Quayle survives controversial campaign to win nominationPosted: August 25th, 2010
From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser
(CNN) - The son of former Vice President Dan Quayle is a giant step closer to coming to Washington, after winning a wild ten-candidate race for the Republican nomination in Arizona's third congressional district.
Ben Quayle's victory follows a primary campaign filled with controversy and a last minute message of support from the former vice president.
The Associated Press projected that Ben Quayle came out on top in Tuesday's primary and will face Democrat John Hulburd in November's general election. Accoring to the unofficial vote count by AP, with 100 percent of percincts reporting, Quayle captured nearly 23 percent of the ballots cast, nearly 3,000 votes ahead of Steve Moak, who was in second at 18 percent.
The ten candidates were vying to succeed retiring Republican Rep. John Shadegg, who announced in January that he would not seek a ninth term in office. Quayle will now face Phoneix lawyer and businessman John Hulburd, the Democratic nominee, in the November general election in a district that Republicans dominate.
"Given the district's strong Republican composition, the most competitive race voters will see here in 2010 was in the Republican primary," says a memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Two weeks ago Quayle went up with a television commercial in which he stared into the camera and solemnly declared that "Barack Obama is the worst president in history."
"He's an ideologue from a leftist bend," Quayle told CNN's John King. "I think that he's trying to take control of more parts of the private sector. He's trying to make government the answer to all the problems that we face when we should be focusing more on individual responsibility."
A few days later Quayle lined up nine reasons why, in his opinion, he believed Obama is the worst. Included on the list were the assertions that Obama has "destroyed more wealth than any human being in history" and that he has "divided America along racial lines in destructive ways." The list did not include any evidence to back up Quayle's claims.
The 33 year-old businessman and lawyer also responded to allegations that he penned regular contributions to a now defunct website called DirtyScottsdale.com. The site has since been renamed theDirty.com, but features similar content – gossip about nightlife in cities around the country. A quick glance at the website offers an endless stream of photographs of provocatively dressed women.
The site's owner, Nik Richie, wrote in an August 9 blog post that Quayle was the person behind the alias 'Brock Landers.' Quayle has admitted to writing several blog posts for the original DirtyScottsdale website, but says he is not behind the Brock Landers posts.
"I posted a few comments on a website that doesn't even exist anymore, they were innocuous and, you know, these are the types of smear campaigns that are being pushed against me about nothing," Quayle told CNN.
The former vice president, who appeared with Quayle in an early campaign commercial, fired off an e-mail to Quayle supporters Monday defending his son against attacks from opponents over the website episode.
Quayle also faced another controversy when a campaign mailer pictured him and two young girls with the words, "We are going to raise our family here." Quayle is married but he and his wife have no children. The girls in the picture were his nieces.
According to local news reports, Quayle briefly appeared late Tuesday night at the state Republican headquarters in Phoenix, giving a quick statement and then quickly departing the room as questions were shouted at him by reporters.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/25/quayle-survives-controversial-campaign-to-win-nomination/#more-119259
