Last September – as Ron DeSantis was spending Florida taxpayer money on advertisements attacking citizen-led constitutional amendments that would have protected abortion rights and legalized marijuana – his administration made a $1.525 million payment for TV commercials.
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Oct 20, 2025 · 12:22 PM UTC
The payment was made by DeSantis’ Agency for Health Care Administration to a small Tallahassee marketing firm called Strategic Digital Services.
And invoice records show that it paid for an ad buy across all 10 media markets that reached an estimated 11.4 million viewers...
But those invoice records also show that nearly all of the money — all but a $5,000 fee for Strategic Digital Services — was to be passed on to a hidden subcontractor that actually produced and placed the ads...
That subcontractor is identified in the records as “Total Video Placements.”
But corporate records and filings with the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Elections Commission suggest Total Video Placements is controlled by another ad firm called “FlexPoint Media"...
And FlexPoint is the same firm that both the Republican Party of Florida and a separate political committee controlled by DeSantis’ chief of staff used for their own advertisements attacking the abortion and marijuana ballot measures...
The connections the two companies are extensive. Total Video Placements uses FlexPoint’s post office box in New Albany, Ohio.
It also uses the same phone number as at least two other entities that FlexPoint set up under fictitious names...
One congressional campaign-finance report even identifies Total Video Placements as a part of FlexPoint...
And though the public record remains incomplete, it’s clear that AHCA wasn’t the only state agency secretly using the FlexPoint-linked subcontractor, either...
Records show that Strategic Digital Services mistakenly submitted a second invoice to AHCA from Total Video Placements. The healthcare agency never paid that invoice, which was for just over $1.6 million...
But about a week later, vendor records show that another agency broadcasting anti-amendment PSAs — the Florida Department of Health — made a payment for just over $1.6 million to Strategic Digital Services...
That's not all.
There was at least one other vendor working on the political ad campaign against the marijuana ballot measure who was simultaneously working as a secret subcontractor on the DeSantis administration’s taxpayer-funded ad campaign, too...
That company: TAG Strategies, an ad firm with a history of working for DeSantis’ political campaigns — including helping to produce a goofy commercial in which the governor pretended to be a jet fighter pilot...
Campaign-finance records show that Keep Florida Clean — the anti-marijuana political committee run by then-DeSantis Chief of Staff James Uthmeier — paid TAG more than $25,000 for “advertising” and “media production"...
At the same time, the Agency for Health Care Administration — a state agency ultimately overseen by then-DeSantis Chief of Staff James Uthmeier — paid $100,000 to TAG for “media placement and production” as a subcontractor under Strategic Digital Services...
These are just some of the details contained in hundreds of pages of public records obtained by Seeking Rents related to Ron DeSantis' unprecedented public ad campaign last fall against the abortion and marijuana amendments...
Altogether, Seeking Rents now estimates that Florida's governor burned between $35 million and $40 million in taxpayer money on so-called "public service announcements" attacking the two ballot measures each of which were supported by large majorities of Florida voters...
