In former Gov. Charlie Crist’s many past political lives, he earned a reputation as a clean-energy champion, an aggressive advocate for consumers, and a watchdog who went to bat against the state’s powerful electric companies and “sent shivers through the entire utility system.”

Now, the Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat is looking to reinvent himself once again, this time as the next mayor of St. Petersburg. And his campaign is taking in a stream of donations from a somewhat surprising corner of Florida politics: Tallahassee powerbrokers linked to Big Tech firms and the investor-owned utility companies eager to make Florida an attractive destination for the energy-intensive data centers they rely on.

The spending on Crist’s mayoral campaign by some of Tallahassee’s most prominent lobbyists comes at a critical time: as St. Petersburg considers breaking free from its power supplier, Duke Energy, and creating its own city-run municipal utility – at the same time that Duke is obligated to power what is slated to become the state’s first hyperscale data center in Fort Meade, which still faces regulatory hurdles before it can be built. In a recent call with investors, executives at Duke – one of the largest energy holding companies in the country – said they anticipate billions of dollars in new investments in Florida and Indiana over the next five years, driven by the data center boom.

St. Petersburg’s 30-year franchise agreement with Duke expired last month, giving the city a rare opportunity to consider charting a new course for its energy future. The decision could lock residents into a decades-long contract worth billions of dollars, at a time when consumer advocates are warning that data-center development costs may be passed down to ratepayers.

“This mayoral election is absolutely critical,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the advocacy group Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, “because whoever is the next mayor will determine how it goes forward.”

A review by The Florida Trib has found that St. Pete Shines, a political committee backing Crist’s mayoral bid, has taken in more than $130,000 from more than two dozen lobbyists, political committees, operatives and executives who represent or are linked to tech and artificial intelligence companies or the state’s largest utilities – which for years have been major campaign donors in Florida politics. None of the donations have been made directly by the corporations, but instead came from individuals and entities associated with them.

The committee backing Crist has received tens of thousands of dollars more from a daisy-chain of opaque political committees, including one whose registered address is a University of Florida fraternity house. 

A representative for Crist’s committee said his fundraising prowess is due to his broad and deep relationships in Florida politics, saying that the lobbyists’ donations have “nothing to do with their clients.”

“It is both the committee’s policy and my personal belief not to speculate about the motivations of our donors, other than to say they believe in Charlie’s leadership for a city in need of change,” said Michelle Todd Schorsch, chair of St. Pete Shines. 

“[T]hese donations will have zero impact on any decision Charlie makes about the future of St. Petersburg,” she added.

The Tallahassee powerbrokers cutting checks

Crist has worn more hats than almost anyone else in Florida politics, serving as a state senator, education commissioner, attorney general, governor and three-term congressman. As a result, he has broad name recognition, decades-deep political relationships and the campaign funding edge to match it – far outraising his opponents in the race, including current mayor Ken Welch.

According to the most recently released campaign finance reports, St. Pete Shines has taken in more than $1.7 million from more than 300 individual contributions from across Florida and as far afield as Washington state and New York City.

Among the financial supporters are Tampa Bay-area civic leaders, real estate developers and business executives, as well as a slate of personal injury attorneys, the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s gaming company and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

But the donations from Tallahassee powerbrokers stand out – some simply for their sheer size. The largest such donation, $60,000, came from Ballard Partners, headed by Brian Ballard, a veteran Florida lobbyist who has built his firm into a global juggernaut of political influence in the Trump era. Ballard’s extensive roster of clients in Florida includes Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, and Florida Power & Light.

One of the nation’s largest utility companies, FPL has been accused of surreptitiously wading into Florida elections through dark money donations and media manipulation. FPL’s parent company, NextEra Energy, had agreed to a $150 million proposed settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by investors detailing a wide range of alleged misdeeds. A federal judge recently rejected the proposal, though the parties can refile.

Asked about what motivated his firm’s contributions, Ballard said the donations are evidence of his “nearly 40-year friendship with Charlie.”

“I gave to Charlie because he is my friend and a good man and was an excellent governor,” Ballard told The Florida Trib. “That’s it.”

Other donations have flowed in from lobbyists whose clients include Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, GE, Tesla and SpaceX, as well as PBA Holdings, one of the companies behind a data center known as “Project Tango” that has been proposed in Palm Beach County. At least two lobbyists for Duke Energy have also cut checks to Crist’s committee, as well as half a dozen lobbyists and firms whose clients include FPL. 

In response to questions from The Florida Trib, Duke Energy spokesperson Ana Gibbs said the contributions “were not made on behalf of Duke Energy.”

“All political contributions made by Duke Energy are done in accordance with campaign finance laws and are publicly reported,” Gibbs added.

Shelby Green, a researcher with the nonprofit utility watchdog Energy and Policy Institute, said political power players make campaign contributions for a reason.

“I think voters know that who a candidate chooses to accept money from ultimately influences their policy-setting and the decisions that they make while they’re in office,” Green said.

Crist’s main competitors, Welch and St. Petersburg City Council member Brandi Gabbard, have not received the same support from Tallahassee powerbrokers. 

Gabbard voted with a majority of the council to spend up to $590,000 on a feasibility study to explore the possibility of municipalization, considered the first step in the process. (In St. Pete, the mayor is not a member of the city council and does not vote on council matters.)

Gabbard has the endorsement of the local “Dump Duke” campaign, which is advocating for municipalization. In voter forums, Welch has said his office is evaluating the idea but expressed caution, saying the process would be complex and lower bills are not guaranteed. Crist has said the issue is worth considering, though he’s questioned the cost of the study and the expense of acquiring Duke’s infrastructure. 

Smith, with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, called it “political malpractice” for candidates to be “down-talking” municipalization before the study is finished. 

“Even if you don’t go forward with municipalization, it is an opportunity to come to the table in a position of strength to look out for the consumer’s interest,” Smith said. “You would want to have your mayor being in the strongest position possible going into those negotiations.”

In the grand scheme of money in American politics, the donations coming into the committee behind Crist are “a fraction” of what utility backers could spend on an election – but could be a “very savvy” early investment, said John Farrell of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, an advocacy group working to unravel corporate monopolies.

“They get a bigger return on their dollar investing upfront to get a friendly ear for their case,” Farrell said. 

“It’s not surprising to me that utilities would figure out this is a good strategy to try to install someone in the middle of this process that might be more sympathetic,” he added.

The push for public power

The next mayor could play a key role in whether St. Petersburg can pull off something no Florida city has done in more than two decades – municipalize its electric utility. 

According to the American Public Power Association, the last Florida community to take its power back from a private utility was Winter Park, which flipped the switch in 2005. Fed up with extended outages after storms and with little promise of improvement by investor-owned Progress Energy (now a part of Duke Energy), the residents of Winter Park voted decisively to take back their local power supply – though not without fierce opposition from the utility company.

“In my 35 years [with the city], it’s the most intense thing I’ve ever gone through – by far,” recalled Winter Park City Manager Randy Knight, who was assistant city manager at the time. 

“Everything about it was just bullying tactics,” he said.

Investor-owned utilities – which are government-sanctioned monopolies – earn regulated rates of return, profits that they can then cycle back into political campaigns to support their preferred policies and candidates.

Knight watched as nearby communities attempted their own municipalization campaigns – only to be overpowered by the private utility.

“In every one of those cases, their politicking won the day. Either they got somebody new elected to the seat, and it overturned the vote, or they got the city manager fired, and the effort to do it stopped,” Knight said. “They were very good at trying to change the opinion of the sitting city commission.”

Two decades later, Knight said, Winter Park’s municipal utility has buried about 85% of its formerly overhead electric lines – a community priority the private utility would not commit to. And, Knight said, the city has kept rates down: An analysis by the Florida Municipal Electric Association found that last year, the city’s rates were on average about 25% lower than those charged by Duke. When Hurricane Milton plowed through Central Florida in 2024, fewer than 300 customers in the city lost power – and they were restored within a day, while hundreds of thousands of customers in neighboring communities remained in the dark.

Still, Knight cautioned that municipalization is no small feat and may not be financially feasible for every community. The process can involve buying parts of the private utility’s infrastructure through complex negotiations and often lengthy legal battles.

Farrell, with the Institute for Local Self Reliance, said there’s another reason why more communities haven’t flipped the switch.

“In the political arena, cities aren’t allowed to spend their own money defending their wish to buy the utility, whereas the utility can spend as much money as they want. And they do,” Farrell added. “They unleash a veritable cash cannon in every single case.”

A push for local control

With Floridians’ electric bills going up, advocates are again pushing public power, which, unlike private utilities, doesn’t have to generate profits for Wall Street investors.

Polling shows that affordability is the top issue for Florida voters this election season – and concerns about whether data center development could increase Floridians’ utility bills have reached Tallahassee. Florida lawmakers passed a bill this year that was touted as a consumer protection measure, but energy policy experts have warned the law doesn’t guarantee that rates won’t go up.

The measure requires the Public Service Commission, which regulates Duke and the state’s other investor-owned utilities, to set rules for massive electricity consumers like data centers to “reasonably ensure” that the costs of “large load” customers are “not shifted” to ratepayers.

Later this month, state regulators are slated to take a closer look at whether Duke’s plans do enough to shield ratepayers from the costs of data centers, in what has been called a key “first test” of the new state law. A state-appointed consumer advocate has argued Duke’s proposal doesn’t comply with the measure’s ratepayer protections.

For Jason Scott, an organizer with the “Dump Duke” campaign in St. Pete, local control is the best way to protect ratepayers. As he sees it, the expiration of the city’s contract with Duke gives residents leverage – and the opportunity to negotiate a once-in-a-generation deal at a critical time.

“If we want to protect our communities from these large load customers like data centers, the only way to do that is with public power,” Scott said. “If we want to have any say, we need to own our utility.”

Kate Payne is The Florida Trib’s state government reporter. She can be reached at kate.payne@floridatrib.org.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to a reflect a recent order from a federal judge rejecting the proposed settlement in a case brought by investors against NextEra Energy.