Much talk has been made about infiltration in local, state, and Federal elections. The rumors have been rampant, but I decided to take a closer look. A candidate for mayor in Palm Coast, Florida has certainly caught my attention as of late. His actions have been questionable at best, so I decided to take a closer look at who is funding the Peter Johnson campaign. Funding typically represents people who personally know the candidate beyond what they promise in a prescripted campaign speech. More often than not, large donors to a campaign align with their candidate’s value system on multiple levels. Supporting a candidate with a vote or a social media post is one thing, however financial contributions are a different level of support.

Peter Johnson has raised just under $3,000 for his mayoral campaign. To be honest, with such a small amount of money raised I expected my review to be fruitless. I completely expected the majority of these donations to be $20.00-$50.00 donations from various members of the community.

Johnson’s largest fundraising came in Q1 of 2024 where he raised $2060.00 along with $1007.16 in in-kind donations. I immediately began to wonder why his fundraising had risen so drastically and declined with the same intensity.

I was shocked to see that nearly 50% of Johnson’s funding in his largest fundraising quarter came from a single donor.

Thomas Nielsen made 2 donations in Q1 of 2024 totaling $1,000 in total funds. This information was taken straight from the Flagler County Supervisor of Elections website. I am very familiar with the political activists and donors in Flagler County; however, this was not a name that I had ever heard. I decided to take a closer look at who Thomas Nielsen was.

There are 0 records of Nielsen donating to a federal candidate available on the Federal Election Commission website. I was able to find Thomas on Facebook, and the first post that I saw was not one that I would expect to be coming from a Conservative donor”. The 2019 post was shared from the page “go left” and shows Donald Trump along with other prominent Republicans being arrested.

In a recent interview with a local media outlet, Johnson recently referred to himself as a Republican, making the matter even more confusing.

It is certainly true that candidates cannot control who donates to their campaign. I am unaware if Johnson and Nielsen have a personal relationship. It is worth asking why a man who obviously takes pleasure in the thought of Republicans being arrested would be compelled to donate $1,000 in funds to a “Republican” mayoral candidate. To date, Nielsen has accounted for 35% of the total funding in Peter Johnson’s campaign.