“Rarely do you have someone so powerful that wants to remain behind the scenes," said Daniel Smith, an elections expert and University of Florida professor.

Tucked away in an industrial park outside northwest Gainesville is a business run by one of Florida’s most influential operatives in GOP politics.

Despite his growing list of high-profile clients, being named in a gerrymandering scandal in 2012 and having ties to dozens of political committees that shift tens of millions of dollars every election cycle, few know the man who has helped elect dozens of lawmakers.

“He is the best-kept secret in Alachua County, if not the state,” said Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida. “Rarely do you have someone so powerful that wants to remain behind the scenes.”

Since 1987, Patrick Jay Bainter has steadily built Data Targeting from a startup company to a must-have campaign team for Republicans, often securing victories for candidates at all levels of government, sometimes with the help of associates and questionable tactics.

The company has worked on hundreds of campaigns over the last 30 years, including races in at least 12 other states.

But Florida is the company's bread and butter, having done work for at least 15 of the 23 sitting Republican state senators and seven of Florida's 14 sitting Republican U.S. House members. Three other state Senate candidates that Data Targeting did work for during the 2018 election cycle weren't elected.

“They’re plugged into the Florida Senate,” said Tallahassee attorney Mark Herron. “They’ve been integral to their success for a number of election cycles.”

Some of Data Targeting's other clients have included Governor-elect Ron DeSantis, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, former U.S. Rep. David Jolly, and former Senate presidents Joe Negron and Mike Haridopolos.

Republicans are not alone in shifting donations among ephemeral corporations and using political committees to cloak donors, but they are drawing in more money and using it in more sophisticated ways than Democrats have managed, according to insiders who spoke with The Sun. It appears to be working. The GOP has dominated statewide politics for the last two decades, despite Democrats having the advantage in the number of registered voters in Florida.

While reviewing hundreds of pages of documents relating to Bainter's political dealings, The Sun found:

• Bainter has worked closely with the last three Republican state Senate presidents, along with dozens of other sitting lawmakers.

• His company has worked on hundreds of campaigns.

• More than 60 political committees and groups close to Bainter funnel money to boost candidates' chances of winning, while creating a mind-boggling maze of campaign funds that make it near-impossible to trace the initial donor.

• His companies earned more than $13 million during the 2018 election cycle, the most he has earned for one cycle, according to campaign filings.

Bainter, 59, hasn't responded to numerous requests in the past few months to speak with The Sun about his business. His secretary said he wasn't interested.

His friend, William “Stafford” Jones, the former longtime chairman of the Alachua County Republican Executive Committee, was also implicated in the 2012 gerrymandering scandal where Bainter's company was found to have illegally drawn district lines to favor Republicans.

Jones operates 55 political committees in Florida and several other nonprofit organizations, some of which have ties to Data Targeting. He, too, has declined to answer questions about some of their political work.

State Republican and Democratic campaign law experts with direct knowledge of Data Targeting's work say Bainter has no Democratic counterpart.

In Alachua County, residents may not be familiar with Data Targeting or Bainter, but they've likely seen their work.

The company was an integral part of Sen. Keith Perry’s controversial re-election campaign through research, consulting, polling and mailers paid for by groups run by Jones and the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, or FRSCC, headed by Senate President Bill Galvano.

Herron, who works for the Florida Democratic Party and chairs the party's counterpart to the FRSCC, represented Perry’s opponent, Democrat Kayser Enneking.

Perry defeated Enneking by 2,000 votes on Nov. 6. That's largely because Charles Goston, a lifelong Democrat, also ran as an independent and earned 4,300 votes. Goston's campaign was largely funded by Republicans with ties to Perry, filings show.

Some suspect Bainter and Jones, who were heavily involved in Perry's campaign, orchestrated Goston's campaign funding. Goston has said he didn't know or care where the money came from.

The dark money that poured in is nearly untraceable. But Goston's PAC used the same bank branch as at least three other controversial PACs — Protect Venice, Social Justice and Moms Speak Out — all of which lead back to Jones.

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“Pat Bainter has been an early innovator in efforts to circumvent what on the surface appear to be restrictive campaign finance laws,” Smith said. “This has been going on for decades.”

The man

Most people couldn’t pick Bainter out of a crowd. He looks like your average Joe.

He’s a relatively fit, white man with short light brown hair and sports a short gray and brown beard.

He came to Alachua County in 1986 from Columbia County, a year before he founded Data Targeting. He is a registered Republican, according to his voter registration. He's the son of former Florida House Rep. Stanley “Stan” E. Bainter, R-Eustis, who served from 1986 through 2000. Stan Bainter, a Korean War veteran, died Dec. 9 at age 87.

In 1987, Bainter earned a zoology degree from the University of Florida. He was issued a commercial pilot license in 2007 and is a certified flight instructor, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. He plays Ultimate Frisbee and competes in antique tractor-pulling contests around the state, according to his company website.

Bainter has been married to Linda Bainter for more than 30 years. She is listed as an officer for Data Targeting in state business filings. The couple have two children, one of whom also works with the company as a programmer.

According to property records, Bainter lives in the unincorporated area of Alachua County between Tioga and Alachua, a 10-minute drive north of the company’s headquarters.

Bainter first got involved in politics in 1986 when he managed his father's campaign. He then quickly entrenched himself by working on hundreds of other campaigns and serving on the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Florida, now a frequent client of Data Targeting.

Seldom does he give interviews to news organizations. He has grown accustomed to staying under the radar, allowing his clients — for better or worse — to soak up the campaign spotlight.

“I’ve never been good with appearing in public, I have a tough time with crowds, and the nature of the company kind of reflects that,” Bainter told the Naples Daily News in 2014.

Smith, the UF professor, said Bainter's shy demeanor has only bolstered his career through the years.

“I think that’s one of the more (positive) attributes of Bainter, is that he has consistently stayed out of the limelight,” Smith said. “That’s a rare trait, and he’s become very wealthy because of it.”

The company

Each year, Bainter’s company becomes more successful. It opened a second office in Jacksonville in 2014, called Data Targeting Research. The office has also managed to keep a low profile despite its growing revenue and list of clients.

Bainter's other affiliated company, Orra Strategic Guidance Systems (SGS), does similar work out of the headquarters, located at 3515 NW 98th St. in Gainesville.

During the 2018 election cycle, Data Targeting was paid more than $8 million from a host of clients that include candidates, PACs and party affiliated organizations, according to state and federal campaign filings. SGS brought in another $6 million during that time.

It was each company’s most successful election cycle, financially speaking.

During the 2014 races, Data Targeting brought nearly a third of that — $5.3 million — and SGS did little work for candidates. Those figures increased in 2016 when Data Targeting brought in about $7.3 million and SGS secured another $1.3 million.

According to its website, Data Targeting offers a range of services and strategies that make it a one-stop shop for those seeking office. The company provides voter turnout projections, voter demographics, polling, opposition research, dossiers, digital ads, robocalls and mailers, among other services.

The site says the company pioneered “data-centric campaigning” and that it can develop a strategic plan “based precisely on what it will take to win.”

During Perry’s campaign run, The Sun fact-checked several of the senator’s ads and Data Targeting-produced mailers, finding that several of their claims were false. According to Data Targeting's website, voters typically scan mailers for less than 6 seconds, so the company creates campaign mailers that get “directly into the minds” of voters to make “an impact that lasts."

Local Democrats and Republicans have suspected that mysteriously funded mailers that attacked Enneking during the Senate District 8 primary were planned by Bainter, though his name hasn't been directly tied to those efforts.

Jones', however, was.

Perry has said he didn’t know if GOP operatives were behind some of the negative mailers, but conceded they could have been. He did not return voicemails for this story.

The money

Bainter used to dabble with political committees, but that effort is largely headed by his longtime friend William Jones, better known by his middle name, Stafford.

Jones, 50, is the former chairman of the Alachua County Republican Executive Committee. He has denied that he works closely with Bainter but says they have crossed paths when working for the same candidates, which is quite often.

He runs a computer consulting company called Data Systems. It is also located in the unincorporated area of Alachua County northwest of Gainesville, about a four-minute drive from Data Targeting.

Jones heads 55 active political committees in Florida, but has closed more than 30 others. During the 2018 elections, he was paid $197,000 for managing them, according to state campaign filings.

He also has at least three active federal PACs and several 501(c)(4)-registered organizations that have been heavily used for political purposes. The 501(c)(4) designation is from federal tax law, describing tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations. Jones' most recent IRS forms filed for the nonprofits are from 2016.

By definition, the Internal Revenue Service states that 501(c)(4) organizations must exclusively work to provide social welfare. Those groups can spend some money on politics, but can't spend more than half of their money on campaign expenses. It also must submit forms to the IRS to show where the money came from. If caught in violation, an organization could lose its tax-exempt status, though nothing restricts a person from opening up a new 501(c)(4).

One tax-exempt group run by Jones, the Florida Consumer Awareness Fund, dumped $1.2 million to the FRSCC as a last-ditch effort to boost the chances of Republican candidates winning in tight races. The FRSCC then paid Data Targeting. The Awareness Fund’s donors are hidden, like some of Jones' other groups.

Herron said many are often under the impression that they can set up a 501(c)(4) as a vehicle to fund PACs without needing to disclose donors. However, he says, that's not the case under Florida law.

Adav Noti, a senior director and attorney with the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., and former attorney for the Federal Elections Commission, said campaign finance laws are set up to prevent people from hiding behind such tax-exempt organizations.

Almost all of Jones’ political groups lead back to a discreet Tallahassee office, at 115 E. Park Ave., where several other businesses share space and do work for the same candidates represented by Jones and Bainter. He recently changed that address to a mailbox store. Some of the candidate PACs also based at the Park Avenue address include Friends of Matt Caldwell and Friends of Ashley Moody.

At least two other businesses at the address are the Coates Law Firm and Tidewater Consulting, headed by attorneys Richard Coates and Emmett “Bucky” Mitchell IV. Both are often paid with PAC money.

Mitchell is a former attorney for the Department of State and Division of Elections. He's tied to 55 active political committees, some of which are headed by Jones.

In 2012, Mitchell was found to have engineered the 2000 Florida felons list, which African-American leaders said purged thousands of eligible blacks from voter rolls in the state and helped swing that election to the GOP, according to the Palm Beach Post. He also provided the first draft of a controversial House bill that restricted early voting and voter registration campaigns that year.

The Sun found that Jones and Mitchell's committees over the years have funneled millions of dollars to one another and make it intentionally difficult to trace or know the true backer of candidates and advertisements, despite some donors being listed in campaign reports.

Most of the money moved around — sometimes from untraceable entities — finds its way to Republican candidates, the FRSCC, or Data Targeting, according to campaign filings.

When “dark money” is used in campaigns, the funds are channeled through nontraditional routes, sometimes illegally, to make it difficult to track who is backing groups or candidates.

Noti said the Federal Elections Commission is cracking down on the use of shell organizations and how some secretly fund campaigns, though he is unsure what Florida’s election officials are doing about the problem. The state's election commission investigates complaints filed by anyone with firsthand knowledge of a violation, but doesn't seek out violations.

"To conceal a source of money in most states is illegal,” Noti said. “If it was at the federal level, it does get prosecuted. Federal law has a specific penalty that is a higher penalty than other types of penalties.”

Some tactics used by Jones' PACs simply expose election law loopholes, which the Legislature could choose to change. In other cases, PACs and tax-exempt organizations pop up, then close, leaving little time to act on possible violations.

In Perry’s Senate District 8 race, two newly created, out-of-state corporations gave more than $200,000 to boost lesser-funded candidates' campaigns as a way to split votes and help Perry win re-election.

The PACs that received the money — Friends of Charles Goston and the Liberation Ocala African American Council — shut down about a month after their creation.

Herron said using untraceable, shell organizations to back candidates through new PACs is a relatively new and unique tactic at the local level ― and one that exposes another campaign-law loophole.

“It undermines the purpose of the campaign finance laws,” he said.

Other PACs, Moms Speak Out and Social Justice, were run by a Gainesville woman connected to Jones and his company, Data Systems. Those PACs helped pay for ads that targeted Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Fort Lauderdale, Venice City Council Member Deborah Anderson, and used the same marketing consultant who targeted Enneking. Social Justice also paid Data Targeting for ads.

The Moms Speak Out, Social Justice and Friends of Charles Goston PACs also used the same Bank of America branch in Tallahassee, located a mile away from Jones' new mailbox store address for his PACs, which Social Justice also uses. Both received funding from newly created organizations based in Washington, D.C., whose funding sources are cloaked.

Jones has denied involvement with the committees.

Noti said Congress and state lawmakers have the ability to change or better enforce campaign laws, noting that politicians tend to dislike shady organizations popping up and targeting them.

“It’s definitely an increasing problem,” he said. “... They get blindsided, and they have no control over it.”

Some campaign violations, like the ones found in the Senate 8 race, fall in between authorities, leaving it unclear who would investigate.

The Florida Elections Commission is confined by its statewide jurisdiction, while the Federal Elections Commission is concerned with federal elections. District 8 State Attorney Bill Cervone says his office isn't interested in investigating campaign finance violations but said a grand jury could, theoretically, investigate such issues.

The redistricting

Using shadowy tactics to get results that favor Republicans is not a new business strategy for Bainter by any stretch.

In 2012, the Florida Legislature sought a transparent process to draw fair district lines for Florida’s Congressional and state Senate members. Members of the public were allowed to submit maps for review. Ultimately, the approved maps' district boundaries favored Republicans.

That’s because Bainter and Jones were involved in a gerrymandering scandal that allowed them to hide behind the open process while drawing maps that favored their clients, court records show.

Gerrymandering is an illegal process of manipulating district boundaries so that they favor one political party over another. The U.S. Supreme Court and other state courts have ruled it unconstitutional.

The district maps passed in 2012 were challenged in a Leon County court by the League of Women Voters of Florida.

Court records show Bainter and his associates drew maps, then asked others to submit them to the Legislature. The maps the Legislature approved matched those drawn by Bainter’s company.

Orlando Attorney David King successfully argued the case on behalf of the League of Women Voters, ending a three-year legal battle between the group and Bainter, his company, state officials and the Legislature.

According to court records, Bainter denied wrongdoing and said he had no involvement in gerrymandering. His story significantly changed as the case dragged out, records show. When the court ordered him to produce hundreds of emails, maps and other documents, Bainter took his case to the Supreme Court, citing First Amendment protection.

The Supreme Court, however, eventually forced Bainter to produce more than 700 pages of documents that showed he was behind the plan to redraw district maps to Republicans’ benefit.

"... Bainter and other political consultants acted in concert with the Legislature to produce individual districts and an overall redistricting map favorable to the Republican Party and incumbents, in violation of the Florida Constitution redistricting standards,” an opinion by Florida Supreme Court Judge Barbara J. Pariente said.

After the ruling, the courts had the districts redrawn ahead of the 2016 election. The courts accepted at least 39 redrawn state Senate districts, in addition to several House districts, King said.

No one was criminally charged in the case, though Bainter and his tactics were thrust into the public spotlight for the first time in his career.

When asked by the Naples Daily News in 2014 about his involvement in the gerrymandering case, Bainter responded: "So what?