Patrick Murphy, a well-funded Democrat, will likely face off against everyone's favorite kooky South Florida congressman Allen West in November, but first he has a few Democratic rivals to face off against in the primary. One of those rivals, Jim Horn, is sending out a flyer that heavily implies Murphy is a closeted homosexual and was once arrested outside of a "famous gay bar" in South Beach.
Riptide doesn't know a lot about what's going on in this race, but we do know a bit about South Beach nightlife, and, no, the club in question is not a "famous gay bar."
Murphy, 29, attended the University of Miami, and, like approximately 95 percent of people who ever attended the University of Miami, he once obtained a fake ID and got a little too drunk on South Beach. Unfortunately for him he ended up getting arrested when he was 19 in 2003 for those shenanigans. He told the Palm Beach Post it was the "biggest mistake of my life."
Here's the flyer Horn sent out as posted by Shark-Tank.net. The part about the "famous gay bar" is at the bottom:
An attack website was also set up and includes this page on Murphy's teenage arrest.
Here are the facts. Murphy was arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning, February 16, outside of Crobar. (It has since closed, and Cameo has reopened in its place.) Crobar hosted some gay and gay-friendly parties back in the day but was not strictly a "gay club" in 2003. But the website would like you to believe it was by linking to this years-old discussion on nightlife website Club Junkie.
At the time, Crobar hosted a gay party called "Anthem" on Sunday. That would have ended on Monday morning. Murphy was arrested after a Saturday night party, and back in 2003 Crobar's Saturdays attracted straighter crowds with big-name DJs. Here, for example, is a photo gallery of Crobar's Saturday party taken just a few weeks after Murphy's arrest. Not exactly a gay party.
Sorry, Jim Horn, but we're not sure someone who can't figure out how to Google around and figure out that Crobar wasn't a "famous gay bar" is exactly congressional material.
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