Candidate's deep-pocketed donors give voter pause

Palm Beach Post
October 20, 2010

As a Lake Worth resident, I am dismayed that in this campaign season The Post has ignored the first rule of political reporting: Follow the money.

The list of contributors to Lake Worth City Commission candidate Lisa Maxwell is top-heavy with development interests. With no roots in Lake Worth and no reason to be concerned about our city other than what they can get out of it, perhaps their generosity is out of gratitude for Ms. Maxwell's decades as a Broward-based building industry lobbyist.

Her largest individual contributor ($1,000) is Broward-based "über-lobbyist" Ron Book, a convicted campaign finance law violator. Get Unified Now ($500), the Gunster law firm's political action committee, is chaired by Broward land-use lawyer Donald R. Hall. The Broward office of Shutts & Bowen ($300) focuses on real estate, eminent domain, litigation, government relations and land use. Broward lawyer/lobbyist Debbie Orshefsky, Ms. Maxwell's business partner, chairs the national land development practice of Miami-based mega-law firm Greenberg Traurig ($500).

There is $100 from the Miami Lakes-based Building Industry PAC and $250 from Boynton Beach-based Gold Coast Builders Association. Disgraced ex-Congressman Mark Foley's Florida Republican Leadership PAC ($250) may be based in Lake Worth, but its bankroll comes chiefly from Jupiter Island and Palm Beach.

Lisa Maxwell's list full of out-of-town sugar daddies may not prove that she is in her donors' pockets, but their money is certainly in hers. I ask: "Why? What's in it for them?"

STEVE ELLMAN
Lake Worth