Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is calling for fellow Democrat, Rep. Alan Grayson, to drop his Senate bid amid allegations he used his congressional seat to promote a hedge fund that until recently had been based in the Cayman Islands.
“Grayson claims to be a progressive, but it seems like he has no moral compass. These deeply troubling allegations should disqualify anyone from a seat in the U.S. Senate. Alan Grayson used his status as a congressman to unethically promote his Cayman Islands hedge funds, and he should drop out of the Senate race immediately. His actions aren’t just disgraceful to the Democratic Party, they disgrace the halls of Congress,” Reid said in a statement.
Grayson is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee following reports that the Florida congressman heavily intertwined his role as a lawmaker and hedge fund manager.
“Here is something that is not true: that I somehow traded on my membership as a U.S. congressman to get clients for this fund,” Grayson told the New York Times.
Reid has been rallying other Democrats to back the campaign of Patrick Murphy to succeed Republican Marco Rubio.
Four Republicans are vying for Rubio’s seat: Rep. Ron Desantis, a Tea Party favorite who has won the support of conservative groups; Rep. David Jolly, a first-term congressman, former Washington lobbyist and congressional aide; Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera; and businessman Todd Wilcox, who has never been elected to public office.
