Rep. Kevin Steele just reached into his pocket to put $5 million into a statewide campaign for Chief Financial Officer.
The Dade City Republican, who is challenging appointed incumbent Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, said he’s willing to put a significant chunk of skin in the game as he runs.
“Florida families deserve leaders who are personally invested in delivering results, not just talking about them,” Steele said. “Floridians are paying too much in property taxes and property insurance, while government continues to grow and waste taxpayer dollars. That has to change.”
Ingoglia was appointed in July to the Cabinet by Gov. Ron DeSantis, filling a vacancy left after former CFO Jimmy Patronis’ election to Congress.
But Steele entered the race at the encouragement of President Donald Trump’s political team. He also enjoys the support of U.S. Sen. Rick Scott.
Steele has founded several successful businesses, many in Tampa Bay. When he first ran for office, his first financial disclosures showed his net worth at around $440 million.
“When you run a business, you look at every dollar as your own,” Steele said. “Taxpayer dollars should be treated with the same respect. As a public servant, I will focus on reducing government spending, eliminating waste, and protecting those who fund this government – the taxpayers.”
Steele, who so far has held back from running an intensely negative campaign, has said he would take a different approach than Ingoglia to reducing spending. While the current CFO has toured the state pushing local governments to slash spending, Steele said as CFO, he would take a top-down approach and look first to how the state government could run more efficiently.
“There’s a lot of issues at the state level that we can address, some of which we are, some of which I’ve submitted different bills to address,” he told Florida Politics at a Washington summit in December. “I think that there’s a lot of waste and abuse at the state level that we can focus on.”
