TALLAHASSEE — Blaise Ingoglia, Florida’s freshly appointed CFO, is starting the latest chapter of his political career the same way he entered politics over a decade ago – crusading against property taxes and what he considers lavish government spending with humor and bombast.
Appointed in July by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Ingoglia has embraced the role of budgetary watchdog with vigor, barnstorming the state with charts full of numbers claiming to expose waste and fraud and bringing the once staid role of CFO into the spotlight.
DeSantis said he chose Ingoglia – a home builder for 24 years, a professional poker player and former state legislator – for his “great financial record,” but also because he is a conservative warrior who has backed the governor’s positions on enforcing immigration laws, eliminating property taxes and tightening voting rules.
At an event in July at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, DeSantis said he wanted someone who was “running toward these fights” and not hiding. “And every single time we’ve had a flash point in Florida, Blaise is running into battle to stand up for people like you.”
Ingoglia, 54, has forged a reputation as a tough talking, wise-cracking “conservative pit bull” who enlivens his presentations with vulgarities, like naming his auditing efforts after an obscenity-laced meme that is abbreviated FAFO. He also has a penchant for stunts like filing a bill to eliminate the Florida Democratic Party or attacking Orlando’s employment of a poet laureate — in rhyme. (He followed up by poetically excoriating the Orlando Sentinel for its coverage of the issue.)
“Governments are spending money left and right. Your property taxes have been going up and up … they think you are an endless ATM,” Ingoglia said during one of his televised press conferences.
At another, where he questioned the City of Jacksonville’s spending $500,000 for a tree inventory, he said, “Maybe they’re trying to find the money tree. Oh, wait, never mind, they actually found it — you the taxpayers.”
But critics question Ingoglia’s qualifications for a job that requires monitoring state revenue collections, paying Florida’s bills, managing the state’s investments, regulating the insurance industry and overseeing fire investigations.
“Floridians deserve a CFO who will stand up to the insurance companies and help make property insurance more affordable,” House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, said in a press statement.
“Instead, Ron DeSantis is appointing a Tallahassee politician more loyal to him than to the people,” Driskell said. “I believe Blaise Ingoglia will talk tough but continue the tradition of giving the insurance companies everything they ask for while Florida’s working families and seniors pay the price.”
Reading the room
Ingoglia’s resume, however, includes more than just politics: He built up his own construction company and has won nearly $500,000 at the poker tables at some of the country’s biggest casinos.
Ingoglia attended college in his native New York but did not graduate. He moved to Florida in 1996 with $1,600 in his pocket. He founded a mortgage company in Spring Hill in 1998, followed by his own housing construction company in 2001 – and has seen his net worth grow from $4 million in 2014, when he was first elected to the state House representing Hernando County, to $28 million by the end of last year.
From 2015 to 2019, he also served as chair of the state Republican Party.
Ingoglia has showed off his gambling prowess at the poker tables of Atlantic City, Las Vegas and the Seminole Hard Rock resort in Florida since 2006. His biggest single win was $261,901, when he came in sixth at the World Poker Tournament at the Borgata luxury resort and casino in Atlantic City in 2006.
His latest winnings came in June at the World Series of Poker tournament at Bally’s in Las Vegas, and were a tick less impressive: He and partner Peter Cuderman, a former DeSantis staffer, took home $2,688 each after finishing 32nd.
Ingoglia’s crusade against tax-and-spend counties began around 2007. Tired of seeing people being overtaxed by local politicians, Ingoglia began his “Government Gone Wild” seminars, meeting with small groups to explain how cities and counties were wasting money that could have been used to lower property taxes.
The title became his brand, and he continues to use “GovGoneWild” as his handle on social media and as the name of one of his political committees.
“I know my local government budgets. I cut my teeth on them,” Ingoglia said recently. “That’s how Government Gone Wild got started.”
It started with a bang. By 2010, he was drawing crowds of 200 people at a time.
He and his followers started showing up at county commission budget hearings, sometimes drawing hundreds of people to what used to be staid, sparsely populated meetings.
During one such hearing, a Hernando County commissioner challenged Ingoglia’s methodology and he convinced county leaders his numbers were accurate.
The next year, that commissioner and one other were voted out of office.
“Ingoglia is a bit of a ham, a helluva speaker. He’s also a professional poker player, and can read a room,” Mike Wright, a veteran journalist and author of the Just Wright Blog, wrote in 2022 when Ingoglia decided to run for state Senate.
Recollecting two “anti-government rallies” that Ingoglia held in Lecanto in 2010, Wright said, “We didn’t know this guy from Adam’s house cat, but 90 minutes later folks in that room were ready to follow him anywhere.”
Asked what they should do to stop this out-of-control spending, Ingoglia told them, “We’re going to vote out the wasteful spenders, that’s what we’re going to do!”
Challenging the ‘gravy train’
As CFO, Ingoglia has broad powers to audit cities and counties for their use of state money, abilities expanded by the governor’s executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency. Ingoglia has taken his authority further than any previous CFO, sending teams of CPAs to several counties and a handful of cities to pore over their budgets for the past five years.
His efforts have been met with derision and disbelief from officials from the larger, Democrat-heavy urban counties he’s targeted. They said his numbers are inaccurate, his calculations simplistic and his examples wanting.
Never one to back down from a fight, he accused them of lying to the public that entrusted them with their tax dollars and protecting their “gravy train.”
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, who has hinted he might just run for governor, accused Ingoglia of using “fuzzy math” and said he ought to tend to his own house first.
Why not audit the state budget — which has ballooned under DeSantis since he took office in 2019 from $91 billion to $118 billion?
“He should be, in my opinion, starting at home,” said Alex Sink, the state’s only Democratic CFO from 2007-11. “Why aren’t they reviewing all the state departments? Why throw arrows at local governments when we have an enormous state budget?”
‘Expect a knock on your door’
In the 15 years since he began “Government Gone Wild,” Ingoglia’s message and methodology hasn’t changed much.
At a recent news conference in Jacksonville, Ingoglia railed against property taxes, which he wants to eliminate for residences with a homestead exemption via a ballot measure next year.
“Governments have become reckless and going wild with our tax dollars,” he said.
As of last week, he calculated that the seven counties his team reviewed, as well as a few cities such as Orlando, are spending $1 billion more than they needed to this year alone. So far, however, the specific examples of waste he’s offered don’t amount to even a fraction of that eye-catching figure.
But Ingoglia, who must stand for election in 2026 if he hopes to keep his bully pulpit, is undeterred.
“If you are planning on putting a tax referendum on the ballot in 2026 expect a knock on your door,” he said. “Anyone that raised the millage rate and property taxes on people can expect a call from our office. We are going to show how much excessive waste, fraud and abuse and you can make the argument why you raised taxes when people are feeling the pinch.”
