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A war of words is being fought in the Democratic Primary for the Florida Senate District 15 special election as former Congressman Alan Grayson trades barbs with former State Sen. Randolph Bracy III over endorsements, romantic relationships, political friendships and Black iconography.
In late May, Grayson sent out a political mailer to select voters that said, “Geraldine Thompson reported Randy Bracy had an inappropriate relationship with her granddaughter.”
Now that sentence is in a footnote. It’s not in quotation marks. It’s uncertain if the late senator actually used the word inappropriate. But the suggestion of impropriety struck a nerve with Bracy. He responded in an Instagram video on May 30.
Bracy condemned Grayson’s use of the phrase “inappropriate relationship,” characterizing it as “nefarious” because it implied his relationship was with ”someone young, a minor.” He clarified that Thompson’s granddaughter was 40 years old when they were together. Indeed, the two had been engaged.
Bracy went on to accuse Grayson of peddling old tropes of predatory Black men.
“Black men are under attack,” Bracy said in the video. “You see the subtle way to try to imply criminality to black men…”
Reached for comment, Grayson laughed. “ I think that he should get a life,” he said in a phone interview. “That's a ridiculous, ridiculous response. Why doesn't he just deal with what Geraldine actually said about him? … Geraldine wasn't attacking Black men when she exposed him — she was attacking him … Geraldine thought that what Randy had done was so appalling that she actually exposed him at his own news conference,” he said.
The news conference Grayson refers to took place during last year’s state senate election when Bracy challenged Thompson for her seat and lost. During that press conference, he accused Thompson of living outside the district and threatened a lawsuit if she did not drop out of the race. No lawsuit was ever filed.
It’s unclear what was “so appalling,” but Thompson showed up at the press conference, uninvited, to address Bracy's allegations about her residency. FOX35 reported that Thompson said Bracy — ironically the one living outside of the district — was using the threat of a lawsuit as “retaliation” for a failed romantic relationship with one of her family members. Thompson didn’t say who the relationship was with, but Bracy, who denied any retaliatory motive, said in several videos on social media that it was her granddaughter.
In his same May 30 video, Bracy also slammed Grayson for having “the nerve to put President Barack Obama and himself in a picture to associate himself with a great Black man and then tear another Black man down.”
Grayson told VoxPopuli that he had been with Obama when the former president had flown in for an Orlando rally while he was in office and had been “sitting to his left” at the event.
That was not the first time Bracy complained about Grayson dipping into his archives from his days in Congress for images of himself with Black politicians and then using them for political gain. In a May 25 video, Bracy railed about another mailer that pictured Grayson on the same postcard with the late Congressman John Lewis. He described it as “trying to exploit the African American community.”
Grayson brushed off the complaint, telling VoxPopuli in a text that Bracy was “literally quoting an endorsement video that John Lewis, whom I worked with quite closely, asked to record for me.”
Grayson displays Lewis’ quote prominently on his campaign site:
“Maybe Randy Bracy should ask himself why no one ever says anything like that about him,” Grayson said.
