Whatever Bettie Cook Scott may lack in national prominence, she makes up with chutzpah. When she lost her bid to move from the Michigan House of Representatives to a Michigan State Senate seat by losing the Democrat primary, she simply stopped showing up for work. Her district, in the City of Detroit, only elects Democrats, so the primary was tantamount to electoral victory.

Despite the temptation to abolish the crown after Hillary’s stunning performance as a sore loser in 2016, another Democrat is making a strong case for membership in the sore loser hall of fame, where she joins Al Gore and John C. Breckinridge (who was defeated by Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and went on to join the Confederacy as Secretary of War).

Tom Gantert of Michigan Capital Confidential reports:

Democrat Bettie Cook Scott stopped showing up to legislative sessions as a state representative for the 2nd District in the Michigan House after she lost her bid for a state Senate seat in the August primary election. The Detroit representative was far and away the state legislator who missed the most votes in 2018, according to an analysis done by Michigan Votes, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s vote-tracking website. Scott missed 599 of a possible 1,045 votes in 2018. She missed all 488 votes from August through December 2018. MichiganVotes.org said in its analysis that it is unable to recall a similar situation in the past 25 years. Michigan Votes released its report on missed legislative votes on Friday. State representatives are paid $71,685 a year. Scott didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Photo credit: Michigan State Legislature

Rep. Scott missed just under 40% of the year, if she quit the day after the August 7 primary, or $28,477.60 worth of her annual salary. If you or I stopped doing our jobs, we’d certainly not get paid for the rest of the year, but of course it doesn’t work that way for solons, who always seem free to abandon their jobs to run for higher office.

But abandoning her constituents out of pique is not even at the top of the list of Scott’s offenses against decency in 2018. On the day of the primary, she employed a racial slur to characterize her primary opponent. Jessica Chasmar of the Washington Times:

Michigan state Rep. Bettie Cook Scott is facing backlash from more than a dozen progressive groups after she allegedly used a racial slur against her Democratic opponent. Ms. Scott, who is black, is accused of calling state Rep. Stephanie Chang, who is of Taiwanese descent, a “ching-chang” and “ching-chong,” according to several witnesses who spoke with the Detroit Metro Times. Ms. Scott allegedly went on a tirade against Asian immigrants while speaking to voters outside polling precincts during last week’s Democratic primary, saying “these immigrants from China are coming over and taking our community from us,” Metro Times reported. Ms. Chang went on to win the race for state Senate District 1 with 49 percent of the vote, compared to Ms. Cook’s 11 percent. “These comments are offensive to all Asian-Americans,” Ms. Chang told Metro Times. “It isn’t about me. It’s about an elected official disrespecting entire populations, whether they be Asian-American, immigrant, or residents of Senate District 1 or [Ms. Cook‘s] own current house district.”

The backlash got to her, apparently:

Ms. Scott on Thursday publicly apologized to Ms. Chang and said she planned to apologize in person during a meeting with her next week. “Those are not the kinds of comments that should be made nor are they the kind of comments I would normally make,” Ms. Scott said in a statement issued through her lawyer Bill Noakes, The Detroit News reported. “I humbly apologize to Rep. Chang and to her husband, Mr. Gray, and to the broader Asian American community. “We live in a time of increasing divisiveness,” she said. “As a state representative, I should never do anything to contribute to an atmosphere of divisiveness and for that, I am terribly sorry. I look forward to meeting with Rep. Chang to express my apologies directly to her as soon as she’s able to meet with me.”

Even after whatever personal reflection followed her apology, Rep. Scott still could not get it together to show up and do the job for which she was being paid.