Brian Hodgers admitted selling beer to a minor in a state application. Now, he says opponents want to ‘frame’ him as a criminal

House candidate Brian Hodgers sent out an email blast saying political opponents fabricated his arrest record. “I was NEVER ARRESTED,” Hodgers wrote.

But he admitted in an application for a Florida real estate license that he once pleaded no contest to selling a minor a beer.

Hodgers is one of three candidates running in the Republican Primary in a House District 32 Special Election to replace outgoing Rep. Debbie Mayfield.

He fired out the email blast after appearing in a Florida Today forum in which opponent Terry Cronin said, “I’m the only candidate who doesn’t have a criminal record.” Hodgers also alludes in letters to paid attacks from “one of our opponents and his liberal allies” that attempt to “frame me as having a criminal past.”

“On the issue of the criminal past, my father and I owned a gas station together about 30 years ago,” Hodgers wrote. “One of our clerks was cited for selling beer to an underage adult, and our business had to pay a fine. I was NEVER ARRESTED. My opponent is making things up and using a falsified document to suggest that I was arrested.”

But a LexisNexis search shows court records indicating that he was cited in May 1996 and required to appear in court on a second-degree misdemeanor. The document indicated he pled “nolo contendere” and adjudication was ultimately withheld. The document lists a sentence of two days in jail.

A license application with the Department of Business and Professional Regulations reveals further details. A portion of that form asks if applicants have ever been convicted of a crime, been found guilty or pleaded no contest. Hodgers marked “Yes.”

He also lays out a more detailed narrative explaining the crime, and acknowledging that the clerk cited was himself.

“I also realize that my application may be held up due to a misdemeanor offense in which I received adjudification with held for selling an alcoholic beverage to an underage minor while working for a gas station convenience store in 1996,” Hodgers wrote in the application.

In the candidate forum, Hodgers said there was no record of him being arrested with Broward County, which does not publish records on its website dating back to 1996. He said Cronin had “embellished” a minor offense. He again said that he and his father owned multiple gas stations, and he again blamed someone else for the offense.

“We had a clerk who was caught up in, I guess what you would call a sting operation where they brought in an underage person and they sold a beer to this underage person. And I, as the business owner, received a citation,” Hodgers said. He denied ever spending “days in jail.”

But that differs significantly from the account he hand-wrote in the state application for his license. There, he made clear he was the one who made the sale.

“As a cashier at a gas station, I mistakenly sold a can of beer to a underage minor,” he wrote. “I paid court costs and adjudification was witheld.”

The application also includes further written explanation about the incident, including that a Judge had informed him the sting was conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and that the incident was a “lesson to be learned” but “should not show up on my record.” “I have never been in any kind of trouble and have a clean record except for this one instance,” Hodgers wrote.

The LexisNexis document shows the court costs amounted to only $45. Hodgers was 23 at the time of the offense.

FL DBPR – License – Hodgers[29] by Jacob Ogles on Scribd

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