Mayoral candidate Jeremy Matlow speaks to a small crowd outside of the Florida State University Student Union prior to casting his ballot Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026.
Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democr
USA TODAY Network, Reuters
The candidates for office in Tallahassee and the PACs supporting them are spending big in the final days of the campaign as they make their closing arguments to voters and in some cases launch their final salvos of attack ads.
The very fate of City Hall – or at least which side controls it – will be determined in the Nov. 3, 2026, general election. An establishment-minded 3-2 majority has been in control for the past eight years, though that would change if a progressive slate of candidates is successful.
Polling from several weeks ago suggested at least two of the three City Commission contests on the ballot were tight, including a marquee mayor’s race between City Commissioner Jeremy Matlow, who leads the local progressive movement, and former state lawmaker Loranne Ausley.
But the needle may have moved in any number of directions since those polls were conducted given the money that’s poured into mail pieces, commercials and mass texts, many of them negative.
At the same time, outside money is pouring into Tallahassee commission races and the mayor’s contest in a big way.
Green Advocacy Project, a national climate advocacy organization that spent heavily on Tallahassee politics two years ago, wrote a staggering $200,000 check to Matlow’s political committee, Friends of Jeremy Matlow, according to newly filed campaign finance records.
The contribution, dated Oct. 19, may be the single largest check ever dropped into a Tallahassee municipal election. And the donor is a familiar one.
Green Advocacy Project, which has direct ties to progressive leader Sen. Bernie Sanders, contributed $150,000 to Matlow’s One Tallahassee political committee during the 2024 election cycle, when he and his allies were battling over the balance of power at City Hall. The group’s newest $200,000 contribution alone eclipses what it gave in multiple checks to One Tallahassee throughout that previous election cycle.
Matlow has drawn criticism from Republicans and opponents who condemn the cash as “dark money” and say they don’t want liberal California policies and influence taking root in Tallahassee. But Matlow said in an email that the $200,000 contribution was meant to counter money the Ghazvini family, prominent local developers who vocally oppose the progressives, have contributed.
“I met with the Ghazvinis last year and let them know we have Democratic donors willing to match what they put in attacking us,” he said. “They’ve contributed $200k or more to Tallahassee United, the political committee smearing our city with negative ads and now the subject of a defamation lawsuit for spreading all out falsehoods.”
Matlow added that his campaign has more local, small-dollar donors than any in city history while his opponents have relied on “big money, the Republican Party of Florida and Donald Trump’s finance chair.”
“That’s the influence most people in Tallahassee are concerned about,” he said.
For his part, Steve Ghazvini posted on Facebook urging people to vote and reject Matlow and progressives, who he said “admit they are SOCIALISTS.”
“Tallahassee doesn’t need SOCIALISTS control the City Hall,” he wrote. “We don’t need CALIFORNIA MONEY control our city.”
Tallahassee United also blasted out a text with the news alleging that California billionaires want control of City Hall to take over Tallahassee’s utilities.
“Loranne Ausley will not sell your public utilities to California billionaires,” it stated.
To be clear, other candidates also got money from of out-of-town organizations and political committees – though much smaller amounts.
City Commission Seat 3 candidate Tom Derzypolski, who has been critical of Matlow’s progressive slate, took in two $5,000 checks over the same period from two Coral Gables committees Protect Our Florida Values and The Right Path for Florida. Both have the same address and are tied to specific Florida Republican lawmakers, Reps. Jason Shoaf of Port St. Joe and Michael Redondo of Miami.
Turnout may tell the tale
As of 9 a.m. Saturday, 66,321 out of Leon County’s 184,523 registered voters cast ballots by mail or early voting, pushing turnout to nearly 36%. That number will only grow by the time early voting ends Sunday, Nov. 1.
Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said turnout was trending on the high side for a midterm in Leon County.
“Turnout’s very good,” he said. “It’s so far surpassing the 2022 midterms by a fairly significant amount. We will certainly beat the in-person early voting from the 2022 midterms. I don’t know if we’ll beat the vote-by-mail, but our return rate is very high.”
Earley predicted turnout would land somewhere around 65%, putting it roughly on par with 2018, when then-Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum was the Democratic nominee for governor.
“We may not beat 2018 because 2018 had the mayor of Tallahassee running in a very close race for governor,” he said. “So I think the local interest was really high. But it’s high this year too because of all the contested city races.”
One of Tallahassee’s own, former Congresswoman Gwen Graham, is on the ballot as the running mate of Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly, a former Republican congressman. They’re competing in an unusually close race against GOP Congressman Byron Donalds and his running mate, former state Sen. Bryan Avila.
Democrats over-performing, GOP under-performing in Leon so far
With national polls suggesting Democrats could have an exceptionally good Tuesday night, taking control of the U.S. House and maybe the Senate, the party was surging in Leon County, a Democratic stronghold.
As of 1:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, Democrats, who make up nearly 47.8% of Leon County voters, were over-performing with nearly 56.8% of the vote, a difference of +9 percentage points.
Republicans, who make up nearly 30% of voters, were under-performing with nearly 27% of the vote, a difference of -2.9 percentage points.
Voters with no party affiliation and members of minor parties also were under-performing. NPA/other make up more than 22% of voters but cast only 16% of the ballots, a difference of -6.2 points.
Roughly 40% of all Democrats had voted as of Oct. 30, compared to about 30% of Republicans, a 10-point gap. Democrats accounted for about 60% of mail ballots and nearly 55% of early votes.
Matt Isbell, a Democratic consultant and owner of MCI Maps, said it’s too early to tell whether a blue wave is forming in Florida, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by 1.5 million voters. He said the electorate will only get redder before the end of Election Day in every city and county in the state.
“But it’s not as red as it should be right now,” he said. “So either we’re going to have a bluer electorate than normal … or election (day) is just going to be the reddest ever. But it would be unprecedented if the Republicans surged to an infinite degree in the next several days.”
Barney Bishop III, former executive director of the Florida Democratic Party and now an outspoken conservative, said he sees a “blue tide” at the national level, with 20-30 seat changes in the House rather than 50-60.
“Having said that, I think Florida is immune to a great degree from what’s happening nationally,” he said. “And I think that all of the polls that show the races that are within the margin of error are going to actually end up being Republican victories.”
What do polls, experts say about the state of the city contests?
Gary Yordon, host of political talk show “The Usual Suspects” and owner of The Zachary Group, said the number of voters who are undecided in the nonpartisan city races are “very slim right now.”
“Loranne certainly represents some stability,” he said. “Jeremy represents kind of a clear dynamic, and I think those two things have come out in their campaigns. Jeremy has brought an enormous energy to the campaign. Loranne has brought a lot of history to the campaign. So I think voters have a more ‘what feels right to you?’ “
Yordon said all three city commission races may be close now.
But they weren’t a month ago, when polls showed former City Commissioner Dot Inman-Johnson up by as much as 10 percentage points over City Commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox in the Seat 5 race. The same polls showed much closer contests between Ausley and Matlow and, in the Seat 3 race, Derzypolski and P.J. Perez.
But Yordon said the state of the race is clear enough with the barrage of negative ads focused chiefly on Matlow and Inman-Johnson, who along with Perez make up the progressive slate. Other attack ads have been directed at Williams-Cox and Derzypolski
“You don’t need a poll to have the story told,” he said. “When you see the significant dollars that have been spent trying to diminish Dot Inman-Johnson and Jeremy Matlow – that to the less than a casual observer is a pretty big red flag that they were both doing very well.”
Isbell, who aligns with Matlow and company, said the progressive candidates, who have campaigned recently alongside Sanders and U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon, have the “bulk” of support from local Democrats.
Ausley and Williams-Cox, both lifelong Democrats, and Derzypolski, a former Republican turned NPA, have more GOP support, he said, with African-Americans acting as a swing voting bloc in this year’s election.
“If the Republican vote isn’t turning out, that’s a problem for them,” he said of the more moderate candidates, “and it’s a good thing for the progressives.”
But Bishop, a lobbyist and founder of the Florida Smart Justice Alliance, said he doesn’t see any of the progressive candidates winning.
“The business community has been united against them,” he said. “They’ve raised a substantial amount of money, spent a lot on direct mail. There’s been a lot of commercials, and there’s been a lot more against the three progressive candidates than there’s been in support of them.”
Local candidate and political committee fundraising tops $3M
So far this election year, the candidates for city, county, school board and county judge raised a combined $2.58 million and spent $2.27 million – figures easily exceed $3 million when factoring in money from PACs and political parties.
Tallahassee United, a political committee behind mailers, commercials and text messages attacking Matlow and/or Inman-Johnson, raised $447,750 and spent $414,000 since forming earlier this year.
Its biggest donors include Ghazvini-family development companies, which gave at least $175,000, and Arbor Properties and related firms owned by Gordon Thames, which gave at least $65,000. Wealthy landowner Jeff Phipps and his Citizens for Balanced Growth political committee also gave $65,000.
The Voice of Florida Business, another political committee behind commercials calling Matlow “Millionaire Matlow,” echoing the same moniker used by Tallahassee United in its mass texts, took in more than $1 million and spent $638,927 so far this year, though only a portion of that was earmarked for Tallahassee.
Nearly all of its donations come from Associated Industries of Florida’s PAC, which also backs Byron Donalds for governor and James Uthmeier for attorney general.
Another PAC, United Citizens Leading Reform, bankrolled several recent flyers about Inman-Johnson’s past service as a city commissioner and Midway city manager. One shows her face surrounded by red flames with text saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s always fire.”
The PAC, which collected $51,050 and spent $34,900, is controlled by Natalie Kato, a Tallahassee lawyer, lobbyist and consultant with longstanding Democratic Party ties. Its most recent donors include 13th Floor Homes, a Fort Lauderdale company, and Ambitrans Medical Transport of Punta Gorda.
Ausley, the top local fundraiser, took in $587,583 through Oct. 16, while Matlow raised $313,374. Derzypolski raised $243,518, while Perez collected $125,237. Williams-Cox raised $195,542, nearly four times the $50,293 raised by Inman-Johnson. Both Ausley and Williams-Cox received numerous bundled checks from NAI TALCOR and related firms with links to its co-founder, Ed Murray; companies owned by the Ghazvinis; and Arbor Properties.
Matlow and Derzypolski PCs, Leon Dems funding mailers
The Friends of Jeremy Matlow political committee funded a mailer with photos of the progressive city slate alongside photos of Nixon, Jolly and Graham. It also paid for mailers saying “Jeremy Matlow keeps its paws-itive” on one side, with photos of dogs and cats, with a message on the back that says “City Hall is broken.”
Matlow’s committee raised $53,474 and spent $34,893. Aside from the last minute cash infusion from the Green Advocacy Project, Down Ballot Democrats, a Tallahassee-based political action committee – also controlled by Kato – gave $10,000.
Other donors include the Los Angeles-backed Lead Locally PAC, which gave $5,000 and has links to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Tom Preston-Werner of Palo Alto, California, the billionaire co-founder of GitHub, who gave $2,500.
Derzypolski’s Tom for Tallahassee PC, which is behind flyers with positive messages about the candidate, collected $30,000 and spent $4,274. The Local Economic Solutions Committee, which includes a who’s-who of FSU officials and alumni, gave $25,000, its biggest donation.
The Leon County Democratic Party sent out mailers showing Perez’s endorsements from local Democratic leaders, including Sheriff Walt McNeil, City Commissioner Jack Porter, and County Commissioner David O’Keefe, himself running for re-election against a little-known challenger.
The flip side of the flyers label Derzypolski, a former moderate Republican turned NPA, as a “Republican” who “opposed President Obama’s agenda.” The party reported raising $13,500 and spending $2,742 so far in 2026.
Betting markets show Ausley taking recent lead
Meanwhile, the betting odds in the Tallahassee mayor’s race on peer-to-peer market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket recently began breaking Ausley’s way, though the reason why wasn’t clear.
Kalshi had Ausley and Matlow running neck and neck as recently as Oct. 20, with Ausley in a nominal lead. But since then, the platform shows Ausley with a 74% chance of winning.
On Polymarket, where bets total more than $156,000, Ausley had a 72.5% chance of winning.
But experts caution that prediction markets are not scientific models or polls and often don’t align with reality.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Matlow gets $200K check as cash piles up in Tallahassee City Hall races
Reporting by Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
This story was originally published October 31, 2026 at 11:09 AM.