Florida Already Has The 2 Worst Senate Candidates in America-- Now Insert Trump Into The Mix

I don't think there's a state offering its voters a worse choice than the two losers running for the Senate in Florida, Republican doofus Marco Rubio and the far stupider "ex"-Republican/fake Democrat Patrick Murphy. These arterially two garbage candidates deserving of no votes at all. It's races like this one that make people yearn for a "none-of-the-above" choice on the ballot.

The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Hillary leading Trump in Florida by a narrow 1.6%. The senate average there shows Rubio beating Murphy by a more formidable 3.6%. And the most recent Senate polling from Florida, by Bloomberg, shows Rubio opening up a much bigger lead over Murphy, 51-41%.

Wednesday night the two clowns debated again. Despite Murphy being demonstrably more of a moron, Rubio is weighed down by the catastrophic and unpopular Republican policy agenda and, of course, by Trump. In fact, Murphy's response to almost every question was "Trump."

Murphy repeatedly criticized Rubio for still endorsing Trump, who Murphy referred to as one of "the most racist and bigoted people ever to run for office."

"Senator Rubio continues to support Donald Trump, and it is shameful that he stands there with him," Murphy said.

Rubio has said he has disagreements with Trump but still thinks Trump would still be a better president than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

He criticized Murphy for continuing to steer debate questions back to Trump.

"The answer to every question tonight by Congressman Murphy is Donald Trump," Rubio said.

...In a sarcastic tone, Rubio added, "And as far as the opening is concerned, cruise ships? Basically an invasion of cruise ships is going to bring democracy to Cuba. It is not, because the Cuban government is a dictatorship. We have now made, over two years, concession after concession to the Castro regime. They have taken not even a quarter step towards democracy."

Murphy responded by pointing to Trump's past business dealings that critics say violate the embargo. "The person you chose to be our next president has basically admitted he violated the embargo. And you continue to stand by his side," Murphy said. "So what's it going to take for you to unendorse Donald Trump?"

Rubio's response: "That's bizarre, Congressman Murphy. You're criticizing Donald Trump for supporting a position you have."

Murphy shot back: "I'm criticizing you for not having the courage, senator. You have no backbone."

The audience broke up the exchange by whooping and hollering.

Rubio said the debate showed Murphy was living up to his reputation as a "serial embellisher."

"Why does someone make things up? You make them up because you don't have anything real to point to," Rubio said.

Murphy said Rubio is the one who can't be believed. "If you voted as much as you lied, you might actually be a decent senator, but you continue to throw out these lies," he said. "I'm proud of what I accomplished, proud of what I've done."

Rubio is certainly correct to point out that Murphy has accomplished nothing for Floridians and is universally considered one of the most ineffective and worthless members of Congress. He has zero influence other than in his work of betraying Democratic positions on the House Financial Services Committee, where he consistently votes with the GOP against consumers and for Wall Street. But Rubio can hardly criticize him for being a Wall Street whore, since that defines him as well as Murphy. One assertion that Rubio makes about Murphy is that it is his own business that has had dealings with Trump and Murphy, a practiced-- if clumsy-- liar, denies it. PolitiFact looked into the claim and denial yesterday and found Murphy's denial "half true," a diplomatic way of saying "half false." During the first debate Rubio pointed out that "There's only one person on the stage tonight whose family made millions of dollars in partnership with Donald Trump and that's you." Murphy had no response and looked like he was going to burst into tears. Later his programming team told him to deny it and he later asserted that "It's an absolute lie. We’ve never done business with Donald Trump."

Reporter Candace McCowan followed up: "Was there not some dealings between him and your father on a real estate deal?"

"No, absolutely not. We’ve never had a contract with Donald Trump," Murphy said.

Who’s telling the truth here?

We found that Coastal Construction, a luxury residential building firm owned by Murphy’s father, Thomas P. Murphy Jr., did have business dealings related to Trump. But they were not direct contractual agreements, and they require further explanation.

During the debate, Rubio was referring to two condo projects that Coastal Construction built: Trump Hollywood and Trump Royale in Sunny Isles Beach.

According to Coastal Construction’s website, it built Trump Royale, a 55-story, 386-residence project owned by Dezer Properties. Coastal won the contract for the project in 2005.

Coastal won the contract to build Trump Hollywood in 2007, a 42-story, 208-unit condo project owned by The Related Group.

(Although Patrick worked at Coastal Construction in the past, for much of the time that the condos were under construction, Patrick worked at Deloitte. Patrick Murphy owns between $1 million and $5 million in assets from Coastal Construction, according to congressional financial disclosure forms.)

We interviewed Thomas P. Murphy Jr. as well as the owners of both projects, to find out the connection between Coastal Construction and Trump.

There is no dispute that Coastal Construction was the builder, and Trump’s organization had the licensing deal. But it was the owners-- The Related Group and Dezer Development-- who hired Coastal. The Related Group and Dezer reached an agreement with Trump separately.

"I hired Coastal to build the building, and I signed up with the Trump Organization for the licensing deal," said Gil Dezer, president of Dezer Development. "The licensing deal was just that. It gave them no rights to construction decisions."

(An article in The Real Deal, a real estate publication, in 2008 described a more intensive business relationship between Dezer and Trump and referred to Trump as Dezer’s "development partner.")

We received a similar statement about Trump from The Related Group.

"Mr. Trump’s role was that of licensor; he was not a partner in the development, and he had no role in the actual development process or the hiring of Coastal Construction," said Betsy McCoy, The Related Group’s general counsel and vice president.

Although Murphy wasn’t the one who entered into the agreement with Trump, he knew about Trump’s role, which had been publicized in news reports. The projects were clearly branded with the Trump name.

"We are extremely excited to be a part of this project and for the opportunity to continue working with such a reputable and powerful development team," Murphy told the South Florida Business Journal in 2007 about the Hollywood project. "The tower's sleek and innovative design is sure to make its mark on the Hollywood skyline, and we look forward to delivering it on time."

Both Murphys have downplayed the link to Trump during the campaign, particularly after the first debate.

"Coastal has never worked with Donald Trump personally or with any of his businesses," Thomas P. Murphy told PolitiFact Florida.

After the debate, Patrick Murphy distanced his father’s firm from Trump.

...But clearly Coastal Construction at the time was aware of Trump’s role and didn’t appear to have a problem with it.

CNN reported Oct. 25 that in a photo obtained from Getty, Thomas P. Murphy can be seen with Trump and a group of people wearing Trump-branded hard hats at the groundbreaking ceremony for Trump Hollywood in 2007. (Thomas P. Murphy is on the far left.)

Funny hat Papa Murphy is wearing with the Trump logo on it (on the left)

Murphy’s campaign spokesman Joshua Karp said that Trump’s involvement was irrelevant to Coastal’s role building the units.

"Trump's name may have helped market the condo units after Coastal's role was completed, but Coastal has never benefited from Trump at all," he said. "The developers paid Coastal for services, which was construction, and developers paid Donald Trump for the privilege of using his name and image in promotional materials. Point of fact, there was no money connection between Trump and Coastal Construction."

So would we call the projects a "partnership" between Coastal Construction and Trump as Rubio said?

We posed that question to Jack McCabe, a South Florida real estate expert hired as an expert witness on behalf of condo buyers in two separate Trump condo cases in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale.

McCabe said that when condo buyers signed contracts, it included a paragraph that stated Trump was not a partner.

"Even though buyers had every inclination Trump was an actual partner in the deals, the paperwork said otherwise," he said.

But it also appears that Coastal Construction boasted of doing work for Trump once.

Coastal Construction president Dan Whiteman in 2008 told South Florida Constructor, a trade publication, "Many of (Coastal’s) high-rise residential projects have been built for world-renowned developers including Jorge Perez, Craig Robins and Donald Trump."

That quote was included in opposition research that Murphy’s 2014 congressional campaign commissioned. On Oct. 14, BuzzFeed reported about the opposition research.

Rubio said that Murphy’s family made "millions" off the condo projects. We don’t know the amount Coastal Construction earned, since it is a private firm. However, McCabe told us that the industry standard is between 8 and 12 percent. In news articles and interviews we found price tags for the projects between $150 million and $350 million, so it’s likely that Coastal Construction did make millions.

Thomas Murphy said that Coastal made the fair-market rate for building these projects.

Our ruling

Murphy said in an interview, "We have never done business with Donald Trump."

Murphy’s family’s construction firm, Coastal Construction, built Trump condo projects in Hollywood and Sunny Isles Beach. The owners of the projects-- not Trump-- hired Coastal as the builder, and then separately the owners reached licensing agreements with Trump. So while Coastal built projects that carried Trump’s name, even boasting about it at least once, they didn’t directly strike a partnership together. But they did work on the same condo projects.

We rate this claim Half True.

Oh, by the way, the actual development company was not "Dezer Development," but "Trump Dezer Development."  You would think that SOMEONE at PolitiFact would think of googling "Trump Dezer," in quotes, but I guess that they’re just too... inside-the-box to think of that.

Yesterday, Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight looked at how Rubio is the Democrats' sorest spot. Schumer knew that going in but his only priority was to make sure Grayson didn't get the nomination. FiveThirtyEight asserts the Democrats have a 67% chance to win the Senate but Florida (Murphy) is holding that number down. They give Rubio an 81% to beat him.

Simply put: The race in Florida isn’t anywhere as close as those in the states that will be key in determining control of the Senate. Rubio is up by a little over 5 percentage points. The margins in Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, in contrast, are all within about 2 percentage points.

Democrats need to win three of these six states to win the Senate (if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and Democrats carry Illinois and Wisconsin, where they are heavy favorites). Because those six races are so close, they dominate our tipping-point rankings, which are based on the chances that a given race will determine which party wins a majority. Florida is down to just a 6 percent chance of determining control.

So if you’re a Democratic operative trying to allocate resources for the national party in Washington, Florida doesn’t come close to topping your list of biggest concerns.

...Rubio’s lead has never dipped below 4 percentage points and has rarely exceeded 7 points. And there’s a lot of agreement among individual polls. Of the last 50 polls released publicly, Rubio has led in 48. Two surveys showed a tie. That’s very different from the states with close races-- like New Hampshire, where in the past three days there have been polls released showing the Democratic candidate ahead, polls showing the Republican candidate ahead and polls showing a tie. The more consensus among polls over time, the less likely the polling average will be way off.

But maybe there’s some Democratic diehard in Miami reading this right now and thinking, “OK, sure, Harry, but 5 points isn’t that big a margin-- if the national party ponied up some cash, we could push Murphy over the top.” That’s not unreasonable, but it would make more sense if we were talking about a 5-point race in New Hampshire or Colorado. Those states are more “elastic”-- they have a lot of swing voters. Florida is not especially elastic and so responds to national trends about as much as other states. Nor does Florida have a large share of undecided voters compared with the states that have closer races.

Enter can't mention that Murphy stinks as a candidate-- even against a jerk like Rubio; that isn't something they do at FiveThirtyEight. PolitiFact was back on Murphy's habit of lying all the time. "Our ears," they wrote yesterday, "are burning. Twice in two debates, Democratic Senate candidate Patrick Murphy invoked our name as a shield in the face of criticism from Republican incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio about his background. 'You continue to throw out these lies. They have all been debunked by PolitiFact,' Murphy said. Murphy’s response was memorable-- especially to us. His retort is a wishful reading of our reports. Here’s the truth: Murphy has exaggerated his credentials, and his opponents have also exaggerated their attacks on Murphy."

In the Oct. 26 debate in Davie, Rubio dubbed Murphy a "serial embellisher," saying the South Florida congressman never had a contract to clean up Gulf oil, and he could not have worked as a CPA in Florida because he did not have a Florida CPA license.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl, the moderator of the first debate, also asked Murphy about his background.

"You’ve described yourself as a small business owner, but your company is a subsidiary of a billion-dollar construction firm founded by your father. You call yourself a Certified Public Accountant, but you have not been a CPA in the state of Florida. And for more than a year, your website said that you had two degrees from the University of Miami, when in fact you only had one."

"Absolutely not," Murphy responded, "and I am glad you asked this question, and it’s important that you all hear it from me. You see, PolitiFact, an independent fact-checking agency has already debunked these accusations."

No, we have not.

Words matter, and here’s why.

In September, we fact-checked a TV ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee that made less nuanced attacks about Murphy’s résumé than what was described at the debates. The attacks skimmed the facts laid out in a June CBS4 Miami investigation into Murphy’s background.

The ad starts with a clip of Murphy saying in 2012, "I believe that my background as a CPA and a small business owner is exactly what we need."

The narrator then reads lines from a CBS4 Miami report and says, "Never worked as a CPA," and "Never a small business owner."





Those words rated Mostly False, meaning they contained an element of truth but ignored critical facts that would give a different impression.

The ad made it sound like Murphy flat-out lied about being a CPA. He is a licensed CPA-- in Colorado. He could not sign off on audits at his Florida job since he didn’t have his Florida license, but he still was a CPA.

Murphy’s claim of being a small business owner is complicated.

Murphy’s business, Coastal Environmental Services, was owned by multiple people and stemmed from a business his father owned, Coastal Construction. Annual reports show Murphy was a director in 2011 and 2012, though he remained an owner and not a director since winning election to Congress in 2012.

Unlike the slippery TV ad, Karl didn’t say Murphy was never a small business owner; he started his question by noting his father’s connection to the business Murphy claimed. Still, Murphy said PolitiFact had debunked the accusation.

PolitiFact Florida also did not rate Rubio’s statement about Murphy’s company not having a contract to clean up the Gulf oil spill. We visited the issue in this this explainer to attacks against Murphy, laying out that Murphy’s Coastal Environmental Services did not get the contracts itself but worked with and then bought another company with existing contracts. Murphy's actual work in the Gulf was short-lived-- just a matter of months.

Finally, we did not debunk an attack from Rubio about Murphy’s degrees from the University of Miami-- we actually backed it up. When Rubio’s campaign released an ad claiming "Murphy embellished, according to reports, his University of Miami academic achievement," we rated that Mostly True.

Murphy’s campaign websites for U.S. House and Senate used to say he had "dual degrees" from Miami, but what he really had was a single bachelor’s degree with a double major in accounting and finance. Murphy’s campaign has since fixed the error.

There’s a lot of blame going around, but here are the facts: Murphy puffed up his qualifications. Republican attack groups exaggerated the scope of the issue.

But Murphy’s claim that we debunked every attack leveled against him?

That’s also exaggerated.

I think it would be safe to say that just about all politicians lie and exaggerate. Murphy's worst than most, but that isn't the reason DWT recommends voters ignore the Florida Senate race. Murphy's record is-- and the likelihood of the damage he will cause if he's elected to the Senate.

Patrick Murphy May Not Lie As Gracefully As Trump, But PolitiFact Finds A Clear Pattern Of Willful Deception

Chuck Schumer, in a mad rush to placate the Wall Street banksters angry about Elizabeth Warrem and Bernie Sanders being mean to them, promised he would deliver the Florida Senate nomination to their most dependable errand boy in Congress, Patrick Murphy. In doing so-- without adequately vetting the fatally flawed Murphy-- Schumer would be handing the competitive seat over to the GOP... if not for Alan Grayson, although Schumer and Harry Reid have worked long and hard to smear and destroy the House's most independent-minded and effective member. If Schumer misses becoming Majority Leader he'll have no one but himself to blame. The Republican ad above isn't something that could be deployed against any other Democrat running for the Senate from any state. This is pure Patrick Murphy-- and Schumer should have known about it before he hoodwinked half his colleagues into backing the deceitful, unqualified and incompetent Murphy.

It's gotten so bad that on Wednesday Tampa-based PolitiFact ran a guide to the attacks on Murphy's resume to determine who's lying Murphy or Murphy's detractors. Short version: Murphy's lying; his detractors are simply reporting the facts.

Here are a few claims in the ad:

"Patrick Murphy says he was a small business owner. First, it is now clear Murphy was not a small business owner."

In summary: By only citing these lines from the TV report, the ad omits that Murphy did have a leadership role at Coastal Environmental Services. But ownership of a private company is difficult to prove, so we have little to evaluate beyond the word of Murphy and the company president. There appears to have been multiple owners along with Murphy.

For years, Murphy called himself a "small business owner," but he was clear that it was affiliated with Coastal Construction, the firm of his father Thomas P. Murphy, Jr.

During a debate in 2012, Murphy said:

"I rejoined the family business, which is Coastal Construction and I decided to start a small affiliated company called Coastal Environmental and that was because of the BP Oil Spill. ... So I decided to start a small fleet of oil skimmers, put them to work in the Gulf of Mexico. That is a small business, and it's affiliated to a larger parent company."

Incorporation records in 2010 list Murphy being on the board of directors along with his father and Dan Whiteman, president of both firms. (Murphy is listed in records as Erin Murphy, his middle name.)

Annual reports show Murphy was a director in 2011 and 2012. Once elected to Congress, he remained an owner but no longer a director.

State records don’t show if someone is an "owner," and Murphy hasn’t said if he financed the firm.

By "owner" Murphy presumably meant that he had an economic interest, said University of Florida corporate law professor Stuart Cohn.

"Records filed with the state do not require listing those who had such an economic interest, whether as a shareholder or otherwise," Cohn said. "So, it is not possible from the state records to determine who owned what economic interests and in what percentages."

The Murphy campaign shared an IRS document with PolitiFact Florida which showed that Murphy, his father and Whiteman were shareholders in 2010. (The campaign blacked out the percentage each owned, as well as the names of three additional shareholders.)

Whiteman told PolitiFact Florida that as vice president Murphy "managed the company’s affairs."

"It's typical for business partners to have multiple ventures together, so it’s not unusual for some of the owners of Coastal Construction to also be owners of Coastal Environmental," Whiteman said.

"Murphy said his company had contracts to clean up the Gulf oil spill. Neither Patrick Murphy nor Coastal Environmental Services were awarded a single contract to clean up oil in the Gulf."

Summary: Coastal Environmental didn’t get the contracts. The ad omits what the TV report explained, that another company, Crescent SR, got contracts in June and July 2010. Murphy started working with Crescent informally in June and Coastal bought out the firm in August.

The Tampa Bay Times reported in May that there were questions about whether Murphy exaggerated his claims that he spent six months in the Gulf leading cleanup efforts.

The Murphy campaign refused to provide to the Times the firm’s contracts.

"Patrick's company acquired two subcontracts to perform near-shore skimming operations in Louisiana," spokesman Joshua Karp wrote in an email to the Times in May. "Contracts to skim oil were all subcontracts originating with BP, who funded the skimming cleanup operation."

In 2015, Murphy told DeFede that he had secured "several" contracts.

The Murphy campaign ultimately agreed to show CBS4 the contracts as long as the station did not name the companies that hired Coastal or the dollar amounts.

The records showed contracts awarded in June and July 2010 between companies and an oil skimming company called Crescent SR, a Louisiana-based firm owned by Kenneth Taylor Beery. Coastal Environmental and Murphy were not mentioned in the two contracts.

On Aug. 9, 2010, Coastal Environmental services bought Crescent SR.

After working informally with Beery to develop the skimming operation, Murphy officially founded Coastal Environmental Services and assumed responsibility for the subcontracts held by Crescent SR, Karp told PolitiFact Florida.

Beery told CBS4 that he developed the concept with one boat, and when he was looking to buy a second boat he was introduced to Murphy. A team of engineers from Coastal worked on coming up with a new line of oil skimmers.

Beery later told Politico in a statement: "Patrick was a vital part of the management and success of our small business."

The number of months that Murphy worked in the Gulf is in dispute.

Murphy's bio says he spent "six months" but it depends on how you count it.

The campaign said that Murphy moved to Louisiana in May and started looking for cleanup opportunities. In June, he started working with Beery. He began cleanup in July, formed Coastal in July and ceased operations in "late September." Dispersants caused oil to sink, the Coast Guard called off oil skimming in October, and Murphy left that month.

So we get to six months if we start the clock ticking when he arrived in the Gulf and end it when he left. If we only count the months of the cleanup, it would be more like three.

"Murphy says he is a CPA. Murphy has never been a licensed CPA in Florida."

Summary: This one has some nuance. Murphy started at Deloitte in Miami 2007 as an "audit assistant." The ad omits that he did get his CPA license-- but in Colorado. He could not sign off on audits in Florida since he didn’t have his Florida license, but he still was a CPA.

  Murphy often touted his work as a CPA and acknowledged during his 2012 campaign that his license was from Colorado after his opponent attacked him for it.

Murphy’s 2016 campaign website said that after college, he "went on to work as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for Deloitte and Touche, auditing Fortune 500 companies."

He started at Deloitte in Florida 2007 as an audit assistant. He applied for his CPA license from Colorado in 2009; at the time Colorado required fewer semester credits than Florida.

After he obtained the license in September 2009, he was promoted to "audit senior" and left in May 2010.

To get the license, Murphy took a test through the state of Vermont (The exam is the same everywhere, so he wouldn’t have had to travel to Vermont to take it.)

There are four sections: auditing, business environment, financial accounting, and regulation. It takes at least two days to complete it.

The test records show that he took portions of the exam nine times between 2006 and 2008 but don’t clearly show how many times he took each portion.

CBS4 initially reported that Murphy took the exam "nine times" before passing the four portions but later updated the written report to also say "multiple times," although the references to the nine times also remains. (Politico also reported on Murphy’s record as a CPA.)

"The average number of sections per candidate is six, but nine is certainly not unusual," Jeannette Faber, who works for the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, told PolitiFact Florida.

The Murphy campaign said that Murphy took the whole exam twice and then retook one section of the CPA exam. The national passage rate for the CPA exam in 2009 was just under 50 percent.

CBS reported that Murphy "never worked a day in his life as a Certified Public Accountant." This is a matter of semantics: He did work while a CPA for several months at Deloitte, he just worked in Florida while holding a Colorado CPA license.

Gary McGill, director of the Fisher School of Accounting at the University of Florida, told PolitiFact Florida that Murphy’s path-- starting as an audit assistant at Deloitte, taking the CPA test multiple times and getting licensed in another state and then being promoted-- would have been a common path.

Many new hires at firms such as Deloitte have not passed the CPA exam. These non-CPA assistants can’t sign audit opinions or tax returns; however, they still can do audit work without having a CPA license from any state, McGill said.

Murphy was promoted to "audit senior" after obtaining his license. That position is "very important," McGill said.

"They are the boots on the ground doing the actually work."

The Florida primary isn't until the very end of August. Wall Street has goven Murphy more money than any other candidate-- from either party-- running for the Senate who isn't already a member of the Senate... and by a lot. He's their top choice because there is no one more corrupt running for the Senate from anywhere. So far the Finance Sector has given him $1,413,950 this cycle, even more than what they've given endangered Republican allies like Ron Johnson (WI), Mark Kirk (IL), Richard Burr (NC) and John McCain (AZ). He's also the top choice of the Saudi Al-Rashid billionaire family and of numerous crooked businessmen like Nick Mastroianni II. We still have time to help Grayson overcome the $7,710,830 is sewer money Murphy had raised by the March 31 FEC filing deadline. How? Here; please click and contribute what you can. And, while you're doing that, you might enjoy watching this Murphy exposé from CBS News:

CBS Digs Deeper Into Wall Street's Callow, Mediocre Pick For A Florida Senate Seat: The Making Of Patrick Murphy

Jim DeFede continues the unmasking of phony little nonentity Patrick Murphy who has lied his way into power. Watch the devastating CBS report above. Wall Street, the DSCC and a powerful Saudi family are furiously pushing to get Murphy into the Senate and spending millions of dollars to do so.

For Murphy, the newfound role as the Democrat’s most eligible candidate is extraordinary; and not just because he’s only been a Democrat since 2011.

Murphy’s rise is extraordinary because of how little he seems to have accomplished to get here.

Just six years ago, in the spring of 2010, Murphy was struggling to find his footing in the world.

A child of divorce, Murphy spent his formative years living with his father, Thomas P. Murphy Jr., who built a multi-million dollar construction empire from scratch.

Thomas Murphy made sure his son attended private schools including an elite prep academy in the Northeast, The Lawrenceville School. The school’s alumni include five Governors, three Congressmen, a Senator, two Pulitzer Prize winners and a Nobel Laureate. The school has also produced an array of business titans in its storied history.

Patrick Erin Murphy circa 2010, however, did not seem destined to join their ranks.

A star athlete in high school and college, injuries kept him from pursuing that further, opting instead for a more functional degree in business administration from the University of Miami. His time at UM was marred by a drunken brawl at a South Beach night club that left him with a mugshot and a black eye.

After graduating in 2006, he joined Deloitte & Touche as an audit assistant. He did not meet the minimum requirements to become a Certified Public Accountant in Florida, opting instead to apply for a license in Colorado, even though he did not live or work there. He applied in Colorado because the requirements were lower.

Before gaining approval in Colorado, Murphy took the licensing exam nine times before passing it. Even with a CPA license in Colorado, his opportunities in Florida were limited because his license was not valid in the Sunshine State.

He was 27 years old. Living in a high-rise condo on Miami Beach. And seemingly going nowhere.

Thomas Murphy, no doubt, had bigger plans for his son. Patrick’s two older brothers were already entrenched in the family business, graduating with degrees in construction management and well on their way to becoming co-presidents of their father’s firm, Coastal Construction.

Patrick was less interested in the family business. For him, politics seemed a perfect expansion for the Murphy brand. His father already held a long fascination with politics and was a major contributor to both parties. A review of Federal Election Commission records shows that by 2010 Thomas Murphy had donated more than $130,000 to races across the country. And his donations weren’t partisan, but seemingly strategic. In 2008, he gave $25,000 to John McCain and $23,500 to Barack Obama.

If Patrick were to enter the world of politics, his father’s money was only going to get him so far. He would need to give the appearance he was more than some rich kid. He would need something of his own to stand on.

And that’s when it happened. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded off the southern shores of Louisiana. The rig, operated on behalf of BP, burned for nearly two days before finally sinking more than 5,000 feet into the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven men died in the blast. During the 87 days that followed, 200 million gallons of crude oil spewed from the busted wellhead on the ocean floor.

President Obama declared it “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.”

And in that calamity arose, in hindsight, the opportunity Murphy needed.

“When that spilled happened I was working at Deloitte & Touche,” Murphy recalled for CBS4 News during an interview last year after he announced he was running for the United States Senate. “They talked about the oil coming down the loop current, coming down Florida’s west coast, through the Florida Keys and then up the Gulfstream. And I’m from the Florida Keys, born down there. Nobody was talking about what they were going to do to really clean up or be prepared. So this was a real opportunity to say, `Wow, I’ll be the guy to get the oil skimmers ready, protect our shores.’ I was ready to move on and start my own business anyway, so this was a great opportunity to not only protect Florida but do my own thing.”

After two and a half years at Deloitte & Touche, Murphy resigned and less than three months later started Coastal Environmental Services. Coastal would be one of the hundreds of companies and businesses that would take part in the cleanup.

“So I was able to get some oil skimmers together, move to New Orleans for several months,” he explained. “We were prepared, we actually redesigned the oil skimmers to put them on a trailer bring them down to the Keys. Thankfully that oil didn’t make it in the loop current [for Florida] so I stayed in New Orleans cleaning up up there.”

In his two runs for Congress and his current campaign for the Senate, Patrick Murphy has repeatedly pointed to his experience as a Certified Public Accountant and a small business owner as reasons why voters should support him.

“I believe that my background as a CPA and a small business owner is exactly what we need to put our country back on track,” he said in 2012 during his first House race against the incumbent Republican, Tea Party darling Allen West.

In 2014, when he ran for re-election, he was asked in a debate to detail the professional and life experiences which qualify him to serve in Congress.

“I would say my background as a CPA,” he said. “Also being a small business owner, you know someone that can relate to those concerns of small business owners I think is particularly important.”

Last year, shortly after announcing his desire to replace Marco Rubio, Murphy once again touted his experience as a CPA saying: “One of the biggest problems we have in our country is our debt, is unemployment, you need to understand numbers to do that. I believe I bring that experience to the table. Having a small business background, understanding the issues, the problems small businesses are dealing with on a day to day basis, I think I bring that experience to the table.”

Portraying himself as an experienced CPA and small business owner has always been critical to the political persona created for his campaigns. They conveyed a sense of seriousness and stability which he otherwise lacked.

A CBS4 News investigation into Murphy’s history as both a CPA and a self-described small business owner, however, shows Murphy has in some cases exaggerated his experience and in other instances made claims that were misleading or outright false.

For instance, he has never worked a day in his life as a Certified Public Accountant.

And he was never a small business owner.

PATRICK MURPHY: C.P.A.

In a televised debate during his 2012 run for Congress, Patrick Murphy provided the following description of his work as a CPA: “Well, first of all when I graduated college I went to work at Deloitte & Touche, I got my CPA license and I spent years going to numerous Fortune 500 companies, looking for inefficiencies, waste and fraud.”

That statement gives a decidedly misleading impression of Murphy’s time after he was licensed as a CPA.

Murphy joined Deloitte & Touche on September 16, 2007 working in the firm’s Miami office located at 200 South Biscayne Boulevard.

Yet despite working in Miami, Murphy has never held a CPA license in the state of Florida.

Instead, he obtained a license in Colorado. And because the requirements are lower in Colorado, Florida does not accept the license as valid in Florida. As a result, none of the work Murphy did in Florida for Deloitte & Touche was as a CPA.

Through a public records request of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, which oversees CPA licensing, CBS4 News obtained a copy of Murphy’s Colorado application. In the application, dated June 26, 2009, Murphy listed his position with Deloitte & Touche as “Audit Assistant.”

Experts in the accounting industry said it seems unlikely that someone, fresh out of college and without a CPA license in the State of Florida, and holding the entry level title of “Audit Assistant” was tasked with “looking for inefficiencies, waste and fraud.”

“The entry level audit assistant is kind of like a gopher,” said Charles Lee a professor at the Graduate School of Business as Stanford University and a former senior manager with the accounting firm KPMG. “He would be given a green pencil and told to check a series of numbers. That’s a very junior position.”

Moritz Hiemann, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Business and a former senior auditor with Ernst and Young, said an auditor merely examines a company’s financial records to determine if they have been following accepted accounting practices.

“That is fairly mechanical work,” Professor Hiemann explained. “You don’t look for inefficiencies. An audit doesn’t really look for fraud either. That is not the role of an audit.”

Professor Lee agreed saying “it’s definitely an exaggeration” for an audit assistant to claim their job was to look for inefficiencies, waste and fraud.

Both professors said in a few rare instances an auditor might stumble onto something that might seem suspicious, but they would then just pass the information along to someone else in the firm.

And Professor Hiemann noted that since he was not licensed as a CPA in Florida he could not be the signatory on any of the work he performed. “You need a CPA license if you want to sign an audit opinion,” he said.

CBS4 News contacted John Gordon, a partner at Deloitte & Touche in Miami, who oversaw Murphy’s work and signed an affidavit on his application for a CPA license in Colorado stating that between 2007 and 2009 Murphy had completed the necessary number of hours of work to qualify for a CPA license under the rules in Colorado.

“Yeah, I think so,” Gordon said when asked if he remembered Murphy. “I’m not really familiar with him.”

He then declined to answer any other questions saying the firm does not comment on former employees.

Documents obtained by CBS4 News reveal Murphy took the CPA licensing exam nine times before passing the four required sections. The records show, Murphy took the exam on those nine separate occasions by signing up for the test through the State of Vermont’s Board of Public Accountancy.

The reason: Murphy did not meet Florida’s requirements to sign up for the exam. He did meet the requirements in Vermont. (Murphy did not have to physically travel to Vermont each time to take the test. There are testing centers around the country he could have gone to. And no matter where you take the test, all CPA exams are the same.)

Colorado accepted the Vermont test results and issued a CPA license to Murphy on September 4, 2009. Murphy left Deloitte & Touche in May 2010.

So when Murphy said in 2012, “I got my CPA license and I spent years going to numerous Fortune 500 companies,” the truth is he only spent at most eight months-- and not years-- with Deloitte & Touche holding a CPA license valid only in Colorado, a state where Murphy has never lived or worked.

A campaign spokesman acknowledged Murphy did not meet Florida’s educational requirements to become a CPA, nevertheless he sought a license in Colorado because “Patrick was excited to start his career.”

The campaign then added: “As a fully-licensed CPA, Patrick is a member of the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants.”

...This is not the first time Murphy has been accused of exaggerating or embellishing his professional record. In May, the Miami Herald pointed out Murphy claimed for years to hold dual degrees from UM in Accounting and Finance. He even listed it as part of his official biography for the House of Representatives. In fact, he holds a single undergraduate degree in Business Administration.

PATRICK MURPHY: SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

His record as a “small business owner” also reveals troubling apparent falsehoods.

During his interview with CBS4 News last year, Murphy was asked about the cleanup efforts Coastal Environmental undertook in the Gulf following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil disaster.

CBS4 NEWS: So how many contracts did you end up getting?

MURPHY: Several, it’s been five years.

CBS4 NEWS: How much did you make during that period of time?

MURPHY: We did okay, yeah. (laughs) We did okay.

DEFEDE: I’m just curious how many contracts there were? What the nature of the contracts were?

MURPHY: Be happy to get you those documents. It’s been five years, though. We did, we did well.

Despite Murphy’s claim that he would “be happy” to provide the documents, he failed to do so in the weeks and months following the interview. On March 2, CBS4 News made a request of the campaign in writing to release the records. What followed were months of negotiations with campaign staffers. (Because the records are the property of a private business, Coastal Environmental Services, they are not subject to the State’s Public Records Law and the company was under no legal obligation to provide anything.)

Ultimately, the campaign agreed to allow CBS4 News to review copies of the contracts but only if we agreed not to name the companies who hired Coastal or the dollar amounts of the contracts.

The campaign said it would also provide financial records to support the claim the company was profitable. Once again, they refused to allow CBS4 News to cite any specific numbers.

On May 17, a CBS4 News reporter, producer, and a CPA certified in financial forensics hired by the station, spent an hour reviewing the records and taking notes. We were not allowed to make copies of the records.

Nevertheless, a review of the material, as well as additional documents obtained by CBS4 News, and interviews with those involved, revealed several new details that directly counter the impression Murphy has given over the years about his experience in the Gulf.

It’s worth noting, at the outset, Murphy’s involvement with Coastal Environmental was brief, no more than two to five months. And while it did operate, according to state records, Murphy wasn’t the president of the company. He was vice president.

The most significant revelation, however, is that neither Patrick Murphy nor Coastal Environmental Services were awarded a single contract to clean up oil in the Gulf.

The Murphy campaign provided two documents related to the cleanup.

The first contract was dated June 28, 2010. And since the Murphy campaign will not allow CBS4 News to release the name of the firm that issued the contract, we’ll refer to them as “Company One.”

Under this contract, “Company One” hired an oil skimming company called Crescent SR, a Louisiana-based firm owned by Kenneth Taylor Beery. Nowhere in this agreement is Coastal Environmental or Patrick Murphy mentioned. The contract is for no more than 90 days with Crescent being paid an undisclosed daily rate.

The second contract is dated July 30, 2010 with “Company Two,” and it is also with Crescent SR, to perform oil skimming work in the Gulf as needed. Once again, neither Coastal Environmental nor Patrick Murphy’s name appears anywhere in the agreement. The only name listed is Crescent’s owner, Kenneth Taylor Beery.

The Murphy campaign then provided a third document, showing that on August 9, 2010, Coastal Environmental Services bought Crescent SR for an undisclosed amount of money. Signing the transfer agreement on behalf of Coastal Environmental wasn’t Patrick Murphy, but rather Daniel Whiteman.

Who is Daniel Whiteman?

Whiteman is the President of Coastal Environmental.

In public, Murphy always said his business was “affiliated” with his father’s business Coastal Construction, one of the largest construction companies in the country.

In fact, it is now apparent, Coastal Environmental was controlled and operated by Coastal Construction.

Incorporation papers show the depths to which Coastal Environmental and Coastal Construction are intertwined.

Patrick Murphy’s father, Thomas Murphy Jr., is the chairman and CEO of Coastal Construction and a director of Coastal Environmental.

Daniel Whiteman is not just President of Coastal Environmental; his primary role is vice chairman of Coastal Construction.

The corporate address for Coastal Environmental is the same as Coastal Construction.

It would appear that rather than start a small business that did work in the Gulf, Murphy, with the support of his father and Coastal Construction, acquired a business that was already doing the work. (Thomas Murphy did not return calls seeking his comment for this story.)

The Murphy campaign, however, says Patrick Murphy was involved with Crescent SR through, what it termed “an informal partnership” that started in June. The campaign maintains it was Murphy who developed the plans for the Crescent oil skimming operation.

Reached by phone, Beery said he cannot remember when he first met Patrick Murphy but he was certain of one thing. “I started the concept before I met Patrick,” Beery said.

Beery said he launched Crescent SR immediately after the oil spill began. A lifelong resident of Louisiana, Beery said he helped in the cleanup following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and wanted to get involved again. He said he started with one boat, a naval skimmer built in the Seventies which he dubbed Crescent 1.

“The naval skimmer was old but it did do a good job,” Beery recalled.

Beery was looking to add a second boat and was looking to buy a new vessel from a shipyard in Connecticut. Beery said he was introduced to Murphy through a boat builder.

“We were connected to each other by the shipyard,” he said.

Beery said there was a “team” of engineers from Coastal that worked with the Derecktor designers on coming up with a new line of oil skimmers. He said he wasn’t sure if the engineers were employed by Coastal Environmental or Coastal Construction.

“I definitely laid down a deposit on a boat,” Beery recalled. He was not certain of the date, but likely sometime around June.

The campaign said Murphy’s contributions were integral to Coastal and Crescent’s success because he helped design a new type of oil skimmer that could collect oil three feet below the surface. Also, the new skimmers were being specially made so they could be placed on trailers and transported quickly to Florida in case the oil spread into the loop current.

By mid-Summer it became clear Florida was not in jeopardy, so Murphy, who had two of the new oil skimmers under construction for himself, turned his attention to the clean-up in Louisiana.

Rather than develop his own deal, Murphy offered to buy Crescent.

Beery said he agreed to sell Crescent to Coastal Environmental Services because he wanted to see his company grow and have a permanent presence in the Gulf in case another disaster occurred.

“They had the resources I couldn’t provide,” Beery said. “I was really happy because I was selling to a group that would take what I started and take it to the next level.”

Murphy would not reveal whether he financed Coastal Environmental himself, placing his own money at risk, or if his father financed the business, including the purchase of Crescent as well as design and construction of the new boats.

(As CBS4 News was preparing this story, Murphy gave the Miami Herald a completely new explanation for his work with Coastal Environmental. He no longer described himself as a “small business owner,” and said he was an employee of Coastal Construction assigned responsibility for Coastal Environmental which he now described as a subsidiary of Coastal Construction. “My job was looking for more contracts and building these boats,” he told the Herald.)

Beery, who keeps in touch with Murphy through the campaign, said he enjoyed working with Murphy and said he was very capable.

“Having dealt with him and worked with him,” Beery said, “I have a lot of respect for him.”

Seven weeks after Coastal Environmental Services bought Crescent, the Coast Guard called off oil skimming operations in the Gulf. As a result, Coastal Environmental was soon out of work.

MURPHY: “WE DID OKAY. WE DID WELL.”

The Murphy campaign said they would provide documents showing the profitability of Coastal Environmental. However, what they provided to CBS4 News was a single sheet of paper with three numbers on it-- Revenue, Operating Costs, Operating Profit.

“It’s not a financial statement, it really doesn’t give you any picture of the financial health or operations of the company,” said Jesse Singer, a CPA certified in financial forensics and who was hired by CBS4 News to review the documents provided by the campaign.

The document from the campaign claims a profit for the company in 2010. Singer said there was no way to verify that claim given the material provided.

The Murphy campaign said Coastal Environmental has not generated any revenue since oil skimming operations ceased in late September and early October. The campaign said Coastal Environmental Services has not generated a dollar in revenue since the end of 2010.

Coastal Environmental has the four oil skimmers in storage in Louisiana and Alabama in case another disaster strikes. The campaign provided invoices to show the boats are in storage. Ironically, reviewing the invoices, the cost of storing the vessels for the last five years is more than the company claims to have made in profit during 2010.

In other words, it appears Coastal was not profitable. It likely lost money. And it continues to lose money to this day.

Once oil skimming operations ceased, Murphy returned to South Florida.

Within a matter of weeks, in January 2011, Murphy hired a political consultant to map out his run for Congress and soon began stressing his credentials: “As a small business owner, as a CPA, I’ve actually created jobs.”

That same year, his father, Thomas Murphy, gave more than $100,000 to key Democrats, including $30,000 to the Democratic National Committee and $16,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which soon rallied around Patrick Murphy’s bid for Congress.

Thomas Murphy ended up contributing more than $550,000 to PACs and committees supporting Patrick’s 2012 congressional campaign.

And federal records reveal he has given close to $300,000 for this year’s Senate race.

Wednesday afternoon, Thomas Murphy issued a statement: “Like any father, I’ve always supported my three sons and their endeavors. When Patrick told me he wanted to run for Congress, I was surprised. However I admire his drive and determination and I am extremely proud of all the good he has done. He will make a fine senator and I will be there to support him in any way possible.”

What makes Patrick Murphy unfit for public service-- the mediocrity, the mendaciousness, the comfort with corruption is exactly what makes him attractive to the Wall Street banksters, to the Saudis and, most of all, to the Democratic Party bosses like Schumer and Reid who are eager for a mindless puppet and who fear an independent-minded leader like Alan Grayson. There's no one better than Grayson running for the U.S. Senate anywhere-- and there's no one worse than Murphy. Rubio would eat him for lunch without taking a sip of water. Let's make sure Florida elects a real Democrat to the Senate in November: