Before You Vote.

It’s long been known to Boca residents who live, work and play east of I-95 that candidates who are focused on quality of life issues are easy to identify. They are not the ones with large signs on corporate property, large campaign coffers and the object of gated community HOA’s telling you how to vote. But, ICYMI, in Boca’s 2026 election cycle, there’s been an explosion of money funneled into this election. David and Goliath matchups are not new to Boca but this time, when you follow the money, the disparity is massive. Why is that? This article looks at the use of Political Action Committees (aka PACs) by five of the 12 candidates. Before you vote, we put together a suite of articles for residents on how the game has changed and how it’s the same song … different verse.

The Money Maze: A look at who’s funding Boca’s $1,000,000 election	We literally followed the money and broke down where each campaign is funded from, how much is from outside Boca and sneaky things corporations do to bypass the $1000 donation limit.
This Isn’t Our First Referendum	How residents fought for and won to keep the 2016 City Council from turning Wildflower Park into a restaurant and the one council member who fought them every step of the way.
Park Wars Episode 3: The P3 Menace	The 411 on three Boca Raton resident petitions against Public Private Partnership deals and how each City Council maneuvered to block them.

More PAC and Special Interest Money Than Voter Donations

Political Committees, aka PACs, have come to town. Last month’s article “Who is behind the One Boca Ad campaign?“, researched the PAC funding behind One Boca. Boca’s historic four city council seat election is in full swing. It is largely PAC money that is behind those mind numbing TV/social media ads, copious text ads and forest decimating glossy flyers overstuffing your mailbox about the current City Council’s thousand household transit district ummm I mean “Walkable Neighborhood with office and hotel space” shoved onto the most traffic dysfunctional part of Boca Raton.

We ran the numbers. It’s a million dollar Boca election and counting.

How much PAC money are we talking about?

Two aspects of PACs are worth noting:

1. Having a Candidate PAC means people, businesses and other PACs can donate more then the $1000 per person maximum
2. Candidate PACs enable large donations from other PACs which hides the source behind multiple levels of PACs¹

The success of PACs is in the hands of voters. After weeks of crawling through the campaign and PAC financial filings, we now know how much PAC money is lined up behind which candidates. Five Boca Council candidates created PACs. As of the most recent filing (4Q25) here is an infographic of the breakdown between donations to a campaign versus the PAC money behind the campaign. These are the five candidates using a PAC:

In brief:

• Pie wedges show how much of the total campaign is funded by PACs verses the traditional campaign donations².
• The larger pie size in the top row reflects an order of magnitude larger campaign total (more detail).
• As of 4Q25, only the mayoral campaign PACs have accepted donations from other “External PACs” (more detail).

These are the infographics for the other candidates NOT using PACs:

The Web of PACs

Because PACs aren’t limited to the $1000 maximum laws for campaigns, large donations flow into PACs in one fell swoop. They also can bounce from PAC to PAC to PAC. We detected this behavior in the county and state filings of the PACs. So we took notes and created two maps of how the money flows, who controls the PAC and who gave how much to whom in 2025.

Here is the first map. It’s a high level map of how the money flows:

Here is an example of the breakdown of donations in the Pac Browser Tool for each campaign and PAC displayed by hovering over a blue pin.

Summary

PAC money is fungible. When a PAC donates to a Candidate PAC there’s information about where the money actually came from amongst the various donations to the PAC. We followed the donations four levels deep and categorized the donations so with the BocaFirst PAC Browser Tool, voters can see where the funds come from that poured into Boca’s mayoral campaign. Besides our analysis of PAC donation source, here are, some conclusions we drew from the flow of funds … YMMV:

• The money from three PACs is from numerous other PACs ranging from the Seminole Tribe of Florida to a California importer of tea from India.
• Some candidates with PACs haven’t taken money from other PACs
• Some candidates don’t use a PAC

Here is one example of a trail we found of fungible $777K from the Seminole Tribe PAC and others into two PACs managed by the Thomson campaign consultant and providing the majority of funds in the Thomson PAC with a token $1000 to a PAC that donated the majority of its funds to the Nachlas PAC.

Boca’s March election is now over $1,000,000 and it’s due to candidates using PACs. What services or promises does a PAC owner give to another PAC owner so that they donate tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars? PACS only work if voters let them. So before you vote, ask yourself “is this the Pandora’s box you want to open for Boca Raton?”.

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FOOTNOTES

1. For Boca’s 2026 Municipal election, we created the BocaFirst PAC Browser Tool that lays out 4 levels worth of PACs and allows residents to see where the money is actually coming from when a PAC is doing the donating. ↩︎
2. Campaign Donations as reported in treasurer reports include “Self Loans” from the candidate. Since these can be repaid to the candidate from donations, they are not included in this calculation. However, “Self Donations” are not refundable to the candidate and ARE included. ↩︎