Gov. Ron DeSantis ousted Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren in a shocking announcement Thursday morning.
So who is the Tampa prosecutor who caught the governor’s ire?
Before he was state attorney, Warren worked for eight years for the Department of Justice, mainly prosecuting white collar crime. He was part of a team of lawyers who prosecuted R. Allen Stanford, a financier who was sentenced to 110 years in federal prison who used his investment company to defraud investors in a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.
The federal prosecutor and Gainesville native announced in January 2016 his intent to run for state attorney as a Democrat, setting up a challenge to the office’s longtime Republican incumbent, Mark Ober.
Warren was very much the underdog; Ober had held the post since 2000 and was well-respected in Hillsborough legal circles. Warren ran as a reformer, vowing to focus on rehabilitation over punishment and become a voice for criminal justice reform nationwide.
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In an upset that stunned Tampa legal observers, Warren squeezed out a victory in the November 2016 General Election, defeating Ober by just 4,700 votes. He was re-elected in 2020.
Political observers told the Tampa Bay Times that a number of factors contributed to his success: Ober didn’t do enough to…
