Arrests, domestic violence, blog wars. Yup. Another day in Broward's vicious GOP congressional race

The Shark Tank Blog, which bags Congressional candidate Karen Harrington, recently took a bite of her fellow Republican, Ozzie deFaria, for two arrests in 2005 and 2006 when he scuffled twice with his estranged wife's boyfriend. The full blog and links to the arrest reports are here.

The "court records from his 2005 Domestic Violence case and his 2006 Arrest for Repeat Domestic Violence and Battery are painting a very disturbing pattern of domestic violence and perhaps some serious anger management issues," blogger Javier Manjarres opines.

DeFaria's campaign is pushing back, blaming Harrington for The Shark Tank's blog (which Manjarres denies) while pointing to yet another website, called truthaboutjaviermanjarres.com, that attacks Manjarres.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whom the Republicans want to topple, must be grinning at the internal Republican conflict.

Following are links and excerpts of letters to Harrington from deFaria and his ex, Elaine Seibold, as well as Manjarres' response ( Download From deFaria and Download From Seibold

From deFaria:

Yesterday, you sent out an email saying, “on this Memorial Day, we put politics aside and honor the daily sacrifices that our brave military men and women have made...”  Hours later, Javier Manjarres, a blogger closely associated with (and likely being paid indirectly) by your campaign, re-launched a previously failed personal political attack on my character....

As I stated the last time you launched this same attack against me via Manjarres, I have absolutely nothing to hide about my past.  I’ve already addressed these issues and anyone can learn the facts at www.ozzieforcongress.com/facts.

As the voters will see in the weeks ahead, this is just another attempt by you to deceive people into believing you are something that you are not.   As you well know, you simply cannot win by running a positive campaign based on your achievements, because your record is weak, your conservative bonafides are questionable, and your professional achievements are limited.  At my discretion and on my timetable, I will make this case to voters.  I’m confident that the facts will speak for themselves.

From Seibold:

In October 2011, we were made aware that you, via your paid blogger, were attempting to leverage our past to discredit and assassinate Ozzie’s character.  Although this behavior has become commonplace in today’s political arena, we personally find these attacks misleading, offensive, and reprehensible.

It's shameful that you would drag us into this.  We are private citizens not running for office. It's people like youthat make people like us hate politicians.  If you can't run for office on your own record, you should not run.  Distorting the facts of our past to make it appear like Ozzie abused his spouse is despicable and wrong.  Frankly, this is not the behavior we expect from someone who claims to be a social conservative with high moral character.

For your information, here are the facts.  Over six years ago, Ozzie and Charles let emotions get the best of them and had a physical altercation. Ozzie was charged with “domestic violence.”  The altercation was between Ozzie and Charles.  The charges were subsequently dismissed.  It was an unfortunate set of incidents that we all regret,including Ozzie.  Ozzie never showed any violence towards me.  For you to insinuate otherwise is an outright lie.

From Manjarres:

Simply put, this is laughable.  I didn't realize I was running against Ozzie deFaria for Congress, maybe I officially should throw my hat in the ring?

His allegation that I am "coordinating" this attack in conjunction with Karen Harrington is ludicrous, and his defensive response to you makes it clear that he's attempting to change the subject without answering the concerns we've raised regarding his candidacy.

The article is true and we stand by it- if deFaria can't stand this type of scrutiny and has to resort to attacking a member of the media with already proven lies and allegations as contained in the truthaboutjaviermanjarres.com site, he's really not prepared for the scrutiny that all candidates for Congress should expect.  Furthermore, deFaria's surrogates are continuing to disseminate the same disproven lies and allegations about me, including Starla Brown, who was recently hired by deFaria's campaign.

How's that for hypocrisy?

Here's video of Ozzie's ex:

Comments

[Sam]

This guy is running for Congress? Sad

[John Smith]

so why doesn't Harrington respond herself???

[John Smith]

Manjarres a member of the "media" - that's the most laughable thing in this article!! hahahahahah

[Republican voter in Fl]

No Man should hit a women! Ozzie is a disgrace!

[BigArch]

Ozzie didn't hit a woman..Read the article and watch the video.

[Just the truth]

hey pot, this is kettle except the pot's incident is between two men. On the other hand it appears that kettle's (womanjarres or womanharrass) incident was against a woman. Harrington was paying this charlatan for "advertising" while the "guppiebowl" proceeded to go after her opponents. Harrington is dumb as a bag of hammers IMO and needs all the negative stuff she can shovel against people because her record of lawsuits and healthcode violations are numerous.

[Rob]

Karen's campaign will continue to be dragged down by her very close association with Javier. Perhaps Mr. Bustamante wants to rethink that strategy. It didn't work very well earlier this year for another candidate. But, hey Karen needs a friend and this guy is her choice to travel around with - go figure.

[Sam]

can Defaria get anymore desperate? Javier just change the election, DeFaria is focused on him, not the race. Very funny

[Me]

Marc... The Harrington campaign's volunteer outreach director is Javier's business partner. Harrington also is advertising on the pay-for-play site falsely claiming to be a blog. Or at least she was, I won't give the page any traffic.

This isn't exactly 6 degrees of separation here.

The Miami Herald should not be a willing part of this "blog" making money off hit pieces. Would Naked Politics take $1000 directly from, say, the Nelson campaign, turn around and write a one-sided piece about the GOP nominee, and NEVER disclose the relationship? Sure, you don't have to hold everyone up to your ethics... but you also don't have to hold everyone up.

[Can't hold back]

Most previous comments about Harrington are pretty much spot on. She has demonstrated indications of being intellectually limited and mean spirited at her fundamental core. The mountain of debt from her previous campaign is the millstone around her neck that seems to be driving this campaign effort.

Ozzie, while the first candidate offering to come forward against Wasserman Shultz that can write a sizable check to bootstrap a campaign has a very awkward history of personal control and anger management. While Ozzie can write the check to give a credible battle in the race, unfortunately he'll spend it all defending his character and have nothing left from which to campaign against Shultz.

But wait, there are the candidates in the race that have the smarts, excellant personal career credentials, clean background records, have developed ground games and have been quietly raising money. Look to Kaufman, Bresso and Juan Garcia to make this primary race credible.

As for the political operatives Javier Manjarres, Patrick Castronovo and Anthony Bustamante, well just look to the corrupt grown from which they arose ... and when you see who Harrington has surrounded herself with you can see why she is not loved by all.

[Gordon]

Ozzie is the only true fiscal and social conservative , not to mention the best qualified candidate, in Congressional district 23. Manjarres know he is representing a Broward Community College dropout and must attack to keep the electorate from dwelling on Harrington' accomplishments AND SOCIAL AGENDA.

[Republican voter in Fl]

Ozzie is imploding right before our eyes! LOL!

[Broward Country Fl Commercial Auto Insurance]

Resources like the one you mentioned here will be very useful to me! I will post a link to this page on my blog. I am sure my visitors will find that very useful.

[NOPC]

I have no clue where you people get your info. I know personally Defaria is a creep...a homophobic misogynist.
Karen...is good.. Karen is conservative...pro life, fiscally conservative and knows the middle east issues She has been treated like crap by BREC, dc works for us and many of the republican "insiders" since day one.. Screw the insiders....we can figure out who we like on our own.

Keep giving us choices like Lowery and Defaria and see what happens.