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Tussle

Rupert Tarsey, 28, was a rising star in Florida politics: the Broward County Republican Party elected him to their executive board. Then someone told the chairman Tarsey used to go by a different name: Rupert Ditsworth. When he was 17, Ditsworth was charged with attempted murder in Los Angeles, Calif., after hitting a prep school classmate in the head with a claw hammer “at least 40 times, splitting her skull open.” He dragged the girl out of his car and choked her, police say, before fleeing. The victim, Elizabeth Barcay, survived; she attended the school prom in a wheelchair. Ditsworth’s well-heeled family got him a good lawyer, and “In the end, I pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor,” the 6-foot-2-inch Tarsey said, claiming he was acting in self defense. “It’s not the charges that matter, it’s what happens in court.” He took his mother’s maiden name and moved to Florida. “We had no idea what his background is,” says Broward GOP Chairman Bob Sutton. “We want him out but he is refusing to resign.” Tarsey, meanwhile, shrugs it all off as “party politics.” (RC/Miami Herald) ...Charges still count in the Court of Public Opinion.