A disgraced former Congressman from Western New York is planning to run for office again — in another state.
Former U.S. Rep. Chris Collins told WGRZ that he is assembling a team for a campaign in Florida’s 19th Congressional District if and when fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds steps aside to run for governor of Florida. Donalds is reportedly considering a gubernatorial run if Gov. Ron DeSantis is elected president in 2024, though Donalds has endorsed former President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination.
The FL-19 district, which has been staunchly Republican for more than a decade, includes Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Sanibel, Bonita Springs, Naples, and Marco Island along the Gulf Coast. Donalds, also a former New Yorker, has represented the district since 2021.
If Collins, who currently lives in Florida, is elected to Congress he would be the first member to represent two different states in the past 55 years, according to WGRZ.
Collins, 73, resigned from office in 2019 before pleading guilty to charges he leaked confidential information about a pharmaceutical company’s failed drug trial to avoid $800,000 in stock market losses. He held the seat in the 27th congressional district, located near Buffalo, from 2013 to 2019; he won reelection in 2018 even after being arrested on felony insider trading charges.
Collins was sentenced to serve 26 months in prison beginning in March 2020, but lawyers successfully argued for a delay multiple times, citing Covid-19 health risks due to his age. WIVB reports he began serving time in a federal prison in Florida in October 2020, but was pardoned by Trump and released two months later.
Collins, a longtime supporter of Trump and the first member of Congress to endorse him for president, was attending the Congressional Picnic at the White House in 2017 when he received an email from the company’s chief executive saying that a drug developed to treat multiple sclerosis had proven to be a clinical failure. Collins admitted…
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