Guilty plea no impediment to former Rep. Corrine Brown's comeback try

Well, live and learn: You can be a felon in Florida and run for election to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The biggest surprise of the candidate qualifying week was that former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown reappeared as a candidate in the Orlando area-based District 10 Democratic primary. Through the magic of computer-assisted gerrymandering, Brown had at one time represented a 14-county district that included parts of Alachua and Marion counties as it snaked through Central and Northeast Florida.

Brown making another run: Ex-U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown running for Congress again

Corrine Brown's plea: Former U.S. rep pleads guilty

Only a few years ago, the former Jacksonville member of Congress was a resident of Coleman Correctional Institution after being convicted of 18 charges involving her use of her charity, One Door for Education Foundation, as a personal piggy bank.

Her federal indictment charged that the purported scholarship fund took in more than $800,000 in donations yet handed out only two scholarships, totaling $1,200. The rest? Oh, there were luxury seats at a Beyoncé concert, box seats at Jaguars games, shopping sprees, travel and the occasional untraceable ATM cash withdrawal.

It was the kind of fake charity that could be used as a tax dodge — if it were registered as a tax-exempt charity, which prosecutors said, it was not.

"Brazen barely describes it," U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan wrote in his order sentencing an unrepentant Brown to five years in prison at the end of 2017. Brown said her only mistake was being too trusting of people around her, notably her two codefendants who testified against her.

Case closed, right? Wrong.

During the jury deliberations, a problem arose. A juror had declared that "a higher being told me Corrine Brown was not guilty." Questioned by the judge, the juror said the Holy Spirit had told him to acquit Brown. The judge, feeling reasonably enough that the juror wasn't basing his verdict on any temporal evidence presented in the courtroom, removed him and had an alternate juror take his place.

On appeal, a conservative court majority on the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Brown's conviction, saying the judge's decision amounted to religious discrimination and ordered a new trial. Under an agreement approved in court last month, Brown pleaded guilty to a tax fraud charge.

She may not be allowed to vote for herself because of her criminal record, but the first article of the U.S. Constitution has the last word on the qualifications of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and it sets only minimal rules that don't say anything about fake charities. You have to be at least 25 years old, a citizen for at least seven years and live in the state — though not necessarily the district — you want to represent. That's all.

As Alexander Hamilton helpfully explained during ratification (Federalist 60), qualifications "are defined and fixed in the constitution and are unalterable by the legislature." State legislatures or even Congress can't add or subtract.   

Which means Brown's back and it's legal.

Ex-U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown faces a crowded field

If Brown's various ethical and legal adventures suggest she believes herself bulletproof, well, who can blame her? She has usually brazened it out and come out OK. This is precisely the kind of representative you get when uncompetitive district lines are drawn so incumbents don't need to worry about reelection.

She's by no means a shoo-in this year. She faces a crowded Democratic primary. Among those who filed to run was another controversial candidate with past ethics problems, the combustible Alan Grayson, who had previously served three terms in the House.

Grayson had run as a write-in this past cycle in the House District 6 Democratic primary for reasons that aren't entirely clear and in 2016 he lost the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate by a whopping 41 points. He's not a face that Democratic Party strategists are happy to see back in what had been seen as a minority-access district. 

But Florida voters tend to have short memories. Because so many Floridians are new to their area, candidates who aren't incumbents tend to be new to them. In a crowded winner-take-all primary, a candidate doesn't need a majority to win — just more than the rest of the crowd.

So despite problematic records, both of these candidates have a shot at returning to Washington. We'll find out in August.

Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mark.lane@news-jrnl.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mark Lane: Guilty plea no impediment to Corrine Brown's comeback try