Monique Worrell wasn’t the first state’s attorney Governor Ron DeSantis removed. The first was Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren, who announced after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that he would not prosecute anyone for abortion-related crimes. On the one hand, Warren was twice elected to his office. On the other, the Florida legislature enacted the 15-week abortion ban. And on the third hand, DeSantis was shortly thereafter re-elected by a huge margin.

“When you flagrantly violate your oath of office, when you make yourself above the law, you have violated your duty, you have neglected your duty and you are displaying a lack of competence to be able to perform those duties,” DeSantis said to cheers.

DeSantis has now done it again, this time to Ninth Judicial Circuit state attorney Worrell.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has suspended State Attorney Monique Worrell, “effective immediately,” for “neglect of duty,” “incompetence,” and not pursuing harsh enough criminal prosecutions.

DeSantis suspended another duly elected state prosecutor, Andrew Warren, in August 2022. pic.twitter.com/WE6m0DhS2N

— The Recount (@therecount) August 9, 2023

Unsurprisingly, Monique Worrell did not go quietly into the night.

“If we are mourning anything … it is the loss of democracy. I am your duly elected state attorney … and nothing done by a weak dictator can change that. This is an outrage.”

— State Attorney Monique Worrell (D) reacts to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) suspending her from office pic.twitter.com/lUbNx7FX2Q

— The Recount (@therecount) August 9, 2023

The argument is grounded in democracy. After all, the position of state attorney is elected, and Worrell won election in 2020 with 66% of the vote, certainly a clear sign that she was the state attorney her constituents wanted in office. By removing her, DeSantis nullified the will of the  Orlando voters, an affront to democracy.

Then again, what was her refusal to execute the laws of the state enacted by legislators who were also elected by their constituents. Was her election any more democratic than theirs? Was her election any more democratic than DeSantis’? It’s not that democracy wasn’t at issue here, but that it was at issue for everyone involved.

Mr. DeSantis said on Wednesday that Ms. Worrell’s office had charged cases in ways that would avoid mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug trafficking crimes; allowed juveniles to avoid serious charges or incarceration; found ways to avoid seeking more serious sentences when they were available; limited charges for child pornography; and inappropriately allowed some offenders to avoid having a criminal conviction on their records.

“Prosecutors do have a certain amount of discretion about which cases to bring and which not,” Mr. DeSantis, a former federal and military prosecutor, said. “But what this state attorney has done is abuse that discretion and has effectively nullified certain laws in the state of Florida.”

When the progressive strategy shifted from trying to win control of legislators, a very difficult task given how many seats would have to be flipped, they focused on the lynchpin of the legal system, prosecutors. If they had too much power to do harm, why not take an election that few cared about, win that executive branch post, and then use that power to help the marginalized? It was a viable strategy, at least in the short term, as these elections were far easier to win and prosecutors certainly had vast power that had long been abused.

But just as the Pennsylvania lege refused to let its laws be subject to the super-veto of elected district attorneys, the overly-accommodating Florida lege gave its (corrected) the Florida Constitution gives the authority to DeSantis to suspend state attorneys who refused to execute the functions of her office as DeSantis saw fit.

Of the three cases that Mr. DeSantis cited in his news conference, two involved offenders with prior records who went on to commit violent crimes. One was Daton Viel, a 28-year-old man killed by Orlando Police officers on Saturday after he had shot and critically injured two officers Friday night. Mr. Viel posted bond earlier this year after being charged with sexual battery of a 14-year-old girl. He was also on probation for a separate felony trespass conviction.

The other cases involved a man who shot and killed his pregnant girlfriend after having been released while facing charges including carrying a concealed firearm on school property, and a man who was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 51 weeks in jail as a youthful offender.

Of course, nothing is ever as simple as one-liners suggest. Even if one disagree with Worrell’s handling of these cases, they were not a categorical abdication of duty but the exercise of individualized prosecutorial discretion that was always within the normal exercise of authority by prosecutors. But then, these cases raised outrage among police and the anti-woke, and DeSantis’ presidential campaign as the unlikable Trump-Lite hasn’t been going too well and he needed whatever press time he could get.

But is it unconstitutional? Is it anti-democratic? Does it thwart the will of the people who overwhelmingly elected Monique Worrell to office knowing she was a progressive prosecutor and knowing that she was not of the sort to be as harsh and carceral as possible to sate the blood lust of the MAGA horde? Of course it was. And it was also anti-democratic to the voters who elected state legislators and the governor, who likewise went to the polls and voted for the candidate of their choice.

DeSantis, however, was both more wrong by thwarting the will of the more local voters who, by electing Worrell, did exactly what democracy entitled them to do by electing a prosecutor over their local jurisdiction who reflected their values and views. If the prosecutor in Miami-Dade wanted to do differently, that was up to the Miami-Dade folks. This was Orlando, and the sensibilities of Jacksonville voters had nothing to do with how their elected prosecutor should do her job.

The problem is that the same rhetoric of democratic outrage being used in Worrell’s defense can be used in defense of acts of the elected legislators and governor. Two wrongs don’t make a right, even if you can slip it past the tribes. When prosecutors categorically refuse to apply duly enacted law, they open themselves to attack for the same rejection of democracy they wrap around themselves in defense. This was always a flaw in the strategy of turning prosecutors into super-legislators with a super-veto over the law. It should come as no surprise that others in government didn’t like it and were not going to let it slide.