JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Westside woman just shy of 100 years old says she was stood up by U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, who left her waiting for five hours after promising to take her to a campaign event.
According to a Florida Politics blog, during a visit to the Lane Wiley Senior Center on the Westside, where 99-year-old Virgie Coleman volunteers, Brown promised to pick Coleman up Saturday morning and take her to a lunch event headlined by Martin Luther King III.
“I go to the senior center five days a week, and I work in the bingo hall. I take care of the money box,” Coleman said. “She came to the center and wanted to see the person who was 99, so here I am. And I think I’ve seen her a couple of times, and it wasn’t no big thing, so she said she’d come take me to lunch and I said OK.”
Coleman told News4Jax that she waited from around 8:30 a.m. until early afternoon Saturday for Brown's transportation to come get her. But Brown never showed up to take her to lunch.
“Her bodyguard said to be ready at 9, and I said, 'OK sir.' So I was, and then (I was) passed over,” Coleman said. “People make a lot of promises, but sometimes it doesn’t work.”
That broken promise cost Coleman roughly half a day waiting in a chair outside.
Coleman said Brown’s office called her later.
“I just got a call from them not too long ago, and I said no I didn’t want to go anywhere with them, and I was home and didn’t feel too good,” Coleman said.
She said she holds no ill will toward Brown and will probably vote for her in the upcoming primary, but she wants no part of another lunch date.
“I didn’t want to do it again,” Coleman said. “Once is enough of anything to me.”
In a post on her blog, Brown admitted that her campaign “dropped the ball” in leaving Coleman waiting.
“I'm extremely sorry that we disappointed Ms. Coleman,” Brown wrote, blaming the situation on a “miscommunication within the campaign.”
She said wrote that she was grateful Coleman had accepted her apology.
“No way are we perfect, but every day we work to do better,” Brown wrote.