Report: Pam Bondi suggests Frank Artiles step down over disparaging remarks

artiles on floor

Attorney General Pam Bondi has joined Sen. Frank Artiles’ chorus of critics, suggesting her fellow Republican leave office for directing slurs, including a version of the N-word, at colleagues.

“There is simply no room for racial, hurtful language spoken to your colleagues or anyone else,” Bondi told POLITICO Florida.

“I have always liked Frank and hope he gives serious consideration to resigning so the focus can return to important legislative issues,” she told the website Thursday.

The head of the NAACP Florida State Conference has called for Artiles to step down. So has the Legislative Black Conference and Jewish Conference. Dozens of protesters gathered outside Artile’s Kendall district office to demand the same thing.

Artiles, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami-Dade County, made national news after he accosted Sen. Perry Thurston, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, and Sen. Audrey Gibson, a Jacksonville Democrat, calling her a “b—h” and a “girl” in a dispute over legislation at a private club in Tallahassee Monday night. Thurston and Gibson are black.

Artiles also used a variation of the “N-word,” referring to her and to white Republicans who supported Joe Negron as Senate President. Artiles apologized on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Thurston has lodged a Senate rules complaint against Artiles seeking his expulsion. An investigative report by General Counsel Dawn Roberts is due next Tuesday.

Michael Moline

Michael Moline is a former assistant managing editor of The National Law Journal and managing editor of the San Francisco Daily Journal. Previously, he reported on politics and the courts in Tallahassee for United Press International. He is a graduate of Florida State University, where he served as editor of the Florida Flambeau. His family’s roots in Jackson County date back many generations.


2 comments

  • Larry Gillis (Cape Coral)

    April 20, 2017 at 5:32 pm

    Will Pam Bondi please start acting like an actual Attorney General and not like some politico on the make ? Her writ as AG does not get her into the operations of the Florida State Senate. For sure, Senator Artile was wrong, wrong, wrong in harboring and expressing those vile sentiments. However, the Prosecutor-in-Chief should butt out until the criminal law brings her in (if it does at all, which it won’t).

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