Plantation Councilman Nick Sortal used to love “snitches” and whistleblowers. In a 2019 Sun-Sentinel article, Sortal asked a fellow journalist, “Why is it that a city employee who calls out a fellow employee for, say, cheating on a timecard, called a ‘whistleblower,’ while a person who provides information on a much larger offense, even murder, is labeled a “snitch?” The journalist responded, “whistleblowers are victims who speak up against an injustice at work.” On Thursday, Sortal told the Sun-Sentinel that a black female whistleblower was lying about sexual and racial remarks he made to her at City Hall last month.

On Monday, REDBROWARD reported on a Human Resources complaint filed a City of Plantation employee against Nick Sortal. According to the employee, in mid-May, Sortal and his wife Robyn Sortal came into the City Clerk’s office to obtain paperwork for his mayoral campaign against popular incumbent Mayor Lynn Stoner. Sortal told the employee about a “scuffle” between his wife and Stoner. Sortal told the female employee that “My dick is hard for this.” The embarrassed employee covered her face with her hands.

Sortal then asked the employee if anyone else picked up paperwork for mayoral race. When told yes, Sortal asked if the person was black. When employee told him no, Sortal said, “Oh good, Plantation will never have a black mayor.”

Within days, the employee, a deputy city clerk, filed a complaint with the City of Plantation Human Resources department.

REDBROWARD obtained a three-page memorandum that is part of the complaint. The memorandum is signed by City of Plantation Human Resources Director Denese Edsall. The memorandum documents the steps city leaders took to investigate the matter.

The memorandum includes the comments made by Sortal, an admission by Sortal to Plantation Chief Administrative Officer Jason Nunemaker and a discussion with labor attorney Denise Heekin.

Heekin told City leaders they were powerless to act against Sortal. She advised the City officials to create the memorandum to accompany the complaint.

BLAME THE VICTIM 101

Nick Sortal began his Clintonian attack on the black female whistleblower on Tuesday in a statement to an obscure student newspaper in Miami. Sortal “declined to comment, but deemed the memorandum ‘inaccurate.’” Fun fact for student reporters: Using the word “inaccurate” in in fact a comment. The rest of the laughable article reads as a Sortal campaign president release. He attacks Stoner while lamenting how dirty politics “muddied” waters. He attempts to spin the story as a partisan attack by labeling REDBROWARD as a “conservative website.” Sortal and Stoner are both Democrats.

Sortal continued his Clintonian game plan in comments to the Sun-Sentinel on Thursday. “I feel it’s all about politics,” Sortal said. “I want to keep my focus. I’m not getting down in the mud. That’s not who I am.”

Sortal claims he made the “My dick is hard over this” remark to his wife not the deputy clerk. He says he wanted to show his wife how proud he was over his defense of him.

But Nick Sortal says the black female deputy clerk’s complaint regarding his racial comment is “a lie.”

Sortal said the allegation that he also made a racial comment to [the deputy clerk] is “a lie. That never, ever happened. I’m not that kind of person.”

“I feel it’s all about politics,” Sortal said. “I want to keep my focus. I’m not getting down in the mud. That’s not who I am.”

A LIE?

In the memorandum obtained by REDBROWARD, Nick Sortal admitted to making the comments to CAO Jason Nunemaker. Sortal told Nunemaker, “he did not realize they were taken as inappropriate as he has been speaking to [the city employee] for four years and felt comfortable.”

Nick Sortal felt “comfortable” with the woman for four years but suddenly she is a liar when his political aspirations are threatened?

According to the memorandum, Sortal was so comfortable with the employee that he revealed why she was not promoted. The employee said Sortal told her, “That the Mayor did not like her and that is why she didn’t get the job.”

Now, Sortal wants voters to believe the employee is a pawn of Stoner in a “dirty politics” plot to keep him out of the Mayor’s office?

Sortal doesn’t apologize. He claims his “My dick is hard” was a pat on his wife’s head for defending him. Really? He makes a remark about his penis while his wife is talking with a female employee about grandchildren?

The female whistleblower, his friend for four years, is a liar?

Lynn Stoner is orchestrating a dirty politics campaign with the aid of high-level City employees and officials?

Nick Sortal wants to be the Mayor. Yet he calls his employees liars?

This sounds so misogynistic. So unprofessional. So unbelievable.

Should Nick Sortal be put in charge of the City of Plantation?

Time for someone to ask Plantation Council Members Jennifer Andreu, Eric Anderson, Tim Fadgen and Denise Horland what they think of Sortal’s behavior.