Democrats have their own version of a famous proverb: If at first you don’t succeed, cheat.

Before she assumed office in 2022, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D., Fla.) was a perennial candidate on the fringes, challenging incumbent Alcee Hastings (D., Fla.) in the 2018 and 2020 primaries. She raised less than $110,000 during those campaigns, both of which she lost in landslides.

Hastings died in 2021.

Cherfilus-McCormick wound up taking his vacated seat after winning a December 2021 primary election by just five votes. This time, money wasn’t a concern—Cherfilus-McCormick put $2.6 million of her own money into her campaign, a major feat for someone who reported earning only $86,000 the year prior.

Here’s how she got the money:

The same day Hastings died, the Florida Department of Emergency Management (FDEM) received an invoice from Trinity Health Care Services, whose CEO at the time was Cherfilus-McCormick. It was the first of 17 invoices that Trinity submitted to the state in spring 2021 that brought the firm $5.8 million in taxpayer funds “that it was not entitled to and had not earned,” the FDEM later alleged in a December 2024 lawsuit accusing the company of theft by “conversion.” Trinity didn’t return those mispaid funds in 2021. Instead, it paid $6.2 million in “profit sharing fees” to Cherfilus-McCormick, who then doled out more than $4.2 million in loans to her 2021 and 2022 campaigns—efforts that raised less than $280,000 from people not named Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.

As a member of Congress, she now has authority to spend our money.

Regarding the congresscrook she replaced:

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Hastings had committed perjury, tampered with evidence, and conspired to accept bribes, recommending his impeachment to the House of Representatives in 1987. The House adopted 17 articles of impeachment in 1988 by a vote of 413–3. In 1989, the Senate convicted Hastings on eight of the articles, including charges of bribery, perjury, and falsifying documents, and removed him from office. However, the Senate did not disqualify him from holding future office.

So his Broward/Palm Beach County district — the most Democrat-infested district in Florida — went back to electing him. He was reelected so many times that he achieved a leadership position on the Foreign Affairs and Rules Committees as well as the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

No doubt it helps that he was the Historic First African American Federal Judge in Florida, appointed by moonbat favorite Jimmy Carter himself and boasting six arrests acquired at “civil rights” demonstrations.

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick also benefits from politically preferred pigmentation. Watch her star rise.

On a tip from Barry A.