It seems like Ben Quayle is stumbling in his father’s footsteps in his campaign for the US Congress. The son of gaffe-prone former vice president Dan Quayle is certainly attracting media attention as he seeks the Republican nomination from a Phoenix-area district.
Campaigning as a family-values conservative, Quayle first denied then admitted that he wrote for a sex-steeped Arizona Web site. It recalled his father’s awkward attempt to explain his military record during the Vietnam War immediately after former US president George H.W. Bush chose the obscure 41-year-old Indiana senator as his running mate in 1988.
The racy Arizona Web site’s founder, Nik Richie, said Quayle used the alias “Brock Landers,” the name of a character from the 1997 movie Boogie Nights about porn stars in California. The Web site, now known as TheDirty.com, recently reposted the 2007 entries.
Quayle said he could not recall what his posts involved or when he made them.
The news broke just days after Quayle sent out campaign mail showing his wife and two young girls, with the words: “We are going to raise our family here.”
He and his wife have no children; the girls were his nieces. Campaign rival Vernon Parker accused Quayle of “renting a family.”
The goofs revive memories of his dad’s missteps as vice president in Bush’s administration. A classroom stumble in spelling the word “potato,” musings on how terrible it is “not to have a mind” and declaring that “Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.”
Name recognition helped Quayle jump to the front of the pack of 10 candidates vying for his party’s nomination in a Republican-leaning district that includes sections of Phoenix and Scottsdale.
Eight-term Representative John Shadegg is retiring. One of Quayle’s ads features Dan Quayle with his son saying: “I grew up watching my dad fight for conservative values.”
Quayle raised more than US$1.1 million, with many of the contributions coming from one-time colleagues and friends of his father. Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld contributed. In May, Bush and his wife Barbara raised money for Quayle at their home in Houston.
The primary is on Aug. 24 and early voting is already under way.
The rapid rise of the 33-year-old Quayle, a lawyer and managing director of an investment firm who has never held elective office, has angered several of his rivals.
“We need folks from Arizona who have done things here for Arizona, not people trying to come in and buy elections with famous last names and not having anything to show for it,” Phoenix attorney Paulina Morris said.
In recent days, Quayle has handed his opponents more ammunition.
He first denied, then admitted, writing for the Web site previously called DirtyScottsdale.com, which describes the city after hours. His contributions were first reported by the Web site Politico.
Asked about the site this week, Quayle said that he “wrote a couple of satirical and fictional pieces for a satirical Web site,” but that he quit doing so once the site shifted its editorial direction. Richie says the site’s content and tone have not changed from the days when Quayle was connected to it.
Quayle also created waves this week with a campaign ad in which he called US President Barack Obama “the worst president in history” and tells Arizona voters that he wants to “knock the hell” out of Washington.
Another famous name is also seeking a seat in the House this year. In New York, former president Richard Nixon’s grandson, 30-year-old Christopher Nixon Cox, is running for the Republican nomination to challenge four-term Democratic Representative Tim Bishop on Long Island.
Meantime a political dynasty is stepping back. The retirement of Representative Patrick Kennedy will mark the first time in six decades a Kennedy won’t be in office. Kennedy, an eight-term Democrat from Rhode Island, is the son of the late senator Edward Kennedy and nephew of former president John F. Kennedy.
The Arizona winner will face Phoenix lawyer and businessman Jon Hulburd, the only Democrat seeking his party’s nomination.
Although Hulburd has raised US$748,000, according to his latest campaign finance reports, whoever wins the Republican primary will have the edge.
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