Upon analyzing the data available, it has come to my attention – worth sharing objectively with the Charlotte County voters – that nearly 70% of Kim Amontree’s Campaign spending goes to Tallahassee-connected political operatives as she targets commissioner Stephen R. Deutsch viciously.
Charlotte County voters are getting their first real taste of what political observers across Southwest Florida already know too well. Kim Amontree, the sitting Charlotte County School Board member in District 2 now running to unseat incumbent County Commissioner Stephen R. Deutsch in District 4, has put Lee County’s most polarizing political operative on her payroll. That operative is Terry Miller, and his firm TM Strategic Consulting is now one of the largest line items in Amontree’s campaign ledger.
Miller’s name appears on Amontree’s own DS-DE9 Appointment of Campaign Treasurer form on file with the Charlotte County Supervisor of Elections, confirming him as part of her official campaign team. And the money trail at charlottevotes.com tells the rest of the story.
A Reputation Earned the Hard Way
Before Charlotte County residents judge Terry Miller by what he does here, it’s worth looking at what he has already done next door.
In August 2024, days before the Lee County Republican primary, Lee Supervisor of Elections Tommy Doyle was forced to publicly admit to an affair with a subordinate from years earlier after documents surfaced on an obscure website and spread across the county. The statement Doyle issued, confirming the affair and apologizing to his wife and staff, was sent to reporters not by Doyle himself but by his campaign consultant. That consultant was Terry Miller. Doyle called it “the worst decision of my life” in the written apology Miller circulated on his behalf.
In the same election cycle, Lee County residents publicly protested Miller by name, a rare moment when a behind-the-scenes operative became the story. The News-Press covered the demonstration in August 2024, with photos of locals holding signs calling out Miller directly over the dirty tactics associated with his candidates, a strategy that Amontree has employed in her campaign, stating at a meeting at We the People Club in 2025 that, “Politics is a blood sport, and I intend to win” – apparently at all cost.
The SWFL Chronicle, in a piece titled “Behind the Scenes In Lee County Politics,” described Miller as a campaign manager who “utilizes massive amounts of money through his political action committees, elected official money and endorsements” to move votes – essentially influencing elections – and documented a PAC-to-PAC money flow his clients benefit from. The outlet identified Miller’s inner circle as a self-described “cabal,” a label Miller’s own allies reportedly use in public social media comments.
Miller’s critics do not dispute he wins races. They dispute HOW he wins them. Even sympathetic commentary in the same publication conceded the man’s trademark is “a barrage of hit pieces that just obliterate any chance of victory” for his clients’ opponents. This ties into Kim Amontree’s campaign strategy of seeking to destroy her opponent, which she did in 2024 when Leonardo Trent ran against. No argument that Amontree would not have been able to bear if a young candidate would have won the race, as that would have destroyed her plan to campaign for commissioner immediately, which seemingly was already in the works when she ran for reelection to the School Board.
In March 2025, Lee County School Board meetings turned contentious when residents learned that five of seven sitting board members, plus the superintendent, had used Miller as their campaign consultant. A resident speaking at the podium accused the board of handing a lobbying contract to a firm tied to Miller and warned it would give him “complete power to destroy Lee County.”
That is the operative Kim Amontree has now imported into Charlotte County.
Following the Money
A review of every campaign finance report Amontree has filed with the Charlotte County Supervisor of Elections since she entered the race in April 2025 shows just how central Miller is to her operation.
Through the first quarter of 2026, Amontree has raised $186,600 in monetary contributions and reported $28,132.16 in total expenditures. Incumbent Commissioner Stephen R. Deutsch has raised $56,195.10 and spent $7,171.04 over the same period.
Let’s examine where her money is going? Kim Amontree is overwhelmingly spending donations to two Tallahassee-adjacent political firms.
TM Strategic Consulting – Terry Miller’s firm, 1375 Jackson Street, Suite 202, Fort Myers:
Q2 2025: $3,015.71 (website build, promotional materials, email services, printing)
Q3 2025: $356.76 (printing, postage, promotional materials)
Q4 2025: $839.88 (printing, campaign shirts)
Q1 2026: $9,529.69 (three campaign consulting retainers of $1,875 each, two direct mail drops totaling $1,247.14, postage, office supplies, email services)
Total paid to Terry Miller’s firm through March 31, 2026: $13,742.04
PAC Financial Management – Tallahassee-based campaign treasurer firm, the accounting back office for the operation:
Q2 2025: $509.03
Q3 2025: $1,575.0
Q4 2025: $2,250.00 (three payments)
Q1 2026: $907.20
Total paid to PAC Financial Management: $5,241.23
Combined, Amontree has funneled $18,983.27 to Miller’s firm and the Tallahassee accounting operation that serves his political ecosystem. That is roughly 67% of every dollar her campaign has spent. Put differently, for every three dollars Amontree has spent trying to beat Stephen R. Deutsch, about two of them have gone to the Miller machine and its bookkeepers in Tallahassee.
The pace is accelerating. In the first three months of 2026 alone, Amontree paid TM Strategic $9,529.69, more than triple what she paid the firm during the entire April-through-December 2025 stretch combined. Three separate $1,875 “campaign consulting” retainers landed in Miller’s lap during January, February, and March. Direct mail drops have already begun.
Familiar Fingerprints
The Miller network’s imprint on Amontree’s donor roll is just as unmistakable as it is on her expenditure side. Her Q3 2025 contributions include a $1,000 check from Tiffany for Florida, a political committee headquartered at 1375 Jackson Street, Suite 202, Fort Myers, the very same office address as TM Strategic Consulting. Her Q2 2025 report shows a $1,000 contribution from Friends of Amira Fox, another PAC operating out of that same Suite 202 address.
Amontree has also taken $1,000 from Friends of Spencer Roach, the PAC tied to the Lee County state representative whose public celebration of Miller was cited in the SWFL Chronicle piece about the “cabal.”
This is not a coincidence. This is a network, and Charlotte County is now the newest market it is working.
What Amontree’s Own Words Used to Say
When Amontree announced her candidacy, she told the Daily Sun she was concerned about commission “distractions” involving investigations and said, “What I can tell you is that I will not be making those kinds of headlines.”
That statement is getting harder to square with the strategy her campaign is now paying Terry Miller to run. Miller’s brand has never been quiet governance or high-minded issue debates. It has been, by the documented account of both his detractors and some of his admirers, the hit piece.
Under the Miller playbook documented in Lee County, the direct mail, digital ads, and late-cycle opposition drops tend to arrive in the final weeks before voters actually cast ballots, when the candidate being attacked has the least time to respond. Amontree has already paid for the direct mail. The machine is loaded.
The Question Voters Should Be Asking
Charlotte County is not Lee County, and voters here get to decide whether they want Lee County’s politics imported wholesale into the Peace River watershed. The facts on the public record are straightforward. A sitting school board member is running against an incumbent commissioner in a different district than she is serving the school board it. She has hired the political consultant whose own clients’ opponents have been buried under hit pieces in race after race next door. She is paying that consultant and his Tallahassee back office roughly two-thirds of every campaign dollar she spends. And the tone of the race, within months of her filing, is already going exactly where observers of Miller’s work said it would go. This is called running a dirty campaign where money is the weapon.
Voters can decide whether that is the fresh leadership and common-sense conservative values Amontree promised when she filed, or whether it is something else entirely dressed up in those words. Follow the money!
The campaign finance reports, the DS-DE9, and the Miller track record in Lee County are all public. They are sitting right now on charlottevotes.com and across the archives of Southwest Florida’s news outlets. Anyone who wants to read them should.
Sources: Charlotte County Supervisor of Elections campaign finance database (charlottevotes.com and voterfocus.com);
WGCU News, August 16, 2024;
News-Press, August 4, 2024; SWFL Chronicle; Florida’s Voice News;
Yahoo News coverage of the Lee County School Board lobbying contract, March 2025.*
by a We the People Club Contributor