Amid a home insurance crisis that has driven up premiums in Florida and left many homeowners unable to afford insurance, some of the state’s largest insurers have donated nearly half a million dollars to the Florida Republican Party.

A Newsweek An analysis of financial documents available on the independent platform OpenSecrets found that four of the 20 largest private insurers in the Sunshine State made generous donations to Florida GOP or state Republican candidates last year. Those four insurers are Heritage Insurance, GEICO, American Integrity Insurance and Slide Insurance.

This year, Heritage Insurance donated $15,000 to the Florida Republican Party and $1,000 to Florida Republican candidate Simon Corey. Last year, the insurer donated $200,000 to the Florida Republican Party and $1,000 to Florida Republican candidate Griff Griffitts.

Heritage is among the private insurers that have cut coverage as the risk of more frequent and severe extreme weather events increases in vulnerable areas of the state. As Insurify reports, the company decided not to renew 74,000 home insurance policies in the state last year to reduce the risk of its home insurance.

In 2023, GEICO donated $7,500 to Republican candidates in Florida. In total, $21,000 was donated to Republican candidates across the country this year. Also in 2023, the private insurer donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party in New York and $30,550 to Democratic candidates across the country.

This year, the company donated $4,000 to Florida Republican candidates Wyman Duggan and Tyler Sirois, and $2,000 to New York Democratic candidates David Weprin and Pamela Jo Hunter.

Between February 2023 and present, American Integrity Insurance donated a total of $82,000, including $60,000 to the Florida Republican Party and $22,000 to Republican candidates. Of that amount, $73,500 was donated last year and $8,500 in 2024.

This year, the private insurer donated to Republican candidates Brad Yeager ($1,000), Shane Abbott ($1,000), Griff Griffitts ($1,000), Greg Folley ($2,000), Linda Chaney ($1,000), Daniel Danny Alvarez ($1,000), Nick Primrose ($1,000) and Chase Tramont ($500).

Between March 2023 and the present, Slide Insurance donated a total of $236,000 to the Florida Republican Party, including $115,000 and $110,000 in March 2023 and $10,000 in July 2023. The insurance company donated $1,000 to a Florida Republican candidate, Simon Corey. The payment to Corey was the only one in 2024 and dates back to May.

Newsweek contacted the Republican Party of Florida, Heritage Insurance, GEICO, American Integrity Insurance and Slide Insurance by phone and email Wednesday morning.

In recent years, homeowners insurance premiums in Florida have skyrocketed as private insurers have tried to adapt to a higher-risk world and serve a market riddled with excessive litigation and widespread fraud in the Sunshine State. According to the latest data from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple I), the average homeowners insurance premium in Florida is currently $2,437 per year, well above the national annual average of $1,411.

Insurance companies that could not raise their premiums to keep potential claims from exceeding their profits chose to limit their coverage in at-risk areas – as Heritage, AAA and others have done – or to withdraw from Florida altogether, as in the case of Farmers Insurance.

The decision by many private insurers to limit their operations forced thousands of homeowners in the state to rely on Florida’s insurer of last resort, Citizens, because no other company in the standard market would offer them insurance. Citizens has since grown to over 1.2 million and the insurer of last resort is now the largest in the state.

The rise in home insurance premiums and the sudden increase in citizenship have raised concerns among Florida residents, experts and lawmakers, while Governor Ron DeSantis blamed the weather and high inflation for the higher premiums.

The state parliament has tried to address the ongoing crisis with measures that encourage the return of private insurers to the state. Some of these measures also seem to have worked.

The state has added six new private insurers this year, giving reason for optimism for the future of Florida’s property insurance sector. But while the situation appears to be stabilizing, a devastating hurricane season this year could bring Florida’s home insurance sector to its knees, experts warn.

“The Florida market currently consists of many small and local insurers that are not well capitalized and rely heavily on reinsurance,” said Penny Liao, economist and researcher at Resources for the Future, previously Newsweek“If the insured losses end up being very high, insurers may become bankrupt or withdraw from the business in the following years, and premiums may also rise due to the increased costs of reinsurance.”

With the situation unlikely to improve dramatically before November, Florida’s ongoing crisis could prove to be a liability for Florida Republicans in the 2024 election cycle. Beth Matuga, an adviser to the Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee, told NOTUS that property insurance and abortion would be Republicans’ “kryptonite” this year.

“As Democrats, especially in Florida, we can hardly ever manage to deal with a financial issue and a social issue at the same time. And those two things together form a kind of kryptonite for Republicans,” she said.