Fraud mars all of Brown’s good works
The ending to Corrine Brown’s political career was, in a word, pathetic.
By the time her trial took place last week, Brown and her attorney weren’t even denying that fraud or corruption took place. They were just arguing over whether she or her chief of staff was mainly to blame.
Money donated in the name of educational charity ended up in Brown’s personal bank account … again and again and again.
Her tax returns omitted much of the money she took.
Out of more than $800,000 donated — big chunks coming from Washington special interests who wanted to curry favor with the Jacksonville Democrat — only $1,200 actually made its way as scholarships to needy students. Less than 2 percent to charitable causes at all.
“I made mistakes,” Brown said at one point during the trial.
No, you committed crimes — 18 counts worth, according to the jury that convicted the 70-year-old, 12-term congresswoman on Thursday.
I believe we’ve reached a pitiful point in American politics where citizens don’t actually expect much from their elected officials anymore. But they do expect them not to steal charity money. (Or money donated to a bogus charity, as the feds described it.)
From the moment she was indicted, Brown claimed racism.
The claim defied logic. The federal charges were brought under a department run by a black attorney general who answered to a black president.
The forewoman of the jury that sealed Brown’s fate was black as well.
It was pretty clear that prosecutors weren’t after black politicians; they were after corrupt ones.
As I wrote last year when the charges were first filed, the indictment was as damning as any I have read.
Yet I don’t completely blame onlookers, particularly black ones, who were initially skeptical of Brown’s prosecution.
She has, after all, been the target of ugly, unfair and race-laced criticism throughout her tenure.
Critics mocked the way she spoke, the way she dressed, the way she did her hair.
I had plenty of beefs with Brown’s policies through the years. But none of them were based on her enunciation.
So when black voters saw internet memes mocking the way Brown — one of the first blacks elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction — pronounced the word “history” or “gators” or insisting she wore a bad wig, they were right to be angry. I was angry too. Many of those who loudly whine and wonder why society is “still so focused on racism” seem not to realize they are the answer to their own question.
I’ll go a step further and say that Brown did some valuable things for Central Florida during some of the years that critics were mocking her dialect.
When other Florida politicians were merely yapping about veterans’ issues, Brown was in the trenches, alongside Republican Congressman John Mica, working to secure financing for a new and needed VA hospital in Lake Nona.
Brown also delivered money for buses, ports and rail. She questioned the time sheriff ’s deputies fired 137 shots at a suspect in Pine Hills when no other elected officials did so.
She even once served as a crucial catalyst for peace. After Trayvon Martin was killed and tensions were high, Brown went to Sanford to call for a lawful, respectful response. While other cities with racially charged killings saw riots, Central Florida did not. That was due partly to Brown.
But none of that — none — excuses the sorry slate of charges Brown racked up in this trial.
In fact, if anything, I’d argue Brown’s role as a potentially historic figure made her actions even more revolting.
For the record, Brown still denies guilt, maintaining that her chief of staff, who testified against her, was the real mastermind. She has vowed to fight on.
In looking at the totality of her career, some will choose to view Brown through the same distorted lens they always did — as either a complete hero or total joke, depending upon their partisanship. Or perhaps their skin color.
But I think a more honest view captures something more complex — an elected official who did some valuable, even courageous things while she was in office, but who terribly tarnished all that with the behavior for which she was convicted.
And that behavior deserved punishment. Because, while we shouldn’t use skin color to condemn someone’s actions, we certainly shouldn’t use it to excuse them either.