“Florida is the wild, wild West”…

“There have been improvements [in the way money is now raised and spent in state races]: campaign finance reports are available any time to any person with an Internet connection, no longer locked in a Tallahassee office to be read only during business hours.”

But many cite myriad problems built into a campaign-finance system tilted to favor political parties, a dynamic that contributes to a partisan divide in the Capitol and concentrates power among a few lawmakers.

“Florida is the wild, wild West,” said Mark Herron, an election law expert with the Florida Democratic Party. “For all intents and purposes, we are a wide-open state with no limits.”

Herron’s refrain was repeated by more than a dozen Republicans, Democrats, campaign finance attorneys and professional fundraisers.

“Their most common complaints:”

• Contribution caps of $500 for state candidates are unrealistically low. It’s nearly impossible to pay for a statewide campaign that way and it’s too easy to circumvent the limit.

• Politicians avoid accountability by using state parties to collect and spend six-figure campaign contributions from corporate donors.

• The rise of so-called 501(c)(4) groups, which are corporations that can engage in lobbying and campaigning without having to disclose donors.