A political committee bankrolling Florida's Amendment 3 property tax measure has funneled more than $14 million to a company owned by a longtime GOP operative whose previous firm was tied to a criminal vote-siphoning scheme. Public campaign finance records show Vote Yes on 3, the group pushing the November ballot measure, paid $14,213,745 to Gainesville-based SGS Inc. between Sept. 8 and Oct. 9, 2026 — more than 98 percent of everything the committee spent during that stretch.
SGS Inc. is owned by Patrick Bainter, described as a longtime GOP operative, according to Creative Loafing Tampa. SGS advertises itself as a full-service polling, communications and political operations company, and it shares an address with Bainter's main firm, Data Targeting, at 6211 NW 132nd St. in Gainesville. Because SGS is a private institution, the specifics of how it spent that money remain unclear, per the same report.
Vote Yes on 3 has raised more than $21.5 million overall and is funded almost entirely by Florida Realtors, with the goal of getting the amendment passed this November. Separate reporting on the committee's September fundraising found it had pulled in an additional $8 million that month alone, pushing its total past $18 million at the time and routing nearly $3 million in independent issue expenditures to SGS, according to Florida Politics.
A Scandal That Still Shadows Florida Politics
Data Targeting, the firm Bainter founded in Gainesville in 1995, was embroiled in a 2020 ghost-candidate election fraud scandal that sent a former state senator to court. Frank Artiles was convicted of three felonies and sentenced to two months in jail for his role in the scheme, the Creative Loafing report states. Separately, Florida Politics reported Artiles's full sentence as 60 days in jail, 500 hours of community service and 15 years of probation, stayed pending appeal.
Artiles was accused of helping Ileana Garcia get elected to the Florida Senate by recruiting Alex Rodríguez, an auto parts salesman from Miami with no party affiliation, to run against Democratic incumbent José Javier Rodríguez in Senate District 37. Alex Rodríguez did not actually campaign in the race. Prosecutors said the purpose was to siphon votes because the two men shared a last name, and Garcia won the seat by 34 votes after a recount, per Creative Loafing's account — though Florida Politics has separately reported the margin as 32 votes, a discrepancy between the two outlets' figures.
Emails subpoenaed by prosecutors, as reported by NBC Miami, showed Data Targeting paid Artiles more than $90,000 plus expenses to monitor Rodríguez, including his lunch companions. In one email from September 2020, Artiles wrote that he was standing by for orders from Bainter. Bainter and his company reportedly cooperated with prosecutors during the investigation, and Bainter was reportedly never charged with a crime.
Big Money Still Flowing Through Bainter's Firms
The financial ties between Bainter's operations and Florida Republican politics run deep. Data Targeting received $8,696,113 in 2024 election-cycle payments, mostly from Florida Republican candidates and organizations, while SGS Inc. received $4,067,524.84 that same cycle, primarily from the Realtors political advocacy committee, according to campaign finance records cited by Creative Loafing.
Bainter's history with controversial tactics predates the ghost-candidate case. He previously faced legal scrutiny when a 2015 Florida Supreme Court ruling highlighted his firm's covert involvement in map-drawing during state redistricting litigation, according to FindLaw's record of the case. Creative Loafing Tampa Bay requested comment from both Bainter and the Florida Realtors Association and says it will include any response it receives.
What Amendment 3 Would Actually Do
Amendment 3 would raise the homestead exemption on non-school taxes to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, while lowering the annual assessment growth cap for non-homestead properties from 10 percent to 5 percent. It would also require newcomers who move to Florida after Dec. 31 to complete five years of continuous residency before qualifying for the full increased exemption. Governor Ron DeSantis backs the measure, according to the article.
The amendment needs 60 percent voter support to pass, and recent polling suggests that threshold is far from secured. An Edge Communications and MDW Communications poll found 50 percent support, 27 percent opposed and 23 percent undecided — while a separate St. Pete Polls survey put support even lower, at 45 percent, with 27 percent opposed and 28 percent undecided, according to Florida Politics, leaving the measure roughly 15 percentage points short of passage.
State legislative staff and the Florida Revenue Estimating Conference have projected that Amendment 3 would cut local government property tax revenue statewide by $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2027-28 and $8.4 billion in fiscal year 2028-29, per Ballotpedia. Major law enforcement groups, including the Florida Sheriffs Association, the Florida State Fraternal Order of Police and the Florida Professional Firefighters, have publicly opposed the measure over concerns it would gut public safety budgets, a fight Hoodline detailed in September.
Legal Fights Over the Ballot Language
The measure reached the ballot after the Florida Legislature placed it before voters during a June 2026 special session called by DeSantis, passing House Joint Resolution 1-F by a 75-26 vote in the House and a 30-9 vote in the Senate, according to the Florida Policy Institute. But the path wasn't smooth: in July 2026, former municipal mayors and state lawmakers filed three consolidated lawsuits in Leon County Circuit Court challenging the amendment's ballot title and summary as misleading political advocacy, forcing Attorney General James Uthmeier to revise the wording, as Hoodline reported at the time in its coverage of the courtroom fight over the ballot question.
The spending disclosures add another layer to a campaign already drawing scrutiny over dark-money tactics. Earlier this month, an inactive 501(c)(4) entity called A Better Florida — with no active state registration — flooded television airwaves with copycat ads echoing the opposition campaign's messaging, a pattern Hoodline previously examined in its report on the mystery ad group. With the November vote approaching and tens of millions of dollars moving through a network of firms tied to one operative's past legal troubles, the final stretch of the Amendment 3 campaign is shaping up as one of the most financially tangled ballot fights in recent Florida history.
