The 33-year-old son of former Vice President Dan Quayle was besieged by controversy this week after Nik Richie, the founder of the now-defunct DirtyScottsdale.com, outed Quayle as one of the original creators of the raunchy, sex-themed website lampooning Scottsdale’s trashy nightclub scene.

The site, launched in March 2007, later morphed into the national gossip site TheDirty.com.

In a fiery statement to campaign supporters, Quayle, who promotes himself as a family-values conservative, calls Richie a “smut peddler.” Yet, Quayle concedes he has known Richie since 2005, introduced him to an intellectual property lawyer in 2007 to incorporate Dirty Scottsdale and posted a handful of “fictional satirical comments” to the site that same year.

“It is amazing that the media will take a casual acquaintance and turn it into something tawdry, taking the word of a smut peddler at face value,” said Quayle, who is running in the crowded Aug. 24 GOP primary for Arizona’s 3rd District. “But I will not back down, and I will continue to fight for our future.”

Quayle, an attorney who runs a small Scottsdale investment firm, has repeatedly pointed out that Dirty Scottsdale doesn’t exist anymore. But bloggers recently unearthed early writings from the site penned by “Brock Landers,” the name of a fictional porn star in the 1997 flick “Boogie Nights” and the pseudonym that Richie says was used by Quayle.

“He is 100 percent without a doubt Brock Landers,” Richie told POLITICO.

Landers’s posts are written tongue in cheek. In one, he writes: “I’m a tall drink of water who is easy on the eyes. Plus, my moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot. Long story short, on a scale of 1-to-10, I’m awesome.”

In another: “When I took off my shirt, and the ladies caught a glimpse of my chiseled physique, I was summarily mobbed like I was a member of Menudo during the Puerto Rican day parade in NYC.”

Others are more graphic.

In a half dozen local and national television interviews this week, Quayle has emphatically stated: “I am not Brock Landers.” But he has not denied using the pen name, and Richie said only two bloggers had the ability to post original content on the site in 2007: Richie and Brock Landers.

Throughout his statement to campaign backers, Quayle portrays himself as a victim, saying he has been “attacked, maligned and smeared” by a “barrage of insults, lies distortions and rumors.”

“As a Quayle, while it never feels good, I am used to this type of unfair treatment,” he said, no doubt a reference to his father who as vice president was mocked by the media and late-night talk show hosts for misspelling “potato” and other gaffes.

The younger Quayle, who some have said is a spitting image of his father, has criticized media outlets for reporting that he first denied, then later admitted his involvement with Dirty Scottsdale. And he maintains his “story has remained consistent” since he was first linked to the site this week.

“I am not a co-creator, a co-founder nor do I have any affiliation with the current website (TheDirty.com),” he writes, though it’s important to point out he doesn’t make the same claim about the original site, Dirty Scottsdale, for which he wrote.

Quayle has alleged that one of his opponents in the 10-way primary, former Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker, has been conspiring with Richie. And Quayle pointed to media reports, suggesting Richie had attended a Parker fundraiser earlier this year at the home of the candidate’s political strategist, Jason Rose.

But both parties denied that they are working together. Richie said he was in California at the time of the fundraiser and did not attend.