Editorial: Cherfilus-McCormick acknowledged it's time to go
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick finally conceded the inevitable. It's about time.
The Democrat from Broward abruptly resigned from the U.S. House Tuesday, minutes before the House Ethics Committee was to meet and likely recommend that she be expelled.
Cherfilus-McCormick has yet to be convicted of any crime, but the federal indictment against her includes evidence that looks strong. If the basic details are true, there's no satisfactory explanation for financing her election, and personal luxuries such as a diamond ring, with some $5.7 million that the state of Florida mistakenly overpaid her family's health care company for COVID-19 vaccinations.
The bulk of it was in a single payment 100 times larger than the $50,578 the state was billed. The money wasn't hers to keep, but she did. It cost her a political future.
A total of 25 counts
Her personal fate remains for a federal jury to decide in a trial that has been rescheduled to next February, but the Ethics Committee's case did not hinge on that.
The 25 counts sustained by a subcommittee include persistent violations of laws requiring timely, accurate disclosure of campaign funds and personal finances. That concealed the source of the millions that helped her squeeze out a five-vote victory in a 2021 special Democratic primary for the District 20 seat, left vacant after the death of Alcee Hastings.
Editorial: If Mills won’t resign, expel him
By cycling much of the money as loans in and out of her campaign, she flashed to her rivals an intimidating, but imaginary, show of personal wealth. In poker, that's called buying the pot.
Conspicuously absent from Cherfilus-McCormick's maudlin resignation statement was regret for misleading voters, or for leaving them unrepresented again while Congress faces some of the most fraught issues in our history.
The people of District 20, in Broward and Palm Beach counties, are left with corruption without representation.
Playing politics in Tallahassee
A special election would be awkward now with filing for the regular election a few weeks away, and the primary in August. Aside from Cherfilus-McCormick, whose continued candidacy would be absurd, four other Democrats and four Republicans have filed for the seat.
Her resignation letter to the House speaker was straightforward. Her remarks to constituents, as posted on X, were not.
She accused the bipartisan committee of a "witch hunt," which the investigation most certainly was not. The staff issued 59 subpoenas, questioned 28 witnesses and obtained more than 33,000 documents in what the chairman fairly called an "extremely serious" case.
The congresswoman was at a disadvantage, unquestionably, in trying to defend against criminal charges at the same time as the House probe. But she's not the first to face that predicament.
The Constitution allows Congress to judge its members' qualifications. If anything, Congress has not been tough enough with miscreants over the years.
A perplexing statement
Her resignation spared her Democratic colleagues what would have been for many an uncomfortable dilemma while they too are seeking re-election.
But it also deprived them of leverage to use on Republicans to expel Rep. Cory Mills, the Republican based in New Smyrna Beach who is trailing his own slew of serious issues pending before the Ethics Committee including incidents of threatening behavior toward two women, reports that companies he founded or controlled doing business with the federal government after he ws elected, campaign finance violations and “stolen valor” accusations that question the veracity of his military record.
Unlike Cherfilus-McCormick, Mills has made it clear he has no intention of resigning – and that he plans to seek re-election in the fall.
As we wrote in Thursday’s edition, GOP leadership should make it clear to him that it’s time to go, by starting to lay the groundwork for his expulsion. Democrats and their own members should continue to push.
The watchdog group CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) did not overstate in calling her resignation "beyond overdue."
"She spent months dragging the scandal on while cashing paychecks from American taxpayers," said CREW president, Donald Sherman, a former counsel to the House Ethics Committee. "You don't get credit for doing the right thing only when forced to, after repeatedly doing the wrong thing."
The humbling end to a mercifully brief career should be a warning to anyone else who might try to get elected by brazenly flouting the disclosure laws.
Lessons still unlearned
Here's another lesson. Cherfilus-McCormick won that 2021 special primary with only 23.8% of the votes in an 11-candidate field. That showed again how poorly the Legislature served the voters by repealing Florida's runoff primary 21 years ago. That unforced error can be corrected, and should be.
Meanwhile, the people still await two explanations.
How did the state Division of Emergency Management, under the governor's control, overpay her company so much and take three years to file suit to recover the money? It was settled on very generous 15-year terms that bind only the company, not her.
For all of that time, Jimmy Patronis, now a Panhandle congressman, was Florida's chief financial officer, the man responsible for paying the state's bills and rooting out waste and fraud.
Where was he?
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
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