This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Any time you receive a get-out-of-jail card, you’re a winner in our book. Scott Maddox, a former Tallahassee city commissioner, was bounced early from a federal prison camp. He served only 18 months of a five-year sentence after pleading guilty “to federal bribery charges involving payoffs accepted from city vendors and undercover FBI agents,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported. The bad news is he now has to rebuild his life after his stint in Club Fed.

This was a bizarre story, if we do say so ourselves. But Olga Mervyak came out the winner. “A police report released 10 months after a bizarre condo pool spat” cleared Mervyak after “a stranger claimed she’d ignored her baby, threatened to take away her kids and alerted child safety enforcers,” Florida Bulldog reported. That stranger? Renatha Francis, who is now a Florida Supreme Court justice. When you figure it out, let us know.

Call this a delayed win: Meredith Sasso, an appellate judge, had long been known to be DeSantis’ choice for the next opening on the state’s Supreme Court. When Ricky Polston stepped down, it was only a matter of process before she became his successor. Sasso, aside from her reliably conservative legal background, is only the seventh woman to serve on the court out of 93 justices. And she’s a Tallahassee native (Leon High School, Class of 2001). Go Lions!

She’s chair of the Okaloosa Republican Party and one of DeSantis’ political appointees, but Sandra Atkinson can add something else to her resume: a Jan. 6 insurrectionist. Oops! A USA TODAY review of footage identified her storming the U.S. Capitol, committing acts that have landed others in jail. DeSantis’ office has declined to answer whether it knew about Atkinson’s past. She has declined to comment, but soon the FBI may have questions of their own for her.

There may be a reason other candidates go to the mainstream media for their campaign announcements. Despite the spin his campaign has attempted to put on it, his appearance on a Twitter Space with Elon Musk was delayed for almost 30 minutes, lampooned by people across the political spectrum, and got nowhere near the listenership pundits expected. Not the launch you want if you are already down 30 points in the race. Just sayin’!

Sure, we had him as a loser last week, but it’s not our fault Francis Suarez skipped “Things Elected Officials May Not Want to Do 101.” The Miami Herald reported Miami’s mayor was paid at least $170,000 from a developer to help cut through red tape and secure permits. You know, he could buy 853 million MiamiCoins with that. Ah well, as a potential presidential candidate, Suarez’s already iffy chances just got a whole lot skimpier.