If Florida man is irrational, ridiculous and maniacal (according to Wikipedia), but always good for a laugh, then what do we make of Florida woman? Especially Florida woman breaking through glass ceilings to occupy one of the highest of federal offices? Take for example Janet Reno and Pam Bondi, both women born and raised in Florida, both of whom began their careers as local prosecutors and then soared to the office of U.S. Attorney General. Both are noted for their grit and determination.

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And there the similarities might end. You could attribute Bondi’s false eyelashes to fashion evolution, but back in Reno’s day they would have been found no further than a Hooters waitress. Reno became Dade County State Attorney in 1978, a year before I moved from Tampa (Bondi’s home town and my own) to Miami (Reno’s home town). I went to work as a journalist, first for UPI, then The Miami Herald and then The Miami News, over the course of a decade. Occasionally, I had to call Janet Reno for comment on a story, an event that never failed to jitter my nerves. She was tough, she was smart, she did not put up with nonsense. Question asked, question answered, end of exchange. Reno did not chat. Professional women in those days worked hard to build an image of strength and competence. On the police beat, I noticed that women detectives might wear the expected heels in the station, but at the crime scene they put on tennis shoes. As professionals, we had to be twice as good as men to be taken seriously. Promoting a pretty face with kitten lashes would have been the fastest route to losing credibility.

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Janet Reno became the first female U.S. Attorney General in 1993, appointed by President Bill Clinton. I was delighted. If anyone could rise to the calling, it was she. By then I was living in France, watching the news from afar. The lesson Reno had to teach then was important too: if she made a mistake (and she did), she owned it, apologized, and moved on. She was tall and kinda awkward, but when the late-night comics made fun of her, she joined in the laugh (see SNL skits). At the start of her appointment, she asked for the resignations of the 93 chief US attorneys working for the Justice Department, and then refused to accept those she felt met her standards, whether Democrat or Republican. “What we’re trying to do is not play politics with justice, but get the very best we can,” she explained in a CNN interview. After she died in 2016, President Obama paid tribute to her “intellect, integrity and fierce commitment to justice.”

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Pam Bondi’s career was no less stellar. She served as an assistant state attorney in Hillsborough County from 1994 to 2009, then became the first woman elected as Florida Attorney General in 2010, and served two terms. Then she cozied up to Donald Trump (like so many, an immigrant to Florida).

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In 2020, Bondi joined Trump’s legal defense team against his impeachment, then his nonprofit America First Policy Institute, and became a lobbyist for both corporate clients (one from Kuwait) and at least one foreign government (Qatar). Two days before Trump took office in 2017, The Donald J. Trump Foundation paid a fine to the IRS for having given $25,000 to a Bondi political action committee. Since being sworn in as US Attorney General on February 4, 2025, the third woman to hold the office (Loretta Lynch served from 2015-2017 under President Obama), Bondi had ducked indications that she acts out of loyalty to Trump rather than the dictates of the law, but her appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11, 2026 erased any room for doubt. After a short but turbulent year in office, the verdict is clear: she acts in the interest of a mafia boss, rather than a nation.

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These two Florida women who took similar paths to professional success offer deeply contrasting examples of how to handle the responsibility of public office. It seems clear that while getting to the top may be a battle, the more important fight is in what you do when you get there. Intellect, integrity, and commitment to justice are not elements in focus in the Trump administration, and that includes the women. I fear a future backlash from his appointments of women – such as Kristi Noem, Linda McMahon, Susie Wiles, Tulsi Gabbard – most of whom have been placed in positions beyond their skill sets, chosen rather because they are America First Policy Institute members and Trump loyalists. We have to ask ourselves whether the authority of women appointees in administrations to come will be damaged because of this precedent.

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I also hope that all those false eyelashes will return to signaling the frivolous and incompetent, and disappear from the faces of women in power.

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(February 2026)

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