AVIE, FL — Philip Busey likely rocked a few worlds last Wednesday, when the Town Council candidate not only admitting to owning and operating an adult internet website — but insisting that it shouldn’t affect how citizens cast their vote this coming March 13th.”It’s registered to me and I developed the page. This is a personal issue involving consenting adults,” he informed the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “This campaign should be about issues,” he insisted, perhaps naively.
Nonetheless, the webmaster turned politician made a few changes to his site after his association with it was discovered. Whereas it had previously included 20 adult oriented links it now to benign content such as that found on the Miami Beach tourist site.
“I changed the content on them so it would no longer be objectionable,” the turfgrass researcher explained to the press. “I have 30 or 40 other domains and none are problematic now. They are mostly about turf.”
Prior to the conversion, Busey says the site made him “pennies or maybe a dollar a day,” via link clicks. He claimed 32 cents on the Monday prior to the admission and $1.37 the following day.
Busey, an associate professor at the University of Florida running for the District 3 seat in western Davie, faces what might be considered a turf way in his race against incumbent council member Susan Starkey, as well as accountant and former council member Terry Santini.
According to Busey, the site in question has been his for nearly eight years. Although it originally promoted nudism on the Florida beaches, he later converted it to a more traditional adult website. Although he has maintained that the site should have nothing to do with his campaign, his opponents, naturally, have leveraged it to paint him as a less than savory candidate.
“Personal lives do reflect on political lives,” the doubtlessly impeccably referenced Santini insisted upon learning of the site’s existence.
Starkey has, unsurprisingly, joined in the anti-Busey’s morality chorus, insisting that regardless of where the man stands on mobile-home parks, affordable housing, and blocking a retail/office project along the freeway, “I know I wouldn’t vote for a candidate with this type of business.”
While some consider Busey’s position as Democratic Party committeeman to be inappropriate for a man making a meager legal income from an adult site, Broward Democratic Chairman Mitch Caesar told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that “The last time I checked, running nude websites is not a rationale for removal from the post.”
