The Florida Tribune<\/a> first reported that Jacksonville City Council President Nick Howland flew to the game on a plane owned by billionaire developer Patrick Zalupski, the founder and CEO of Jacksonville-based Dream Finders Homes and a part owner of the Rays.<\/p>\nDream Finders has lobbyists registered with Jacksonville City Hall.<\/p>\n
Howland told the Florida Tribune that he attended the game to raise money for his political committee, Florida Freedom PAC. In a statement to News4JAX, he said all monetary and in-kind contributions related to the trip would be disclosed in the committee\u2019s campaign finance reports, as required by Florida law.<\/p>\n
\u201cI attended last Sunday\u2019s Rays-Padres game to help raise funds for my political committee, Florida Freedom PAC,\u201d Howland said. \u201cAll monetary and in-kind contributions will be fully disclosed in the committee\u2019s campaign finance reports as required by Florida law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacksonville City Council member Jimmy Peluso criticized the trip, saying the public does not know how much Howland paid for the flight or whether he paid anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue is he gets on a private jet that a billionaire owns and flies down to see a game in a box suite, and we don\u2019t know how much of that he paid for,\u201d Peluso said. \u201cAnd I doubt that he paid any. It\u2019s just the ability to do something when you\u2019re in power. That doesn\u2019t mean you should do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peluso said he plans to review the campaign finance reports when they are filed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would hope that somebody in leadership would have enough emotional intelligence to recognize, like, you know what? Perception or otherwise, this doesn\u2019t look good,\u201d Peluso said.<\/p>\n
Florida ethics law generally prohibits certain elected officials from accepting gifts valued at more than $100. However, state campaign finance rules allow private-aircraft travel to be reported as an in-kind political contribution. The value may be based on comparable commercial airfare.<\/p>\n
Political analyst Rick Mullaney said the distinction is important. He expects the trip to become an issue in the spring election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are really three basic issues here,\u201d Mullaney said. \u201cOne is whether or not any ethics laws were broken. Based on what we know, it does not appear that ethics laws were broken. Second is popularity with the public, and I think that it is very unpopular with the public. But the bigger area is that third area \u2014 this could very well be, with the spring elections coming up next spring, one of those discussion points.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Florida Tribune reported that Zalupski did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Howland said all contributions connected to the trip will be disclosed as required by law.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A private-jet trip to a Tampa Bay Rays game is raising questions about the relationship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[832,116,118,117,14217],"class_list":["post-393139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-city-council","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-nick-howland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}