Who Funds Pasco's Longest-Serving Commissioner Jack Mariano, and What Business They Have Before His Board

Jack Mariano has held the District 5 seat on the Pasco County Commission since 2004. He is in his sixth term, and since December 2025 he has been chairman of the board. He is the longest-serving commissioner in the county and one of the longest-serving in the Tampa Bay region.

This analysis asks one question: who funds his campaigns, and what business do those funders have before the board he leads. Drawn from the full itemized filings for his 2024 race, the answer is that most of his money comes from the people who build Pasco County. Developers, homebuilders, land owners, engineers, contractors and the lobbyists who represent them account for well over half of everything he raised. Many of them had projects, incentive packages or contracts pending before the commission during or shortly after the period in which they gave.

Where the money came from

Mariano opened his 2024 campaign account in May 2023. He faced a Republican primary challenger, Gina Finocchiaro, and a no-party general election opponent, Thomas Celotto. Neither raised a comparable amount.

Florida caps contributions to county candidates at $1,000 per donor per election. Because the primary and the general count separately, one donor can give $2,000. The practical way around the cap is to give through affiliated entities, and the filings show that pattern repeatedly: a developer, the developer's spouse, and three or four of the developer's limited liability companies each writing a $1,000 check on the same day.

By industry

Sorted by the occupation each donor reported on the filing:

Real estate, development, construction, engineering and homebuilding together exceed $108,000. Add the land-holding agricultural entities, the Realtor political committees and the lobbyists, and the development sector accounts for roughly $125,000, about half the total. That is a conservative count. It leaves out donors such as auto dealerships, storage operators and water utilities whose business also depends on county approvals.

By geography

The money is not from Hudson.

Tampa addresses gave six times what Hudson addresses gave. District 5 covers northwest Pasco. Most of Mariano's money comes from outside it, and a meaningful share comes from outside the county entirely.

The donors, and their business before the board

Each of the following pairs a donor or group of related donors with the county action they were connected to. Where a specific vote is documented, it is described. Where only the business relationship is confirmed, that is what is stated.

Avalon Park and Beat Kahli

$7,000 from Avalon Park Group Management, sitEX Properties USA, Beat Kahli personally, K&M Pasco 130 Holdings and Pasco Excavation, in two rounds in October 2023 and October 2024.

In February 2020 the commission voted 4-0 to approve a $33.25 million incentive package for Avalon Park Wesley Chapel, a 215-acre district off State Road 54 planned for roughly 2,700 homes plus office and retail. Mariano voted yes. The package is structured mostly as a 30-year property tax rebate. In 2021 the board followed with a special tax district and a loan. The project is now delivering its first apartment buildings and will need county action for years.

Pasco Town Center

$4,000 from PTC Boyette, Double Branch Dev, CH II Management and DB LOG 1A Property Owner, all at one Dallas address, all on October 2, 2024.

Pasco Town Center is a 965-acre mixed-use project at Interstate 75 and State Road 52 with 3,500 homes, four million square feet of industrial space and 725,000 square feet of office. In 2022 the commission approved it along with $56 million in tax incentives, the second-largest such package in county history. Two years after that vote, the developer's four entities gave Mariano the maximum in a single day.

Lennar and Angeline

$3,000 from CR Pasco Development, Len-Angeline and Epperson North, all at Lennar's Tampa office, all on March 8, 2024.

Angeline is the largest development in county history, about 6,200 acres off State Road 52. Lennar formed Len-Angeline in 2017 to buy the first 2,900 acres from the Bexley family, then moved to acquire the remaining 4,000 in partnership with Metro Development. In 2018 Lennar and the Bexleys asked the county to change its future land-use plan to allow a corporate park of up to 24 million square feet. Len-Angeline also appears routinely on commission consent agendas for utility acceptances and maintenance guarantee releases.

The Arnold family and Clearwater Bay Associates

$9,000 from Lee Arnold, Deborah Arnold, Clearwater Bay Associates, Brown-19 and Herbert G. Brown, in two rounds in September 2023 and October 2024. This is the largest family cluster in the filings.

Clearwater Bay Associates is a party to the Wesley Chapel Lakes development agreement with the county, a multi-thousand-home project dating to 2008 and amended in 2011. The company still has active business before the board, including acceptance of utility improvements for its Parcel A and C master drainage and roadway design on an April 2025 agenda.

The Denton Avenue project, in his own district

$2,000 from Denton Ave Project LLC of Tampa, in December 2023 and September 2024.

The Denton Avenue project proposes 832 homes plus retail and light industrial on 331 acres in Hudson. The land was bought for $5.81 million in 2021 by New Strategy Holdings. A rezoning petition drew organized neighborhood opposition and a petition drive, and was scheduled for commission review in June 2026 with Mariano presiding as chair. The company gave to his campaign while the project was moving toward that hearing.

The engineering and land-planning layer

Roughly $13,000 from Heidt Design and two of its principals, Lincks & Associates, Florida Design Consultants, Clearview Land Design, Coastal Design Consultants, Faulkner Engineering, Northside Engineering, LevelUp Consulting, Hamilton Engineering and Applied Sciences Consulting.

These are the firms that appear as applicant agents on rezonings before the planning commission and the board. Several also hold county continuing-services contracts for road, drainage and utility design. This layer sits between the developers and the commission, and it gave at a rate comparable to the developers themselves.

The lobbyists

$5,000 from Todd Pressman and Pressman & Associates, Johnston & Stewart Government Strategies, JJCM and RSA Consulting Group. Pressman is the most active land-use lobbyist before the Pasco commission and has represented applicants on dozens of rezonings during Mariano's tenure.

Homebuilders and national operators

PulteGroup gave $1,000; its own corporate disclosure confirms the check and shows a matching one to Commissioner Ron Oakley. Homes By West Bay and three affiliates gave $4,000. American Homes 4 Rent, a national build-to-rent operator buying and building single-family rental subdivisions in Pasco, gave $1,000. The Tampa Bay Builders Association gave $2,000, and five Florida Realtors political committees gave $5,000 between them.

Single-purpose entities named for a parcel

A set of donors are companies formed for one specific Pasco project. These are the clearest signal that a contribution is tied to a land-use decision rather than to general political support: SR 54 and Black Lake Road, Hudson Bay Developers, The Residences at Hunters Ridge II and III, Hawk Highland Trails, Thornwood Associates, Schaer Development of Central Florida, three Galvin land entities that gave $3,000 in one day, Rave Commercial and three Epperson-area affiliates, Dune FL Land 1 Sub, Forty Nine Acres and Bear Creek Towns.

Contractors and vendors outside development

Road paving contractors Florida Asphalt, Ripa & Associates and Cement Treated Base gave $5,000 across two rounds. Transportation engineering firms HNTB and RS&H gave $2,000 through their political committees. Four Ferman auto dealership entities gave $4,000. US Water Services founder Gary Deremer and two utility companies gave $4,000. Paramedics Logistics, a medical transport contractor in Texas, gave $2,000.

The SunWest thread

One donor group connects the campaign filings to a federal inquiry into Mariano's own dealings.

SunWest Park is a county-owned beach and swimming lake built on a former limestone quarry on Old Dixie Highway in Hudson. The county acquired the land in a 2006 settlement with the mine's owner, Sun West Acquisition Corp. The Grubbs family, which controls that company, still owns the adjoining mine property.

The Grubbs family gave five times in the 2024 cycle. John G. Grubbs and Sun West Acquisition gave $500 each in August 2023. Sun West gave another $500 in July 2024. Grubbs and Grubbs Emergency Services gave $1,000 each in October 2024. That is $3,500 from the family whose property adjoins the park at the center of a federal subpoena, all of it after Mariano was interviewed by the FBI.

Mariano remains the park's chief advocate on the board. His district includes it. As chair of the Tourist Development Council he supported spending tourist tax money to expand its beach volleyball facilities in 2023, and he has backed each successive expansion phase.

What the federal inquiry covered

One other name from that period reappears in the filings. Applied Sciences Consulting, the engineering firm of Elie Araj, one of the original investors in the Sea Ranch Drive company, gave $1,000 in September 2023.

A pattern that predates this term

The 2024 filings are not an outlier. A single report from November 2015 shows the same donor profile: Adam Smith Enterprises, Ajax Paving, GL Homes, Logan Outdoor Advertising and Seven Oaks, each at the maximum. His 2008 filings, the earliest available online, already show maximum checks from the same categories. Adam Smith Enterprises gave in 2015 and again in 2023. The donor base has been stable for more than a decade.

What Mariano says

Mariano was contacted for comment on the findings in this article. He declined calls and did not respond to an emailed request before publication. This story will be updated if he responds.

He has addressed the federal inquiry once publicly. In March 2021, through attorney John Lauro, he said he had become aware of the investigation that week, did not know its source or scope, had been interviewed by the FBI, had cooperated fully and had conducted his duties lawfully.

What this shows, and what it does not

It shows that most of Mariano's campaign money comes from people and companies whose business depends on decisions the commission makes, and that in several documented cases those donors received large approvals or incentive packages with his vote. It shows the pattern is consistent across cycles. It shows that the family at the center of a federal inquiry into his conduct continues to fund him.

It does not show that any contribution bought any vote. Florida law allows every contribution listed here. Mariano's colleagues draw from the same donor pool; Pulte gave to Commissioner Oakley the same year. Development money flows to county incumbents across Florida because county commissions control zoning, and Pasco is among the fastest-growing counties in the state.

What distinguishes Mariano is the combination: the longest tenure on the board, the chairmanship, a district that is now the last frontier for large-scale development in west Pasco, an unresolved federal inquiry into his own real estate activity, and a donor base concentrated in the industry he regulates and drawn mostly from outside the district he represents.

He has also positioned himself publicly as a skeptic of some development. In 2024 he travelled to Tallahassee to argue against the Live Local Act and said he would support lawsuits against apartment complexes claiming affordable-housing tax breaks without delivering affordable units. That stance is not inconsistent with the donor record. The developers funding him build master-planned communities and town centers, not the stand-alone apartment complexes he criticized.

How this was reported

Contribution data comes from the Pasco County Supervisor of Elections campaign finance system, exported in full for the 2024 election cycle and analyzed by donor type, reported occupation, address and city. Affiliated entities were grouped by shared address and same-day contributions. Earlier cycle data comes from the same system. Vote and project information comes from the Tampa Bay Times, Bay News 9, Fox 13, the Laker/Lutz News, Suncoast News and Pasco County commission agendas.