Rep. Alan Grayson believes Vice President Joe Biden’s endorsement of his opponent in the Florida Democratic Senate primary was a case of mistaken identity.
“I’m absolutely certain of it,” Grayson, a progressive Democrat, told the Tampa Bay Times.
Grayson is trailing in the primary against Rep. Patrick Murphy, who has the support of Democratic leaders in Congress and President Obama. But he thinks that Biden was duped into thinking he was endorsing an old friend from Pennsylvania who was also named Patrick Murphy.
He drew that inference from Biden’s explanation, during a private phone call, for why he had decided to endorse Murphy. “[Biden said] Patrick had been so good on the issue of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,'” Grayson said.
But Grayson’s opponent wasn’t involved in that fight. Instead, a different Patrick Murphy worked on that issue as a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania. “They managed to sell our Congressman Patrick Murphy from Florida by pretending he was the other one from Pennsylvania,” Grayson said during an editorial board meeting with the local paper.
Democratic leaders have lined up behind Murphy in their bid to pick off a competitive Florida seat, which should be more of a challenge now that Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has decided to seek reelection. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is working particularly hard to stop Grayson.
“I want you to lose,” Reid told Grayson during an explosive meeting with progressive House Democrats.
Grayson faces an ethics investigation over his affiliation with a hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands, including “how he promoted his international travels, some with congressional delegations, to solicit business,” according to the New York Times. Those issues, combined with his occasionally bombastic rhetorical style, motivated President Obama and Vice President Biden to endorse Murphy.
“This is the real deal,” Biden said while campaigning with Murphy in May. “We need people in the Senate who can bring people together.”
But now Murphy has his own troubles, following a report that he has made a series of “misleading or outright false” statements about his professional background, according to a local CBS station. “For instance, he has never worked a day in his life as a Certified Public Accountant,” the report says. “And he was never a small business owner.”
