Two weeks ago, we published a months worth of investigative work on Boca’s campaign financing that dropped a lot of jaws. The Sun Sentinel and others followed suit validating the record breaking amount of PAC money pouring into Boca’s City Council election coffers of five of Boca’s 12 council candidates. Campaign PACs are not new things in politics but, as far as folks seem to recall, this is the first time Boca Raton city council candidates have had them. But more novel for Boca is that of the five candidates (Thomson and Nachlas) have gone a step further and accepted donations into their PACs from other PACs. Donations to PACs are hidden in that they are on County or State reports and not included in City Campaign reports. And PACs accepting funds from other PACs further hides where money comes from.
PUBLISHED: February 21, 2026 at 10:27 AM EST
In the interest of transparency in a city culture that seems to fight it at every opportunity, we created a tool, the BocaFirst PAC Browser Tool so anyone can look through the web of PACs that are funding Boca’s candidates. More importantly, anyone can see who is and who isn’t accepting PAC to PAC transfers. Then something happened.
A slick, glossy, negative campaign flyers of dubious truthfulness hit mailboxes just after we published our Before You Vote and The Money Maze articles. It was not from a candidate’s PAC, this was a previously unknown PAC. But with State filings easily accessible, it was an easy matter to trace the mailer’s source and integrate it into the PAC to PAC to PAC scheme in play in Boca’s election. Others on social media traced the address to a business in West Palm Beach that does not answer the phone.
Anyway when the ad series hit, a quick lookup of the PAC (Keeping Citizens First, Inc) that paid for the mailer revealed that it is run by same person who is running the Thomson campaign PAC. Looking further, records show that it hasn’t had a donation to it since 2024. And, when it did have receipts, the funds came from two other PACs run by the same person. So in this case, a dormant PAC was dusted off to further obscure its source. Here is a screenshot of the PAC Browser Tool showing how the Floridians for Economic Leadership and Citizens for Law & Ethics PACs flowed money into Keeping Citizens First INC that paid for the negative campaign mailer.
The More You Know
PACs are legal entities registered with the state as being involved in electioneering. Campaign PACs bear the name of the candidate so when you see a negative ad from them, you know where it’s coming from. But the PACs accepting funds from other PACs are using the other PACs to hide who is behind the ads. BTW, the PAC names are entertainingly and, at times, hysterically facile attempts to put themselves forward as political movements or hoards of citizens arm in arm in common cause. But they are not. As far as the law goes, they need only be two people with at least $500. From what I have seen, they are plainly bank accounts run by attorneys funding any cause they choose with as little transparency as possible.
As diagramed in PAC Browser Tool, there are three PACs involved and operated by the same combo of Asnani/LeeBove of Cornerstone Consulting in West Palm Beach.
- The Keeping Citizens First, Inc. PAC that sent the recent mailers was the recipient of $125,000 from the Citizen’s For Economic Leadership (CFEL) PAC.
- In 2025, the CFEL PAC donated $90,000 directly to the Running With Andy Thomson campaign PAC.
That $125,000 donation from the Citizen’s For Economic Leadership PAC to Keeping Citizens First PAC pays for a lot of glossy flyers in your mailbox. Campaigns, with these big money PACs from outside Boca, can send those mailers all day long and it doesn’t show up on a campaign treasurers report to the City. Here’s a screenshot from the PAC browser showing the web of PACs around the Citizen’s For Economic Leadership PAC. There’s plenty more of the web in the PAC Browser that traces to Florida Cristals (big sugar), the Seminole Tribe and more – if you have the stomach for it.
Finally, speaking of outside funding of Boca campaigns, here is a recent infographic we developed using the data we mined from our work tracing PACs. In it, we separate funds coming from individuals vs businesses that are inside Boca Raton from those outside. We then further split those amounts based on whether the inside or outside funds were from PACs or campaigns.
