Every Party Has Its Bad Actors. Check the Candidate Before You Vote

From 2013 through 2025, at least 162 state officials were publicly accused of sexual harassment tied to a statehouse or a statewide office, according to a running count by the National Women’s Defense League, a group that calls itself nonpartisan. The accused came from both parties in close to equal numbers: 52 percent Republicans and 48 percent Democrats. Over the past decade, about 93 percent of those accused were men.

Both parties have put people in office who were later accused of abusing their power. The letter after a name on the ballot cannot tell you whether that person is honest, which is why the research before you vote has to be about the person.

What the statehouse counts show

The league’s Abuse of Power report, its latest, logs more than 424 separate incidents involving those 162 officials, since some were accused repeatedly. It includes only cases that became public through news reports, court filings or official disclosures, so the real number is higher, and it makes no adjustment for how many seats each party held over those years. And these are accusations. Not all of them were ruled on by a court or an ethics panel.

An Associated Press review published in March 2025 ran its own count and found at least 147 state lawmakers in 44 states facing accusations of sexual harassment or other sexual misconduct since 2017. AP’s tally starts later and covers only lawmakers, which is why its number is smaller. More than a third resigned or were expelled, and roughly another third lost party or committee posts. Citing the league, AP reported that Republicans and Democrats were nearly equally accused.

Federal corruption records leave party out entirely

Harassment is one kind of misconduct. Bribery, fraud and the misuse of public money are others, and the main federal record of those cases says nothing about party. The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section sends Congress a report every year. The latest one posted, covering 2023, sorts charges and convictions by federal, state and local officials and by judicial district. It never lists a defendant’s party.

We looked for a public data set that counts every kind of misconduct at every level of government and adjusts for how many offices each party holds. We did not find one. Anyone who tells you one party is the crooked one is saying it without numbers to back it up.

Party still tells you a great deal. It predicts who will chair the committees, which judges get confirmed and how the budget gets written, and those are fair reasons to weigh it. It won’t tell you how one particular person has handled money and power. For that, you need the public record.

Five places to look before Nov. 3

Follow the money. The Federal Election Commission’s data search shows who gave to a federal candidate and how the campaign spent it. For state and local races, the FEC keeps a directory of every state’s election and disclosure offices, and USA.gov will point you to your own. In Florida, state races are in the Division of Elections campaign finance search. Two things deserve a closer look. One is spending that looks personal: the FEC bars a federal campaign from paying any cost that would exist even without the campaign, such as the candidate’s own mortgage, and Florida law bars state candidates from using campaign money for normal living expenses. The other is payments to family members, which the FEC allows only for real work at a fair market rate.

Government filings list donors one at a time, which makes it hard to see the pattern. Two free sites sort those filings for you. OpenSecrets tracks federal campaign money and lobbying, so you can see who gives to a candidate and whether the same names also lobby Congress. The nonprofit behind it took that name in 2021, when the Center for Responsive Politics merged with the National Institute on Money in Politics, Maryland Matters reported. Transparency USA covers money in state politics in 25 states, Florida among them, including a page for the Florida governor’s race. A useful question for any candidate: how much of the money comes from people and businesses in the district or state they want to represent, and how much comes from somewhere else.

Read the financial disclosures. People running for Congress file them. The House Clerk has a search for House filers, and the Senate Ethics Committee links to the Senate’s filing system. A disclosure proves nothing by itself, but it can show investments, outside income and stock trades worth asking about. Members of Congress have to report a stock trade within 45 days, and late reports draw a fine, as Newsweek has reported. For a state office, ask your state ethics commission or election office what candidates there have to file. In Florida, candidates for governor and other statewide offices file Form 6, a full disclosure of net worth, assets, debts and income, which you can find through the Commission on Ethics’ disclosure search or on each candidate’s page at the Division of Elections.

Find any ethics findings. The National Conference of State Legislatures keeps a state-by-state list of ethics commissions. When a commission has issued an order or a report, read the document itself, and watch the words. Accused, charged and convicted mean three different things, and campaign ads tend to blur them. Florida’s Commission on Ethics posts its final orders.

Look at the record. Votes, sponsored bills, public meeting minutes and local news coverage show what someone did with the office they already had. A county commissioner running for the legislature has years of minutes with that name in them, kept by the county itself.

Ask the campaign. On Oct. 1 we sent the same one-sentence question to the five Ohio governor campaigns we could reach (Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and two write-ins): what bill would you push first, and what household cost would it change? One answered. Send your own question about the thing you care about most, and notice who writes back.

The five lookups, run on Florida’s race for governor

To show what these searches turn up, we ran all five on the two leading candidates for Florida governor, Byron Donalds and David Jolly, using the same sources for each and leaving their parties out of it. Eight candidates are on the ballot, and the same searches work on any of them. This is what a voter running them on Oct. 21 would find. It isn’t a recommendation.

The money. Florida matches contributions of $250 or less from state residents, the News Service of Florida reported. As of Oct. 16 the program had paid Jolly $2,805,218.54 and Donalds $1,131,323.66, the Division of Elections reports. Counting their political committees, which can take gifts of any size, Donalds had raised more than $134 million and Jolly $16.6 million as of Sept. 25, CNN reported. The largest gifts to Donalds’ committee came from Ken Griffin, $10 million, and Jeff Yass, $7.5 million. The largest to Jolly’s committee came from Donald Sussman, $1.6 million, The Real Deal reported from state records.

The disclosures. Each man’s Form 6 is posted on his Division of Elections candidate page. Donalds listed total assets of more than $1 million, a net worth below $90,000, the lowest he has reported, and two debts: a $730,946 mortgage and more than a quarter-million dollars in student loans, the Tampa Bay Times reported. The Times reported that neither debt was new, and a campaign spokesperson said its compliance team had determined they “should now be included.” He listed his $205,000 congressional salary. Jolly listed a net worth of $2.2 million, almost all of it his home near Largo, which he valued at $1.5 million, and about $107,000 in income from Shumaker Advisors. Form 6 doesn’t require a spouse’s holdings. Donalds’ federal House disclosure does, and it shows his wife with stakes in three companies worth between $1 million and $2 million combined, the Times reported. Jolly’s wife runs a small film production company whose income he wasn’t required to report.

The stock-trade reports. Donalds has been in Congress since 2021. In September 2024 the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics saying more than 100 trades by Donalds and his wife, worth up to $1.62 million, appeared only in his annual reports, with no separate trade reports for two years, the Florida Bulldog reported. His spokesman said outside professionals make the trades and that Donalds was working to reconcile the filings, WINK News reported. The complaint’s outcome hasn’t been made public, the Campaign Legal Center told Mother Jones. Jolly served in Congress from 2014 to early 2017. A report he filed in May 2015 lists four stock sales, each worth $1,001 to $15,000, made 70 to 258 days earlier, past the 45-day window. We found no complaint or news coverage about it.

The ethics findings. We found no finding against either man by the House Ethics Committee or the Florida Commission on Ethics. The 2024 complaint above is the only complaint we found against either one.

The record. Donalds served in the Florida House from 2016 to 2020 and has represented the 19th District in Southwest Florida since January 2021. Jolly represented the 13th District in the Tampa Bay area from March 2014 to January 2017 and has since worked at Shumaker Advisors and as a television commentator. Every House vote either man cast is on the Clerk’s roll-call pages, and Donalds’ state bills are on the Florida Legislature’s site.

Asking the campaigns. No debate is scheduled. Donalds’ campaign announced three debates on Sept. 18 under rules that included no audience. Jolly said two days later he would not take part, saying Donalds had turned down other debates and set his own rules, and Donalds said Jolly only wanted to talk in soundbites, WUSF reported. Jolly answered the News Collaborative of Central Florida’s voter questionnaire, and Donalds did not respond, WKMG reported. Both campaigns take questions through their websites, byrondonalds.com and davidjolly.com.

What the searches add up to

Donalds has raised about eight times as much as Jolly, most of it through his political committee. Jolly has received about two and a half times as much from the state’s matching program. Donalds reports a net worth under $90,000 after about $1 million in debts, with his wife’s company stakes reported separately, and Jolly reports about $2.2 million. Both men filed stock-trade reports late: Donalds for more than 100 trades, which drew a complaint whose outcome isn’t public, and Jolly for four small sales in 2015. Those are the facts on file. Whether they matter for the job is your call, and each one is a fair question to put to the campaigns.

Early voting in Florida runs Oct. 24 through Oct. 31, and Election Day is Nov. 3, according to the state calendar as reported by Fox 35.

Between now and Election Day, each side’s ads will keep showing you the worst person on the other side. Those ads won’t say much about their own candidates, so that part of the homework is yours.

Editor written. AI used for spelling and grammar only.