2025 HD 32 Florida House Special Election

Bob White

The 2025 HD 32 Republican Primary Special Election in the first quarter of the year

was one of the closest three-way races in Florida election history. The three

candidates garnered 35%, 33% and 32% of the vote respectively. There were 16,120

total votes cast in the election with only 306 votes separating the first and second

place finishers and 194 votes separating the second and third place finishers. Vote

totals in the race were as follows:

  • Brian Hodgers 5,642 35%

  • Bob White 5,336 33%

  • Terry Cronin 5,142 32%

The difference in the race? Money. PAC Money especially. The second-place finisher,

Bob White, was outspent 2.4 to 1 by the winner, Brian Hodgers, and 5 to 1 by the

third-place finisher Terry Cronin who spent a staggering $856,952 in the primary.

Total expenditures by the candidates break down as follows:

  • Bob White $170,651

  • Brian Hodgers $404,585 2.4 to 1

  • Terry Cronin $856,952 5.02 to 1

More importantly, here’s the breakdown in Political Committee (PC) money:

  • Bob White $ 16,376

  • Brian Hodgers $ 64,461

  • Terry Cronin $472,306

The almost a half million dollars in PC money poured into the Cronin

campaign came from one source … the federal level Republican State

Leadership Committee. The RSLC is a national organization that raises

money to support state level republican candidates. On the national board of

the RSLC are current Florida House Speaker Danny Perez and Florida Senate

President Ben Albritton. Perez and Albritton secured $1,000,000 from the

federal level RSLC as a contribution to a Florida PC, Sunshine State First,

chaired by the notorious Stafford Jones, a well-known unsavory political

operative in Florida politics.

Jones took that $1,000,000 and laundered it through multiple other political

committees that all ultimately made large contributions to one political

committee, Keep Florida Winning. Keep Florida Winning then made a

$780,000 contribution to the Florida Committee for Accountability, which

directly spent $472,306 on mailers and television advertising on behalf of the

Cronin campaign, attacking the White campaign.

Why would the current Speaker of the Florida House, Danny Perez, steer this

money into a political committee to be used to attack the White campaign.

Simple. They didn’t want White in the Florida House. Through his leadership

of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida, White had a well-deserved

reputation for holding legislative leadership accountable for their

capitulation to the “donor class” in Florida at the expense of the citizens of

Florida.

This is just one example of the dirty little secret in Florida politics. Large

sums of campaign cash are being “legally laundered” through various

political committees to conceal the original source. We no longer have a

government Of, By and For the people of Florida. It’s far too often Of, By and

For the “Donor Class” on behalf of the special interests with business before

the legislature that they represent