It must be frustrating for Alan Grayson, in his run for the open Florida Senate seat that Rubio is giving up-- see the clip of Grayson above explaining Rubio's dreadful Senate record to Chris Hayes-- to have Wall Street's Senator, Chuck Schumer, pushing Wall Street's favorite candidate in the primary, "former" Republican Patrick Murphy. Murphy may be a dullard-- he was recently named among the least effect members the House-- but Schumer is as shrewd and manipulative as he is loaded down with bankster cash. Between his bro-mance with Schumer and his deep family roots in the GOP, Murphy knows how to blatantly lie to voters.
Like Rubio, Murphy is also lazy and doesn't like doing any work. His biggest campaign contributors are from the Finance Sector (who gave him an astronomical and unprecedented $2,260,848 in just 3 years). Rubio has been out cozying up to big donors instead of doing any work in the Senate-- and work in Congress means working on committees. Ironically, last week, Murphy played hooky from the House Financial Services Committee, the committee where he regularly serves Wall Street interests and kicks his Florida middle class constituents to the curb, but when it came to 13 important votes last Wednesday, he disappeared. The markups were so important that they started Tuesday and went into Wednesday but it looked like Patrick, like Rubio, was out kissing up to potential contributors instead of doing the work Florida taxpayers pay him to do. I called and e-mailed Murphy's office to ask why he missed those 13 votes and, of course, couldn't get an answer.
Another Democrat on the committee told me, in confidence, that whether or not Murphy was at a fundraiser, he probably didn't want to vote because his normal routine of voting with the Republicans for the Wall Street agenda-- while very remunerative-- could cause him problems with Florida voters. And, it's true, I've noticed that since he got into a primary fight with Grayson, his normally Republican voting record has turned slightly more Democratic. I guess Schumer told him to play up to Democrats for a little while.
This morning I got a fundraising e-mail from his campaign making ridiculous claims in the vein of having "championed the middle class and fought to expand Medicare, strengthen Social Security, defend women’s rights, and protect the environment against climate change." Much of that is just flat out false. He didn't just vote against the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus budgets that do attempt to expand Medicare and strengthen Social Security, he even voted against the official Democratic Party budget, which attempts to fight back against GOP attempts to weaken Social Security and Medicare! 31 right-wing Blue Dogs and New Dems voted against the official Democrat budget with Murphy and 10 of them were defeated or forced from office in the next election. Instead, Murphy thinks he should be promoted!
And as for Murphy's absurd claim to be protecting the environment, not only did he vote 6 times for the Keystone XL Pipeline-- including for a far right-wing scheme to remove President Obama from decision-making capacity (one of the only Democrats to go so extreme)-- he was also one of the only Democrats to join his Republican polluter buddies in favor of drilling off Florida's coast! No wonder he refuses to debate, Grayson-- he's petrified of being called out on his unending liars about his record.
In the end the pathetic Republican shill for Wall Street was reduced in his fundraising e-mail to whining that he’s "a Floridian, through and through, born and raised in Florida," referring to Grayson having not been born in Florida. OK, Patrick isn't lying about that so kudos to Patrick. Only problem is that almost 2/3s of Floridians weren't born in the state but moved there because they preferred living there. Does Murphy think that 64% of the people who live in his state are somehow not as good as he is?
He also claimed he's the "most electable," meaning he can get Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to vote for him. That's an interesting argument but it doesn't hold any water. The Republicans are likely to nominate a David Jolly, who is only slightly less conservative than Murphy is-- so it will be a turn-off/lesser-of-two-evils election for Democrats, many of whom just won't vote, while conservatives will look at the two candidates and pick the actual Republican instead of the former Republican who they are likely to figure out is a transactional opportunist-- and completely beholden to the hated Chuck Schumer.