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 Senate Minority Leader 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."
Both Braynon and Flores are married.
Braynon is the Senate Minority Leader, and Flores is a top lieutenant of Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart. She is chairwoman of both the Banking and Insurance Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.
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 apartment at The Tennyson, an apartment complex close to the Capitol that is popular with lawmakers and others who come up to Tallahassee for the two-month legislative session. 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.
Braynon found a different hidden camera in The Tennyson during the 2017 legislative session, and told the website Politico Florida in April that he believed the camera was the work of a private investigator hired by former state Sen. Frank Artiles of Miami, who was ousted from the Senate after a tirade directed at two other state senators that included racist and sexist language.
"I've heard from other people that, in retribution for what happened to Sen. Artiles, he was contemplating having private eyes following around members of the Legislature," Braynon told Politico.
Negron reiterated Tuesday that his chamber will have "zero tolerance" for sexual harassment or misconduct against employees and visitors.
"State government should lead by example in instituting policies that ensures employees feel safe when they come to work and comfortable to confidentially report inappropriate behavior by any person," he said.
Negron said Senate Rules Chairwoman Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, is leading the Senate's effort "to update its administrative policy on sexual and workplace harassment."
Negron did not address the statement from Braynon and Flores, which came out just minutes before Negron delivered his remarks opening the legislative session.
The website showing the affair between Flores and Braynon went live Tuesday, but the domain name was registered the same day Latvala resigned, Internet registry records show.
(c)2018 the Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)
