Jax Daily

The Florida State Senate District 1 race hasn’t attracted much attention this year. It pits sitting State Senator Tony Hill (D) against little-known challenger Louis Tart (Constitution) in a contest that will decide who represents the largely African-American district for the next four years.

Aside from paying the qualifying fee of over $1,900, Mr. Tart hasn’t run much of a campaign. He hasn’t raised any money and he’s spent less than $10, as of the October 10th report, on mailing expenses.

Tart is a member of the conservative Constitution Party, which has never successfully elected a State Senator anywhere in the nation. This race was, quite obviously, over before it even began.

But despite having no significant opposition, Democratic State Senator Tony Hill’s re-election campaign has continued to raise funds at a rapid pace, building up a warchest of over $170,000. The money came in bundles of checks from law firms, teachers unions, gambling interests, labor unions, major corporations, developers, car dealerships, and a host of other sources. Even the Fraternal Order of Police.

What is a State Senator who is flush with campaign cash and has no significant opposition to do? Seems like the reasonable and ethical way to proceed would be to run a modest campaign and return the balance of the donated funds to contributors.

However, as of the last reporting period which ended October 10, the Hill campaign was not holding back their spending at all. Indeed, Senator Hill is spreading the wealth around.

In July he spent over $500 at Books a Million and Barnes & Noble, and recorded it as “Literature Charitable Contribution” on reports filed with the state. But the vague contributions don’t stop there. Another $668.50 was spent at Foot Locker for what is described as “Donation Equipment” in the report, and a $550 check to the University of North Florida for what’s called a “Student Donation”.

Slightly unusual, but it’s hard to say what these donations really mean. Are they donations to a single person or to an organization?

Another one of the many donations is a $250 donation registered as going to Cynthia Sciptt. I don’t know who or what that this is, but it sounds like a person’s name. Should a campaign be making “donations” to individuals?

But all of that is petty and not particularly unusual for a large campaign. It gets much more disturbing as you dig a little deeper.

Meals, meals, and more meals. Scanning the list it’s easy to spot so-called planning meetings at restaurants in Washington, Atlanta, Louisiana, and elsewhere. Hotel bills in Chicago, at a Disney resort in Orlando, New York, Denver, Tampa, Tennessee, and many other places located far outside District 1.

It appears that Hill’s campaign account has been used to finance all of the Senator’s travels for the last two years. Hotel, airfare, conference registrations, rental cars… it’s quite a list and definitely worth taking a look at.

There’s $1,233 for “Candidate Lodging” at Red Lion Hotel in Denver , Colorado . A quick search on the Internet turned up a nice looking hotel in the Denver area, but not anything extremely expensive. In order to spend that much money, you’d probably have to have a room there for well over a week. Or I guess you could be renting multiple rooms or purchasing other amenities.

(UPDATE: I just noticed that this Denver expense was at about the same time as the Democratic National Convention was being held in the city.)

Actually, late August was a busy time for the Hill campaign. While Hill was apparently at the DNC in Colorado , his campaign reports show expenses for gas and food in the Jacksonville area. And shortly before that, a big car rental bill in New Jersey.

What does any of this have to do with getting re-elected to the State Senate?

Two voice messages left with Senator Hill’s office requesting clarification of this unusual spending have resulted in no return phone calls.

But it would be interesting to get some answers.

I mean, thousands upon thousands of dollars in airfare for “candidate travel” on Continental, Delta , U.S. Airways, and other airlines? Over $600 for Avis car rental during Memorial Day week? Another $800 at Avis during August? The company’s national headquarters is listed on Hill’s finance reports, so it’s not possible to tell where he was when he was renting these vehicles or what they were for.

What legitimate campaign purpose could these expenses serve? Is Senator Hill personally chasing down absentee voters one-by-one around the country to talk face-to-face with them?

Scratch that, Hill must be looking for absentee voters from around the globe. Last year he spent over $2,000 for travel on South African Airlines and an additional $400 at the Vineyard Hotel in Capetown , South Africa for candidate lodging. And then the campaign spent $610 at the Windhoek County Club Hotel in Namibia.

Quite a trip.

More likely than absentee voter outreach, it seems that Hill’s re-election fund is being used as a general purpose piggy-bank into which special interests and powerful supporters can donate large sums of money. And then those funds are used for whatever Senator Hill feels like using them for. Conferences or vacations or maybe official business. Who knows what some of these items actually mean?

In an era in which public officials are nervous about accepting a free lunch or dinner, Senator Hill’s use of campaign cash is somewhat shocking. Perhaps it would be prudent to have an ethics investigation into the sources and uses of this money.

With one final pre-election campaign finance report due any day now, it will be very interesting to see how Senator Hill disposes of the rest of his re-election funds.