- Jay Shooster, a Democrat candidate in the House District 91 race, has seen a significant surge in campaign funds, raising $300,000 within a month of entering the contest.
- Shooster’s top contributors are predominantly from out of state, mostly New York and California, and are primarily affiliated with technology or healthcare sectors.
- Only a small portion of the donations reported by Shooster’s Future Leaders Florida PAC originated from Florida, indicating a strong out-of-state interest in his campaign.
- Shooster’s opponent, GOP Representative Peggy Gossett-Seidman, has raised a significantly smaller amount of $11,500 according to campaign finance documents. House District 91, encompassing Boca Raton and Highland Beach in Palm Beach County, is considered a toss-up district.
Democrat candidate Jay Shooster has garnered attention in the House District 91 race following a surge of campaign funds acquired in the early days of his operations, netting $300,000 since his entry into the contest last month. However, each of Shooster’s top contributors is registered out of state, with a concentration in New York and California, and all work in the technology or healthcare industries.
Among his biggest contributors in the healthcare field, Sabina Makhdomi, a nurse practitioner based in New York City, donated $20,000 to Shooster’s campaign, while Li Physiatry, P.C., located in a Northern New Jersey suburb of New York City and owned by Constance Li, contributed $15,000.
Tech donors include Todor Markov, a machine learning researcher in San Francisco at OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, who contributed $10,000, and Jacob Eliosoff, a cryptocurrency fund manager for Trevi Digital Assets Fund in New York City, who also donated $10,000. Simon Townsend-Last, a chief technology officer in San Francisco, pledged $10,000 as well.
Shooster did not respond to requests for comment about the out-of-state money he has collected.
“I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve raised almost $300,000 to flip Florida HD-91 blue,” he said in a prepared release regarding his campaign finances. “So grateful for all support we’ve received. We are going to turn the tide against extremism in Florida.”
It is also worth noting that of the 49 donations reported by Shooster’s Future Leaders Florida PAC, just six have originated in Florida, with four of those individuals sharing a last name with Shooster, underscoring the out-of-state draw held by his campaign. Attempts made to contact Shooster went unanswered.
Shooster’s opponent, GOP Representative Peggy Gossett-Seidman, has raised just $11,500 as of this writing, according to campaign finance documents.
Shooster, a Boca Raton-based lawyer and Artificial Intelligence Fellow at the Center for Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University, has received endorsements from U.S. Representative Jared Moskowitz, state Senators Lori Berman and Tina Polsky, and state Representatives Joe Casello and Kelly Skidmore. House District 91, which encompasses Boca Raton and Highland Beach in Palm Beach County, is considered a toss-up district.