Like father, like son? Quayle stumbles

August 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

PHOENIX

Seems like old times — Jay Leno cracking Quayle jokes on late night. But now the rising target of comics is Ben Quayle, son of the gaffe-prone former vice president, who is committing doozies of his own in his campaign for Congress.

Campaigning as a family-values conservative, Ben Quayle first denied then admitted that he wrote for a sex-steeped Arizona website.

The racy website’s founder, Nik Richie, said Quayle used the alias “Brock Landers,” the name of a character from the 1997 movie “Boogie Nights” about porn stars in California, and wrote lines such as: “My moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot.” The website, now known as TheDirty.com, recently reposted the 2007 entries.

Quayle said he couldn’t recall what his posts involved or when he made them.

This came out just days after Quayle sent a campaign mailer showing his wife and two young girls, with the words, “We are going to raise our family here.” He and his wife have no children; the girls were his nieces. Campaign rival Vernon Parker accused Quayle of “renting a family.”

“Good way to start the campaign,” Leno cracked on the “Tonight Show,” reminding the audience of Quayle’s lineage.

The goofs revive memories of his dad’s missteps as vice president in President George H.W. Bush’s administration. Classroom stumbles in spelling, musings on how terrible it is not to have a mind and questions about his military service — or lack thereof — dogged the senior Quayle, whose political career ended with the GOP ticket’s one-term loss in 1992.

Arron Bradford, a 37-year-old Phoenix resident and independent voter, said there’s “a fairly heavy stigma to the whole Quayle name. I think that’s a detriment to him, unfortunately, at least as far as I’m concerned.”

Yet his name helped Quayle jump to the front of the pack of 10 candidates vying for the Republican nomination in GOP-leaning district that includes sections of Phoenix and Scottsdale. Eight-term Rep. John Shadegg is retiring. One of Quayle’s ads features Dan Quayle with his son saying: “I grew up watching my dad fight for conservative values.”

Quayle raised more than $1.1 million, with many of the contributions coming from one-time colleagues and friends of his father’s. Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld contributed. In May, Bush and his wife, Barbara, raised money for Quayle at their home in Houston.

The primary is Aug. 24; early voting is under way.

The rapid rise of the 33-year-old Quayle, a lawyer and managing director of an investment firm who has never held elective office, angered several of his rivals.