Cocaine Congressmen Trey Radel: Ended with Coke Charges and Started with Adult Domain Names

You could have seen it coming a mile away.  Trey Radel, a US Republican Rep out of Florida, was busted this week on cocaine charges only 10 months after taking office.  Before becoming known as the first sitting member of Congress to be busted for Coke since everyone did it 30 years ago, he was best known for DomainGate.

Back when he was a candidate for Congress he registered the domains of all his political opponents.  Putting a few websites up as well.   When the word got out, he blamed it on his campaign team but it was done 11 months before the election and everything pointed back to him.  During the research process, the website Mother Jones, dug up that Radel had a little company that involved buying and parking adult domain names.  Just like the Big 3. While many well known domainers have porn names, not many are running for Congress.  But Radel didn’t do just porn, he had a niche.  He specialized in Spanish adult domains.  All since dropped (and picked up by someone on the Domain Name Sales platform), he registered the names under his not so secret company name Trey Enterprises.  Some of his lovely names included

CasaDeLasPutas.com

Mamadita.com

SexGuideOnline.com

ChicasDeRio.com

While I’m not judging the man on his domain registrations, when he first came in to public office I did do a big “WTF” when asked these questions on RollCall’s 5 Questions.  His “favorite city”?  Cartegena, Columbia.  I understand a lot of people love South American cities, and many are quite beautiful and inexpensive,  but to me it seemed a little odd.  I put together the known drinking, the sex domains, and crazy vacation spots and I knew it was going to be a crash and burn ending eventually.  And it did.  You’d hear more about it but Rob Ford stole his thunder this week.

On a side note.  Representative Radel didn’t miss a vote during his little coke addiction over the last 10 months.  He also proposed a bill that would make welfare recipients take a drug test before they could get their benefits. And his website states that he was working hard until the end trying to “lower your gas and grocery bills”. Sounds like a man of the people to me.