2 state senators reveal extramarital affair.
Two South Florida state senators went public Tuesday to acknowledge their extramarital affair as the Florida Legislature convened under a cloud of sexual impropriety that has distracted lawmakers for months.
Their statement came after a website posted video purporting to show state Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, entering and leaving an apartment rented by Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens.
“As this 2018 session of the Florida Legislature gets underway, we do not want gossip and rumors to distract from the important business of the people,” Flores and Braynon said in a joint statement.
“That’s why we are issuing this brief statement to acknowledge that our longtime friendship evolved to a level that we deeply regret. We have sought the forgiveness of our families, and also seek the forgiveness of our constituents and God. We ask everyone else to respect and provide our families the privacy that they deserve as we move past this to focus on the important work ahead.”
Braynon is the Senate Minority Leader, and Flores is a top lieutenant of Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart. The consensual affair is of a different nature than the previous sex scandals that have dogged the Florida Senate. State Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, resigned Dec. 20 after multiple allegations that he had offered to trade legislative support in return for sexual favors and inappropriately touched female staffers over a period of years.
State Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, resigned in October after acknowledging an affair with a lobbyist.
A website called floresbraynonaffair.com published videos from a hidden camera purporting to show Flores entering the apartment of Braynon across the hall from her own at The Tennyson, a complex close to the Capitol. Another video shows Flores leaving the next morning. The videos were taken in April 2017, during last year’s legislative session.
The anonymous author of the website wrote that a resident of The Tennyson provided him with both a key fob to gain access to the building and a key to enter the resident’s apartment. It’s unknown who’s running the website or who hid the camera.