The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

Staff, Wire Reports

Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:20 PM

Two Miami Lawmakers Apologize For Affair After Threat From Anonymous Website Threatens Them

Two Miami lawmakers were forced to admit and apologize for their bipartisan extramarital affair after an anonymous website claimed to have evidence of the swing-state senators getting busy behind closed doors.

It’s just the latest sex-fueled scandal that has rocked the Florida legislature in recent months.


On Tuesday, shortly before the start of the session, veteran lawmakers Sens. Oscar Braynon, a Democrat, and Anitere Flores, a Republican, issued a joint statement saying their “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,” the statement read. “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.”

That might be easier said than done.

Both Braynon and Flores are married – to other people – and hold leadership positions in the state legislature.

Braynon is the Senate Minority Leader, while Flores is the chairwoman of both the Banking and Insurance Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.

The couple was outed after the website floresbraynonaffair.com published videos from a hidden camera purporting to show Flores entering Braynon’s apartment at The Tennyson. Both lived in the Tallahassee complex during the two-month legislative session in 2017.

Another video purportedly shows Flores leaving Braynon’s place the next morning.

The website has since been taken down.

The mystery surrounding who could be behind the video remains.

The anonymous author wrote that a resident at the Tennyson gave him a key fob to get into the building and a key to enter the apartment.

Last year, Braynon told Politico Florida that he had found a different hidden camera at the complex and believed it was the work of a private investigator.

But unlike the Flores-Braynon incident, which involved two consenting adults, a spate of other sex scandals has dogged the Florida legislature in recent months.

In December, Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Jack Latvala was forced to resign following complaints of sexual harassment from at least seven different women. The complaints ranged from making boorish comments about the weight and breast size of women to nonconsensual touching of their private parts.