Twice now, voters of Orange and Osceola counties have made it perfectly clear: Monique Worrell is their choice for state attorney. In November, they re-elected Worrell with a 57% victory over former Judge Andrew Bain, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to take over the 9th Circuit State Attorney’s Office after the governor suspended Worrell from office in August 2023.

Yet the DeSantis-orchestrated campaign against this duly-elected public official has trampled voters’ rights, long-held legal principles and even basic honesty underfoot. The bizarre machinations reached a new peak Monday with the release of back-to-back memos from Bain. The first, distributed to employees of the office Monday morning, said Bain was rebuffing her request to coordinate on a transition plan and hinted broadly that he didn’t think Worrell would be able to take office.

“While I accept the results of the election and wish to do everything I can to ensure the office is successful going forward, I do not yet feel I can assist her in that transition because of the clear language” of DeSantis’ August 2023 order, he wrote, pointing out that the order said the suspension was effective until the order was lifted, either by DeSantis or “as otherwise provided by law.”

This extraordinary announcement — which we’ll call the “Monday-morning memo” — contained numerous other questionable statements that we’ll get into later. But we should say this: Multiple news outlets, including the Sentinel’s news reporters and opinion writers, reached out to numerous elections-law experts. We couldn’t find anyone who believed DeSantis’ suspension would survive a subsequent election.

I didn’t say that

Within a few hours of that memo’s leak to Central Florida media, Bain was singing an entirely different tune. A statement released at 3:19 p.m. Monday simply states: “The state attorney is ready and willing to ensure a smooth transition. The state attorney’s term ends Jan. 6, 2025, and he will no longer be in office. Ms. Worrell’s term will begin Jan. 7, 2025. It is the intent of the state attorney to enforce the will of the people.”

That’s nice — but it’s clearly not what Bain said in the Monday-morning memo. There’s no way Bain can pretend the two documents, released hours apart, are consistent. The morning email is a brush-off of voters’ rights to decide who fills an elected office, wrapped in language that seems calculated to sow anxiety and distrust among staff members in the State Attorney’s Office.

The Monday-afternoon press release is what Bain should have said — what would be expected from any attorney who is familiar with state law, precedent and the fundamental concept of elections.

In the Monday-afternoon press release, Bain also noted that he had received “several questions” after the Monday-morning email. That, we can believe. We have plenty of our own — and we’d be happy to offer Bain op-ed space on this page, should he desire to answer them.

Explanation, please

If the language of the 2023 Worrell suspension order was so clear to Bain, how does he explain the fact that he spent more than $200,000 (which included a $100,000 loan to himself) trying to defeat her in the November election? Is he suggesting he hadn’t read the August 2023 document — which also names Bain as her successor?

There are plenty of other questions raised by the Monday-morning memo. First, why does Bain claim that “many did not know the law” when he took over the office 16 months ago? That’s a very serious allegation and one that, if true, he should have pursued.

Next, why does Bain suggest that Worrell was somehow derelict in challenging DeSantis’ suspension because she didn’t file an appeal in the Senate — ignoring the fact that she chose to challenge DeSantis through the courts instead, a path that was only curtailed by a July 2024 order from the Florida Supreme Court denying her appeal? It’s not as if he didn’t know about that case; in fact, he cites the Florida court’s decision in the very next sentence. (We also wonder about Bain’s suggestion that the court found merit in the allegations DeSantis levied against Worrell. In the July order, the court made it clear that it was only ruling on whether DeSantis acted within the scope of the law.)

The second half of the Monday-morning memo is also rife with questionable statements, notably this one: “I understand all of you have careers and families to attend to and I cannot expect you to remain here without clear answers if it is your desire to depart rather than go through a change in administration. Since I cannot guarantee what will happen, I encourage you each to do what is best for yourself and your families at this point and will not think less of anyone who seeks employment elsewhere.” Remember, this is all predicated on the spurious suggestion that the governor can trump the will of the voters before they’ve even spoken — a question that should have been cleared up when Worrell filed earlier this year to run for re-election. Disrupting the orderly operation of a government office after losing an election is one of the oldest, dirtiest tricks in the book. Why did Bain think this was a good idea?

Further muddying the waters is another memo sent just after the November election by Ryan Williams, Bain’s second-in-command — suggesting that Bain and his top staff aren’t budging. “The leaders of this office have no plans to begin looking for work elsewhere,” Williams wrote. Our question on that: What the what now? A hefty majority of voters just told you to look for work elsewhere.

Enough, already

If these questions sound a little impatient, we’ve got ample reason: The shenanigans in this race started well before Worrell was suspended, with DeSantis (then a presidential candidate) milking his decision for all it was worth after he suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren on accusations that were nearly as spurious as those cited against Worrell.

This editorial is already far too long, but we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that the Sentinel’s Cristobal Reyes looked into many of the cases DeSantis cited when he suspended Worrell. In a sizeable number, she did nothing wrong by anyone’s standards — the cases fell apart because of slipshod police work, or were decided before or after she ran the office. Others can be attributed to her dedication to criminal justice reform that avoids pointless, harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes. It’s an approach voters obviously liked, since Worrell was the second in a row of reform-minded prosecutors in the 9th Circuit.

And we suspect we haven’t heard the last in the cavalcade of dirty tricks and disrespect. Bain — and by likely extension, DeSantis — have had 16 months to rifle through the files of the State Attorney’s Office, looking for anything that could be spun into smear material. Until now, we’ve been willing to give Bain the benefit of the doubt — or at least hope that he wouldn’t stoop so low. But the Monday-memo head fake has significantly eroded that hope.

Orange and Osceola voters deserved better.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com