‘Florida Woman’ Crowned the Most ‘Absurd’ Midterm Candidate Amid Wild Firestorm of Scandals

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Florida Republican House candidate Te Mayonna Brown may well be “the most absurd general-election candidate in America,” The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger insisted Tuesday.

That’s because Brown is apparently embroiled in a series of fraud-related scandals — and potentially facing a federal indictment.

Egger also noted Brown lost a different House primary last year, and that one was in Illinois, where “she appears to be under indictment for felony wire fraud.” Her trial is “set to begin just weeks after Election Day.”

Brown has denied the allegations made by Egger, but he isn’t entirely convinced.

He wrote:

When I reached her by phone yesterday, she flatly insisted—despite clear photographic, social-media, and campaign-records evidence to the contrary—that she, Te Mayonna Brown, wasn’t the Tedora M. Brown who ran for Congress in Illinois or the Te Dora Brown named in a federal indictment. She then asked if I was with law enforcement before hustling off the phone. Politics attracts strange characters. But few seem to match this.

The state of Illinois indicted Te Dora Brown and her husband on 13 felony counts and accused the pair of “fraudulently obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID relief money by applying for federal loans on behalf of phony employees at companies that turned out not to exist.”

They further accuse the two of spending the money “on themselves” instead.

When Brown decided to run for office in Illinois, she told a local reporter, “They came after me because I’m a Republican and I’m an American Black woman. If I was guilty, why would I run for Congress? Why would I put myself in the limelight? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

A woman by the name of Te Brown showed up in Florida business records about a month after she lost her primary. The Florida company was registered under the name Dratonyai Ratcliff — Brown’s former campaign manager.

Egger continued:

On the phone yesterday, she repeatedly insisted she is not Te Dora Brown or Tedora M. Brown of Illinois. When I pointed out that the same Dratonyai Ratcliff had filed the paperwork for both of Te Brown’s campaigns, she suddenly swerved: ‘Wait, hold on, is this—are you the police?’

Per his reporting, an archived website for Brown states her full name is Te Dora Mayonna Brown and the name on her Florida website reads Te Mayonna Brown. All the links to Brown’s social media accounts on that website direct to new and unused accounts.

On top of that, her current campaign manager, Karin Dennis, told Egger “that this was, indeed, the same person.” Dennis also said the charges against Brown were dropped. After Egger disputed that claim and cited a lack of any electronic record that proves it, Dennis “suggested it would be there shortly.”

He also added:

In Illinois, Brown seemed to be following a familiar playbook for accused white collar criminals: Proclaiming herself MAGA to paint herself as the victim of a political witch hunt. But if her goal was to run as a victim of Biden-administration weaponized justice to get on the PardonQuest radar of a president with a soft spot for fraudsters, it’s not clear why she’s suddenly trying to keep that indictment hushed up.

Egger concluded, “It’s not like federal prosecutors have forgotten who she is or where to find her. That trial’s coming right up.”

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