TALLAHASSEE — Within the shadow of Florida’s Capitol, a supposedly closed boutique resort has develop into an unique retreat for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ closest allies and high advisers — with a significant supporter of the governor appearing as gatekeeper.
Ostensibly closed for renovations, the Governor’s Inn is the place DeSantis’ presidential marketing campaign paid hire for marketing campaign workers and the place his high deputies generally mingle on a balcony overlooking Adams Avenue. It’s the place the governor’s former chief of workers and marketing campaign supervisor held his first 2026 fundraiser after DeSantis made him Florida’s lawyer common.
There isn’t any approach for most of the people to guide a room or occasion on-line. Stroll-ins aren’t welcome, based on indicators taped to the glass doorways on the entrance entrance. To get in, it helps to know the proprietor: Craig Mateer, a high sponsor of the governor’s second inauguration who made his non-public planes obtainable to DeSantis throughout his presidential marketing campaign.
The dynamics at play contained in the Governor’s Inn, as described by greater than a dozen individuals who have been inside for occasions, in a single day stays or drinks, have ethics consultants questioning about what’s going on inside a venue with no public details about the worth of rooms, drinks or occasions, and no clear standards about easy methods to get in.
“It’s a black field,” stated Bob Jarvis, an ethics professor at Nova Southeastern College’s regulation college. “There isn’t any technique to know what’s occurring. There’s no technique to know what expectations there are of the proprietor. There isn’t any technique to know whether or not these expectations have been fulfilled on a quid professional quo foundation.”
The governor’s personal ethics coverage prohibits workers from accepting presents, equivalent to the usage of non-public property or entry to purchases that aren’t obtainable to others, to keep away from the “look of impropriety.”
Mateer, whose possession of the resort has created an uncommon degree of entry in a capital metropolis constructed on energy and affect, controls what the agency employed to renovate the Inn describes as “the proper backdrop for leisure or putting offers.” However in a Might 7 interview, he downplayed the venue’s exclusivity.
“We aren’t that cool,” stated Mateer, who lives in Orlando. “We’ve some events there, it relies upon.”
DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin didn’t reply questions concerning the governor’s high staffers utilizing the resort and second-floor bar, or whether or not they pay for his or her drinks whereas there. He accused reporters of “stalking individuals on their lunch breaks and of their private lives, which even authorities staffers are allowed to have.”
Contained in the Governor’s Inn
The comings and goings on the resort and bar have develop into a subject of dialog amongst Tallahassee’s governing class, in no small half as a result of its opaqueness.
The resort’s makeover was accomplished in 2023, based on the structure agency that received awards for its design. However Mateer, who purchased the resort in 2020 for $2.9 million, insists it stays closed as a result of it’s nonetheless underneath development.
“We‘re probably not able to open,” he stated, citing security issues associated to a gutted restaurant connected to the resort and plumbing points. “We‘ve type of limped alongside.”
An individual who answered a name from a reporter on the resort on Might 5 repeated that declare, regardless that there aren’t any open permits for development on the property with the town of Tallahassee. The one technique to keep on the resort is that if the proprietor approves it, the particular person stated.
It’s not clear how a lot Mateer spent on renovations to the historic constructing, a horse-drawn carriage and wagon store that was first transformed to a resort in 1983. Data obtainable by metropolis permits and native newspaper articles counsel it was a multimillion-dollar venture involving a redesign of the facade and the development of a brand new balcony to go together with a modernized second-floor bar. The venue has an lively resort and liquor license.
Hungerford Design, the renovating agency employed and owned by Mateer’s late childhood good friend, describes the resort’s second-floor “Appaloosa” bar on its web site as a venue that provides top-shelf bourbons and personal whiskey and cigar lockers. The wooden and steel-lined inside extends to a balcony overlooking Adams Avenue. A go to “simply may need you mingling with the Tallahassee elites,” the design agency boasts on its web site.
Rooms are “furnished with their unique vintage poster beds and armoires, distinctive to every room, refinished in historic playful colours mixing the outdated with the brand new,” based on the agency. “Vintage brick and wainscoting full the classic setting.” Loos are adorned with “premium Kallista fixtures” and “Italian Sicis mosaic tile” within the showers.
Contained in the foyer, a big portrait of DeSantis is prominently displayed subsequent to framed footage of former Florida governors. In step with the theme of the resort, its 29 rooms are named after Florida governors.
Mateer has been internet hosting friends on the resort since not less than October of 2023, when a contingent from Dublin visited Tallahassee. In January of final 12 months, DeSantis’ wheezing presidential marketing campaign reported a fee of $2,300 for hire. In December, the Republican Celebration of Florida reported paying $45,311 to the Inn to cowl bills associated to the Florida electors who traveled to Tallahassee to solid the state’s 29 votes within the presidential election.
In keeping with a supply accustomed to the comings and goings on the Inn, it’s the place DeSantis and the primary woman watched outcomes roll in from the November election.
Mateer, whom DeSantis appointed to the state college system‘s Board of Governors, has additionally allowed New Faculty of Florida and Florida Worldwide College to host occasions on the resort. The schools’ respective presidents, Richard Corcoran and Jeannette Nuñez, are former DeSantis administration officers and have stayed on the Inn, based on the colleges.
Nuñez’s room value $113 an evening, based on FIU, which stated its reception on the resort value $13,266, together with meals and beverage, and was paid for by the college’s basis. New Faculty didn’t instantly reply when requested how a lot the varsity paid for its occasions or Corcoran’s resort stays.
The truth that the resort is open to some is not any secret in Tallahassee. On the afternoon of Might 6, reporters witnessed DeSantis’ chief of workers, Jason Weida, and the governor’s director of legislative affairs, Peter Cuderman, assembly for about an hour on the out of doors balcony earlier than heading again to the governor’s workplace within the state Capitol.
In January, The Floridian reported that state Rep. Meg Weinberger, R- Palm Seaside Gardens, and her husband had been advised to pack their luggage and discover a new resort. The explanation, based on witnesses: She sided with GOP legislative leaders as a substitute of the governor on a hotly debated immigration invoice.
Weinberger declined to remark. Mateer declined to touch upon Weinberger’s ejection.
Those that have been inside say the resort has been fantastically remade.
Barry Richard, a high-profile Tallahassee lawyer whose spouse is a Democrat within the Florida Home, stated he was capable of get his son a room in Mateer’s resort for his wedding ceremony evening after calling a common supervisor who had given him a tour. He booked it by his regulation agency.
“I’ll let you know what, he spent some huge cash on his pastime,” Richard stated. “Some individuals purchase gigantic yachts. He simply constructed a wonderful resort.”
Comply with the cash
A lot of Mateer’s fortune is attributed to an airport baggage-handling firm he bought for $275 million in 2018. Two years later, he began to present massive political money to DeSantis and the state GOP, marketing campaign finance information present.
Since 2020, Mateer and his speedy household have given $1.9 million to DeSantis’ gubernatorial and presidential marketing campaign efforts and to his inauguration.
Firms affiliated with Mateer had been additionally paid practically $1 million for journey bills as DeSantis criss-crossed the nation whereas operating for president, federal marketing campaign finance information present.
DeSantis has in flip put in Mateer on state boards. He serves on the Board of Governors and was beforehand appointed to boards that oversee Florida State College, the Orlando airport and Walt Disney World’s particular district.
In an interview, Mateer stated the results of his donating is “they put you on these boards.”
“Then I do what I feel, and generally they prefer it, and generally they don‘t,” he stated. “I don‘t actually belong on these boards.”
He made mild of his relationship with DeSantis, who he stated “does what he thinks is true and pushes ahead.” He stated politics wants “extra individuals giving that don’t need something.”
“I’m not some massive political man,” he stated. “You received‘t see me with any state contract. You received‘t see me with benefits. I don‘t want them. I don‘t need them.”
A overview of the newest three years of lobbying information discovered that not one of the dozens of lively corporations that look like affiliated with Mateer and his household have had registered state lobbyists.
The Mateer household has continued to assist the term-limited governor after he dropped out of the presidential race.
In March, Mateer’s son, William James, gave $500,000 to a political committee that DeSantis plans to make use of to assist his successor. Mateer’s son additionally contributed $275,000 to Legal professional Common James Uthmeier’s political committee, making him the lawyer common’s high donor thus far, marketing campaign information present.
Uthmeier, who was seen on the resort a number of occasions when he was DeSantis’ chief of workers, picked Mateer’s Inn to host a March fundraiser with influential political operatives enlisted to assist him elevate cash.
Amongst these in attendance, based on the flyer: Jeff Aaron, who has develop into the go-to lawyer for a few of the DeSantis administration‘s most high-profile assignments, together with representing the embattled Hope Florida Basis charity; Aaron‘s spouse, Chelsea, the governor’s appointments director; Weida, DeSantis’ chief of workers; and Carlos Duart, the CEO of Miami engineering and emergency administration agency CDR Maguire, which has acquired tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in contracts from the DeSantis administration.
Duart, an FIU trustee whose spouse serves on the primary woman’s Hope Florida Basis board, was seen by reporters going out and in of the Inn on Might 6. He gave $500,000 to DeSantis’ political committee, Florida Freedom Fund, in March and $25,000 to Uthmeier’s political committee.
Duart didn’t reply to a request searching for remark.
Marketing campaign finance information present tens of 1000’s of {dollars} flowed to Uthmeier’s political committee after the fundraiser on the Inn however no file of the institution being rented out for the occasion.
Marketing campaign spokesperson Makenzi Mahler stated bills associated to the marketing campaign launch are mirrored in a $4,000 fee to the regulation agency DownsAaron. The agency is co-led by Aaron, the registered agent for Uthmeier’s political committee, and Mayanne Downs, who has carried out non-public authorized work for Mateer. Aaron advised the Instances/Herald in an e mail that the agency “helped coordinate” the fundraiser.
Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for Uthmeier’s workplace, didn’t reply questions on why the lawyer common was hanging out on the Governor’s Inn, whether or not he performed official enterprise there or accepted free meals or drinks. He advised a reporter to “get a life.”
“Because the Governor’s former Chief Ethics Officer, James maintains the best degree of ethics and certainly has been requested by many state staff to offer ethics trainings,” Redfern stated in an announcement. “That is simply one other hit piece from a faux reporter.”
Twenty years in the past, Florida officers reformed ethics guidelines and legal guidelines to forestall particular pursuits from influencing state enterprise by freebies equivalent to meals, drinks and journeys.
These guidelines require state officers who obtain presents price $100 or extra, together with the usage of non-public property, to reveal it to the state’s Fee on Ethics. The Fee stated on Might 13 that it has acquired no reward disclosures from Uthmeier, Weida or different high administration officers who’ve been on the Inn.
For the reason that disclosure requirement was put in place, state officers have reported presents starting from cigar packing containers to bottles of wine and swords, information present. DeSantis has by no means filed a present disclosure as governor, based on the Florida Fee on Ethics. However he has been accused of failing to report journeys on non-public jets. DeSantis additionally acquired a $28,000 golf simulator on the Governor’s Mansion from one among his donors, which state ethics officers discovered was a present to the state, not the governor.
Mateer dismissed the concept opening his resort to the governor’s workers offered a possible ethics drawback.
“What worth is it?” he stated. “I’m nonetheless underneath development.”