Longtime Trump Critic Frederica Wilson Retiring
Wilson skipped more than 40 votes while recovering from left eye surgery, staying away from Capitol Hill for weeks while speculation grow about her health.
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) announced Friday she will not seek reelection, closing out a congressional career that started in 2011 and never ran short on controversy. Most readers know her for the bedazzled cowboy hats. The Trump White House knew her differently.
“This has been a journey. But it’s time. It’s time.”
The announcement blindsided nobody who had been paying attention, but Wilson still managed to make it awkward. Just days earlier, she called speculation about her retirement a “crazy rumor,” told Axios she was “almost distraught” by the reports, and insisted she was still running.
“It’s not true. I am still planning on running.”
Days later, she confirmed the opposite, telling the Miami Herald she had deliberately hidden her plans to keep Republicans from targeting her district during redistricting.
The missed votes made the reversal harder to sell. Wilson skipped more than 40 votes while recovering from left eye surgery, staying away from Capitol Hill for weeks and letting questions about her health fester into something louder. Republican critics jumped on it in May. Democratic primary challenger Rudy Moise argued:
“Every vote is important and you cannot fight for your constituents if you don’t vote.”
Wilson came back to cast a vote on May 21, too late to quiet the chatter. Her age and her absence had already turned the retirement rumor into an open secret
The moment that defined her nationally arrived in October 2017. Army Sgt. La David Johnson died in an ambush in Niger, and Wilson climbed into the car with his widow, Myeshia Johnson, while Trump called to offer condolences. She then told the press Trump said Johnson “knew what he signed up for.” Trump denied it. John Kelly walked to the White House briefing room podium and dressed Wilson down on live television, accusing her of exploiting a grieving family for political points. Wilson demanded an apology. The feud ran for weeks, spawned countless headlines, and cemented her reputation as one of Trump’s most combative Democratic opponents. She held that title throughout both of his terms.
Wilson is among a growing number of House Democrats over 80 choosing not to run in November’s midterms, part of a slow-motion generational turnover in the caucus that the party has done little to manage gracefully. She held her seat for 15 years, denied she was leaving until she wasn’t, and missed 40-plus votes in her final stretch. Her district will stay blue. Whether the next occupant matches her grip on it is a different question entirely.
She has not named a preferred successor. Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones and Miami-Dade Commissioner Oliver Gilbert are circling the seat. Wilson says she plans to register voters, finish her memoir, and stay politically active. She also floated running for governor, as a joke, presumably.
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and she will not be missed.
Are you sure? Wait and see what her successor is like!
The moment that defined her nationally arrived in October 2017. Army Sgt. La David Johnson died in an ambush in Niger, and Wilson climbed into the car with his widow, Myeshia Johnson, while Trump called to offer condolences.
She then told the press Trump said Johnson “knew what he signed up for.”
The full quote was, “He was a very brave man. He knew what he was signing up for, but he signed up anyway.”
It is past time for this clown to leave. She can spend the rest of her life making hats.
I suspect her talents don’t go beyond just wearing them.
The one in that photo doesn’t even fit correctly, probably because he head is swollen from her over-inflated ego.
So Congresswomen Sparkle Hat is moving on. She shouldn’t have been there in the first place and is a prime example of racial gerrymandering gave us. The empty barrel can stand on an empty beach and yell at the sky, it will produce the same results for her constituents as she got during her time in congress.
I have little use for Kelly after his WH tour but everyone should watch his press conference where he talked about the death of his son and steamrolled that empty skinsuit. It’s quite something.
Yep. To be fair, the establishment, country club GoP went along with the imposition of ‘majority minority’ districts far longer than they needed to. Once Shelby County came down in 2013 and the neo reconstructionist pre clearance regime was ended they could have moved more forcefully. Instead they had grown accustomed to packing and creating safer GoP districts to protect their own power. Describing them as collaborators with lefty, d/prog to create/maintain these racist districts isn’t entirely unreasonable.
Chief. Anyone who believes that the majority of democrats and the republicans aren’t working together to protect their sinecures is a borderline fool.
Everyone of them is receiving money from foreign actors, laundered through various funds, that protect the global interests and not the American people. Except in those cases where global interests and the American people coincide.
Scratch the surface of any campaign and one will find China and other $$$$
If I were elected to Congress, I would crawl over broken glass to be present and represent the people that had elected me to office. If I had eye surgery, I’d take a day or two to recover but would still work from home. I would consider it the privilege of a lifetime to be selected to perform these duties. Too many that are sent to Washington seem to feel the opposite is true, and this repugnant circus clown is an excellent example of this situation.
Be gone. You will not be missed.
“If I had eye surgery, I’d take a day or two to recover but would still work from home.”
They won’t let you vote from home, they won’t let you authorize someone else to proxy for you. Congress is so strict… for a country that lets pretty much anybody on the WH staff make presidential decisions from anywhere, while its nominal “President” may or not even be in town and nobody really cares.
good riddance–now her family / neighbors will have to deal with her bs 24/7–like a bulging trash bag dropped by the garbage truck, laying in the middle of the street–a malodorous fly / rodent magnet
just another grifter
This is the same chick who held a public presser last year at a roadside rest stop dressed all in pink and glitter, like Graceland Barbie.
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