The incumbent vs. incumbent Republican primary in Florida’s 7th Congressional District has gotten nasty, with the two House members no longer speaking after one reportedly threatened to “destroy” the other.
Rep. Sandy Adams, a freshman, told The New York Times that her opponent, Rep. John Mica, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, pulled her aside after a recent event and said, “You will regret this for the rest of your life. I’ll destroy you.”
Mica’s recollection of the conversation is more benign.
“I told her that she would regret personally attacking my family for the rest of her life. I think that’s something that stoops to a whole new level,” Mica said.
“This is one more distortion by a desperate candidate who has run out of support and financial backing and everyone knows that her reputation will be forever tainted by her baseless personal attacks on my family,” he said. Adams has alleged that Mica used earmarks to help a client of his daughter’s.
But Adams, a former deputy sheriff, said there was no ambiguity and certainly nothing “benign” about the comment or its intent.
“In my years as a law enforcement officer, you know, you can pretty much tell when someone is very serious in the actions in the manner in which they say it, and he was very serious, and it was definitely a threat,” she told The Daily Caller.
“I think he was more surprised at the way I responded because, again, I am a law enforcement officer,” Adams said, “and I’ve been in scenarios where – have not been so nice, and my reaction was a little bit more – I think it took him back – because my reaction was: ‘I’m sure you probably want to restate that because I’m certain you did not mean it to sound the way it did. Don’t you want to restate that.’”
“His reaction was to run into the men’s bathroom,” she said. “We haven’t spoken since.”