Democratic governor candidate joins calls for Cherfilus-McCormick to resign from Congress

Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly called on U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick to resign after a House Ethics Subcommittee concluded she had committed 25 ethics violations, including breaking campaign finance laws.

Jolly, who is a former member of Congress, is the only major Florida Democrat to call for the Broward-Palm Beach County congresswoman’s resignation.

“She should resign,” he said. “She should resign right now,” Jolly said, adding that “when you’re elected, you hold the public trust. I think the public trust has been broken.”

Mayor Dean Trantalis of Fort Lauderdale, who called Cherfilus-McCormick “a friend,” said that based on what has been made public so far, she should not resign.

But Trantalis doesn’t see her continuing in office for long. “I think it’s important for Sheila to step back and really rethink her political career,” he said. “I just think this should be her last term.”

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who also represents Broward and Palm Beach counties, said he wanted to see the ethics committee process run its course before saying whether she should resign or be expelled.

“I think the trajectory is not good for her,” Moskowitz said. If the full Ethics Committee reaches the same conclusions as its adjudicatory subcommittee did on Friday, he said there will be “two options on the table: resign or probably be expelled.”

Other leading Democrats are, for now, more reserved in their judgments.

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, Jolly’s competitor for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, said he did not have a view on whether Cherfilus-McCormick should remain in office or resign. “I don’t have a particular position on that,” Demings said. “She’s accused. She hasn’t been tried and convicted yet and so we’ll just have to wait and see on that. It’s not my responsibility to make a determination whether or not she stays in office or not.”

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the senior Democrat in the Florida congressional delegation, said she wanted to see a full ethics committee report, its recommendations, and review the evidence before making a decision about whether her colleague should resign or face expulsion.

The Democrats made their assessments in separate interviews during breaks at the Broward Democratic Party’s annual Obama Roosevelt Legacy Gala on Saturday night, one day after the bipartisan House ethics adjudicatory subcommittee found 25 of the counts in a statement of violations “had been proven by clear and convincing evidence.”

The full ethics committee will consider the subcommittee findings after the congressional break for Easter and Passover. It could recommend expulsion.

Cherfilus-McCormick has also been indicted on federal criminal charges, some of which overlap the House ethics case.

She has consistently denied any wrongdoing. “This was all politically motivated to have salacious headlines,” the congresswoman said Sunday on the WPLG-Ch. 10 public affairs program “This Week In South Florida.”

And she said the adjudicatory subcommittee’s findings do not mean she is “guilty” of anything. The ethics proceedings were “actually not a trial, it was a summary judgment hearing and there was no finding of guilt, there was a finding of violations,” she said.

Other Democrats

Several non-Florida members of Congress have called for Cherfilus-McCormick to resign.

Cherfilus-McCormick downplayed the significance of fellow House Democrats calling for her resignation. “There’s only six members who said they want me to resign. Only six. The rest of the members when I talk to them they say, ‘This was not fair,’” she said on WPLG.

State Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried declined to say if she thinks Cherfilus-McCormick should resign. “We’re not there yet. We’re going to have a statement soon.”

County party chairs Rick Hoye of Broward and Howard Richman of Palm Beach County also declined to say if they think Cherfilus-McCormick should resign.

Not present

Cherfilus-McCormick, who has attended and spoken at Obama-Roosevelt events in the past, didn’t attend Saturday night. Her planned speech was scratched and her absence wasn’t acknowledged by the other speakers.

Hoye said he was informed hours before the event that she was “having trouble” getting a flight from Washington, D.C., to South Florida. (Wasserman Schultz, who was in Washington through the week, was able to get a flight home and attended. Moskowitz left the nation’s capital earlier because his wife had surgery.)

Democrats had mixed views about whether Cherfilus-McCormick’s absence was good or bad.

“Of course she should still be here,” Fried said. “She is still a member of Congress. She represents this area and until otherwise said, she needs to be here representing her district.”

Wasserman Schultz and Moskowitz agreed. “She should be here. She still is a congressperson,” Moskowitz said.

Aude Sicard, recording secretary of the Broward Democratic Party, said after more than five hours of a public hearing on Thursday, followed by the subcommittee’s announcement on Friday, “she’s probably not in the right mind to come here and celebrate with us Democrats. So I can understand why she’s not here.”

Trantalis also said it not attending was probably for the best “because if she came here, she’d probably get a lot of sidelong glances, and she’s not deserving of that.”

Conflicting feelings

Cherfilus-McCormick is the first Haitian American Democrat elected to Congress and Sicard, former president of the Haitian American Democratic Club of Broward, said she was hopes the congresswoman is exonerated and remains in office.

But she isn’t confident that will happen. “The situation is very dire,” Sicard said. “She maintains that she’s innocent, and I’m praying that she finds a way to bring to light her innocence.”

“The community would really, really like to see her still be there,” she said. “We are saddened by the publicity, the negative publicity, and the fact that our community had so much hope with her, and now it’s like we feel like we’re losing something,” she said.

Dale Holness, a former Broward County commissioner, lost a special congressional primary in 2021 to Cherfilus-McCormick by five votes after she heavily outspent him, partially with money that is part of the investigations into her conduct.

Holness is running again this year.

“Sadly, I knew it was coming,” he said, based on the lengthy report from the ethics committee’s investigatory subcommittee issued earlier this year. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “There was a lot of stuff in there — and if anyone gets a chance because they read it because it gives you so much information about what occurred.”

He declined to say directly whether she should resign. “When you look at all the evidence that they produced, I don’t see a path forward, how she gets anywhere.”

Political fallout

Maureen O’Toole, spokesperson for the Republican Party campaign organization for U.S. House candidates, has been trying to make Moskowitz and other Democrats squirm over Cherfilus-McCormick, arguing they are “carrying water for (their) corrupt, taxpayer-thieving colleague,” and demanding they call on her to resign.

On Saturday, Democrats focused on firing up party activists and donors, largely by emphasizing the party’s victories since President Donald Trump took office. Several speakers repeatedly denounced what they labeled as corruption from Trump and Republicans.

Hoye said the Cherfilus-McCormick situation doesn’t make it harder to make the case against Trump and Republicans.

Hoye said he didn’t think the House ethics charges and federal criminal charges against Cherfilus-McCormick make it harder for Democrats to make their case that Trump and his administration are corrupt. “No. I think they’ve seen much worse from this president and from other Republicans.”

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