Meet the 23-Year-Old Student Who Raised $25 Million in Democratic Losses

After the Democratic candidates in Florida’s special elections burned through millions and millions of dollars on the way to double-digit losses this week, some Democrats are asking where that money deluge came from — and where it all went.

The answer to both questions is, in part, a 23-year-old law student and dungeon master — in Dungeons & Dragons — with a lucrative side gig.

In between classes and fantasy play, Jackson McMillan is also the chief executive of Key Lime Strategies, a small fund-raising firm in Florida that scored big when it landed as clients the two Democratic nominees in the Florida congressional elections, Josh Weil and Gay Valimont. Mr. McMillan said they had combined to raise $25 million.

“We’ve built a juggernaut,” he said in an interview.

Along the way, Mr. McMillan has piled up critics far beyond his years. Much of the focus is on his unusual fee structure, which one top party official excoriated in a cease-and-desist letter as “exorbitant.” His firm received a 25 percent cut of “true profits” — the proceeds after fund-raising expenses — for both special elections.

Mr. McMillan is unapologetic.

“A lot of the people who are critiquing me online are mad that it wasn’t them,” he said of raising so much money, which he said put a scare into Republicans and injected real money into long-neglected corners of a rightward-drifting state.

One secret ingredient to his firm’s success, Mr. McMillan explained, is Dungeons & Dragons.

“All the senior fund-raising strategists at my firm — myself, Ryan — we’re dungeon masters,” he said of his college friend and the firm’s chief operating officer, Ryan Eliason. “We run Dungeons & Dragons games. So we weave narratives and tales. It’s like our biggest hobby. We basically tell a really compelling story. And that’s what sets us apart from — that and a lot of technical analysis — is what sets us apart from some of our competitors.”