Rep. Rivera had tough time against ‘ringer’ — even after she quit
By
Mark Caputo Read Spanish Version
From
the Miami Herald Naked Politics blog
Talk
about a close call.
Heading
into Election Day, with Democrats looking as if they’d ride Barack
Obama‘s
coat-tails in South Florida, a suspected ringer who switched her
party affiliation from Republican to Democrat to "run"
against Miami Republican Rep. David
Rivera
pulled
the plug on her own campaign within 24 hours before Election Day.
Even
though voters were provided with a notice of Beatriz
"Betty” Gaffney’s
withdrawal,
it wasn’t enough to keep the 30-year-old political unknown from
winning the Broward County portion of HD 112 by 4,424 votes. In
Collier County, she came within 496 votes of beating Rivera,
according to the Collier supervisor of elections office. But in
Miami-Dade, Rivera won by 9,901, according to the supervisor’s
office.
Rivera’s
net victory margin: 5,973, giving him a 55-45 percent win against
someone who raised just $2,600 (in loans from herself), who doesn’t
return reporters’ phone calls and who didn’t seem to have had a
campaign event, much less a flier, sign or ad.
Rivera’s
House campaign alone raised $209,595.54.
So
who is Gaffney? "I don’t know who that woman is," Rivera
said just after she withdrew. Gaffney never returned calls to the
Miami Herald.
