helped do Mickey a big favor.

Just two years earlier in 2021, when Republicans were calling for stricter regulation of companies that run social media platforms, Ingoglia personally pushed to make sure Disney didn't face those same regulations. Specifically, he pushed to insert language in the law that ensured the new crackdown wouldn’t affect any media company that also "owns and operates a theme park."

It was naked pandering to a special interest back when Disney and Florida Republicans were thick as thieves with Disney cutting them campaign checks and lawmakers doing Disney favors.

At the time of the social-media crackdown - when Ingoglia also had Disney stock in his E-Trade account, according to a financial disclosure that year - Ingoglia said he wanted to “make sure that Disney+ isn't caught up in this."

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Some Democratic legislators needled Ingoglia back then for his obvious attempt to shield Disney from his own law. One asked if the new language meant that Facebook could just buy a theme park and be exempted from the Republicans’ social media crackdown as well. Ingoglia admitted it did.

I asked Ingoglia and his spokeswoman if either one of them would like to comment about the state's CFO doing favors for Disney when he was holding their stock and going after the company after he made a show of saying he’d dumped it.

They did not.

Ingoglia's financial disclosures show he had $23,000 of Disney stock in 2020 and $20,000 in 2021, most of it in an E-Trade account. His 2022 filing showed no Disney stock in his E-Trade but still listed $4,778 worth in a Raymond James account. Lawmakers later removed the special carve-out for Disney in that social media bill after a federal judge suggested it was unconstitutional to pass laws that apply to some companies but not others.

The amount of Disney stock Ingoglia owned back when he was doing Disney favors was relatively small compared to his total net worth. He listed his net worth at $7.8 million in 2020 and at $28 million in his most recent disclosure.

Interestingly, Ingoglia helped jump-start his political career by running a "Government Gone Wild!" website that, in part, railed against politicians who saw their net worth go up while in public office.

In one YouTube video from 2011, he decried public officials "amassing personal fortunes" while in office. The main point of that video was to castigate members of Congress for trading stock while in office.

I actually agree with 2011 Blaise. So do most Americans. Research shows a majority of Americans on both sides of the political want stricter rules, if not an outright ban, on stock-trading by elected officials.

That’s probably why Florida Republicans inserted this language into the bill - to act like they were doing something while hoping nobody would notice they weren’t doing anything to themselves.

"It makes no sense that the oath requirement applies only to federal candidates," said Ben Wilcox, a founder of the government watchdog group, Integrity Florida. "Candidates for state and even local offices have as much of an opportunity to profit from insider stock trading as federal officeholders."

I agree. Wilcox went on to say: "The provisions in this bill give the public the illusion of a crackdown on insider trading, while in reality, these conflicts of interest will continue to exist."

That, in fact, seems to be the point.

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This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 6:19 AM.