Florida Representative Arrested for Solicitation
Posted on | July 14, 2007
Senator John McCain can’t catch a break. His campaign appears to be falling apart, his South Carolina chair was arrested on drug charges, and now this from Florida (State) Rep. Bob Allen, co-chair of McCain’s Florida campaign:
“‘How about across the bridge, it’s quiet over there,” Florida House member and state co-chairman for Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid Bob Allen allegedly told a police officer moments before his arrest in a Florida park for soliciting sex. Allen, a Republican first elected to the House in 2000, was referring to a possible location for a sexual encounter that would be away from the men’s room in the park.
“Allen engaged me in a conversation in which it was agreed that he would pay me $20 in order to perform a ‘blow job’ on me,” Officer D. Kavanaugh wrote in the arrest report, obtained by PageOneQ. Kavanaugh stated that he was in the handicapped stall and he “observed Allen look over the door of my stall and make eye contact with me. Allen then stepped away and then came back to the door of my stall and looked in, making eye contact with me again.”
This was, reported the officer, the second time Allen had entered the bathroom. Earlier, Allen had been seen entering the bathroom by Kavanaugh and other officers in the park.
As the lurid details of his alleged encounter with the officer emerged, Allen told a press conference he “would ask people not to jump to any conclusions about this.” Allen faces misdemeanor charges for solicitation.
What is it about these repressed, oh-so-moralistic “family values” politicians? They can’t all be living double lives like Allen’s, but it often seems that way. Allen, as you might have guessed, sponsored or co-sponsored the following get-tough-on-sex-offenders bills in Florida’s Congress:
HB 1475 - Lewd or Lascivious Exhibition
CS/CS/HB 41 - Sexual Offenses
CS/HB 269 - Lewdness and Indecent Exposure
HR 597 - Sexual Solicitation and Abuse
HB 7117 - Sexual Predators and Offenders
