Insults and Accusations Fly in Florida’s House Races

MIAMI — In an election year awash with partisan fury, Florida can lay claim to some of the nastiest and most personal House battles in the country.

Near Orlando, a debate between two House candidates — one a Tea Party favorite, the other a Democratic firebrand — descended into name-calling and a command to "shut up."

In Miami, Representative David Rivera, a Republican, is seeking re-election amid accusations of political skulduggery during the primary campaign and a criminal investigation into a separate matter.

Farther north, on the Treasure Coast, Representative Allen West and his Democratic challenger, Patrick Murphy, are thumping each other with television advertisements that portray Mr. Murphy as an irresponsible party boy (complete with a 2003 mug shot after a South Beach bar brawl) and Mr. West as a man with a tarnished military career.

"Nasty is the new normal in Florida," said Dan Gelber, a former state senator and Democratic leader in the State Capitol who is not inclined to shirk from the state's political tussles. "Politics here is very gutterlike. It's like a very bad reality TV show that still gets very high ratings."

Because elections are so tight and a small number of votes can decide races, each voter is highly coveted and doggedly targeted.

"It's a true swing state, and a close state ignites people's passions," said Roger Stone, a longtime Republican consultant who lives in Miami Beach. Add to that the state's mix of immigrants, many from countries well practiced in tainted politics, and New Yorkers, who are accustomed to delighting in political rumbles, and the result is not altogether unpredictable.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in South Florida.

Since he was elected to Congress in 2010, Mr. Rivera, one of three Republican Cuban-American House members from Miami, has been dogged by allegations of wrongdoing while he was a state legislator. On Wednesday he was charged by the Florida Commission on Ethics with 11 counts of filing fraudulent financial disclosure forms, misusing campaign funds and concealing a $1 million consulting contract with a Miami gambling business while he served in the State House.

Mr. Rivera, who was Senator Marco Rubio's roommate when both were state representatives, called the charges false in a statement, but he is also confronting another series of damaging accusations.

The Miami Herald has reported that Mr. Rivera ran a puppet candidate in the Democratic primary against his Democratic challenger, Joe Garcia, who lost to Mr. Rivera in 2010. The candidate, Justin Lamar Sternad, a part-time hotel worker with no political experience, has told the F.B.I. that Mr. Rivera was secretly behind his race, The Herald reported. The newspaper said Mr. Rivera funneled as much as $43,000 to Mr. Sternad, who paid cash this summer for expensive campaign fliers attacking Mr. Garcia. A federal grand jury is investigating.

One witness in the case — a political operative who describes herself on Twitter as a "Republican Political Guru and Conservative Bad Girl!" — vanished hours before she was scheduled to talk to prosecutors. Mr. Rivera, who declined through his lawyer to comment, has said he has done nothing wrong and knows of no investigation.

"We are not going to respond to unfounded rumors and innuendo," said his lawyer, Michael R. Band. But, he added, "it's like a Carl Hiaasen novel."

Analysts say Mr. Garcia stands a good chance of winning next month. And if so, he would be a new breed of Cuban-American in the House: a Democrat who supports travel by Americans to Cuba.

Meanwhile, his party has stepped back from Mr. Rivera.

"I know the Republicans are putting enormous pressure on him to drop out," Mr. Stone said, adding that Mr. Rubio has been asked to intervene.

But Mr. Rivera, who was named the most corrupt member of Congress this year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a nonpartisan group in Washington, has refused to back down. Recently, he ran a television advertisement saying, inaccurately, that Mr. Garcia was "under investigation for breaking the law."

Last week, Mr. Garcia counterpunched, starting a Web site,
davidriverafacts.com, delineating the accusations. An accompanying video warns: "The more we know, the worse it gets."

Caustic races are nothing new to Alan Grayson, a brash, blunt Democrat from Orlando who was elected to the House in 2008, only to lose two years later to Daniel Webster, a Republican.

Carlos Harrison contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 24, 2012

An earlier version of this article mistakenly said Joe Garcia opposes the United States embargo on Cuba.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Insults and Accusations Fly in Florida’s House Races

Dengan url

https://dunialuasekali.blogspot.com/2012/10/insults-and-accusations-fly-in.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Insults and Accusations Fly in Florida’s House Races

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Insults and Accusations Fly in Florida’s House Races

sebagai sumbernya