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For Florida delegate, supporting McCain gets personal

By Jennifer Liberto, Times Staff Writer
In print: Thursday, September 4, 2008

David Paul Horan, 65, of Key West is a Florida delegate at this week’s National Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn. He is not worried about losing his vacation buddy.

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BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — David Paul Horan knows about John McCain's "blue spot," a place on his leg that Cindy McCain playfully pinches, and "it will damn near cause tears."

He knows the teasing story of how the walls got marked up in the McCain household, thanks to the sometimes erratic driving of teenage daughter Bridget who was in a wheelchair after foot surgery.

He also knows how crushed and angry McCain was in March 2000, when McCain called from Bora Bora to confide to his buddy (who already knew from watching the news) that he was dropping out of the Republican primary.

Horan, 65, is a Key West attorney best known for representing shipwreck treasure hunters such as Mel Fisher. (His money clip is made from a silver 1776 Spanish eight rial pulled up from a ship that sunk off New Orleans.) He hasn't spent his life in politics and is making his debut as a Florida delegate to the Republican National Convention.

But Horan says he couldn't miss this. He has been waiting a long time to see McCain get the Republican nomination.

"I'm can't be impartial when it comes to John McCain. I know it," Horan said. "It's all pretty exciting."

Horan and McCain's friendship spans more than two decades and developed over years of shared vacations and diving trips in and around the Florida Keys and Virgin Islands.

"The first time I met him, I wasn't really prepared for who I met," said Horan, who was introduced to McCain through a mutual friend in the 1980s.

The friend was Jerry Dorminy, founder of Hog's Breath Saloons in Fort Walton Beach and Key West. Dorminy and McCain had known each other as young men in the Panhandle, back before McCain served in Vietnam.

Over the years, the three became close. Dorminy had been a groomsman in John and Cindy McCain's wedding, then Horan and McCain were groomsmen in Dorminy's wedding in 1998. Dorminy died in 2006, and McCain delivered the eulogy, wearing a Hog's Breath Saloon T-shirt, Horan said.

Today, Horan has a bunch of McCain stories, like the time McCain fell overboard on a diving trip and ended up bleeding, and word got out so quickly that Cindy McCain fielded a call from the White House within 20 minutes after it happened. "I told John, 'You never fail to impress me,' " Horan said.

Horan was born in Rome, Ga., and grew up in Fort Walton Beach or "L.A.," Lower Alabama, which left him with a slow Southern drawl. But the pursuit of warmer weather sent him to Key West in 1970. He has been married to his wife, Karen, for 29 years and has five grown children and four grandchildren.

Horan said he's not worried about losing his best vacation buddy, if McCain wins in November. "He's assured me that wouldn't happen," Hornan said. "It's just going to be a little more crowded."