Fairbanks led the industry’s $24 million ’96 lobby effort that defeated a proposed penny-a-pound tax on Florida sugar producers to clean up the Everglades. “This is a real victory for the citizens of Florida,” said Fairbanks, sugar-coating the truth at the industry’s victory party. “It’s a victory for the environment and the constitution.” The money for what was the most expensive political campaign in state history came from Fairbanks’ U.S. Sugar, the Sugar Cane Growers Co-op and Flo-Sun (which employs Pioneer lobbyist Wayne Berman). The Florida sugar industry owes its very existence to corporate welfare, since the federal Army Corps of Engineers drained much of its land. The industry employs an army of lobbyists to ensure its price subsidies and to protect the ban on Cuban sugar imports.