[lit-ideas] sex scandals
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:56:58 -0400
This was published in 1998, so it avoids Clinton and Foley.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/congress.htm
Congressional Sex Scandals in History [excerpt]
This history begins in 1974, but not because episodes of
sexual impropriety only go back a quarter-century. In the
old days, they simply weren't reported. In 1903, for
example, the Speaker of the House, David Henderson (R-Iowa),
was forced to resign over his sexual relationship with the
daughter of a senator. Henderson never said why he was
quitting, and neither did the press. But that was then, and
this is now.
1974
Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.)
On Oct. 9, 1974, Mills, the chairman of the House Ways and
Means Committee and perhaps the most powerful member of the
House, was stopped for speeding near the Jefferson Memorial
at 2 a.m. Shortly after, Annabella Battistella – a stripper
who went by the stage-name of Fanne Foxe, Mills campaign
button the "Argentine Firecracker" – jumped out of his car
and into the Potomac River tidal basin. The incident did not
immediately threaten Mills, whose district was solidly
Democratic. But Mills won reelection with only 59 percent of
the vote, his lowest total ever. Within weeks, Mills
appeared on a Boston stage carousing with Foxe, apparently
intoxicated. Faced with an uprising among House Democrats,
Mills was forced to resign as Ways and Means chairman, and
in 1976 he announced he would not seek another term, ending
his 38-year House career. He was succeeded by Jim Guy
Tucker, whose own ethics got the attention of Kenneth Starr
some two decades later.
1976
Rep. Wayne Hays (D-Ohio)
In its May 23, 1976, editions, The Washington Post quoted
Elizabeth Ray as saying that she was a secretary for the
House Administration Committee, headed by Hays, despite the
fact that "I can't type, I can't file, I can't Hays campaign
button even answer the phone." She said the main
responsibility of her $14,000-a-year job was to have sex
with Hays. The fall of Hays, an arrogant bully who was one
of the most powerful – and disliked – members of Congress,
was rapid. The House ethics committee opened its
investigation on June 2. He resigned as chairman of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on June 3. In
the Democratic primary five days later, a car-wash
manager/bartender who had run against Hays four previous
times and never received more than 20 percent of the vote
got 39 percent. Hays later resigned his committee
chairmanship, dropped his reelection bid, and finally
resigned on September 1.
Rep. John Young (D-Tex.)
On June 11, 1976, Colleen Gardner, a former staff secretary
to Young, told the New York Times that Young increased her
salary after she gave in to his sexual advances. In
November, Young, who had run unopposed in the safe
Democratic district five consecutive times, was reelected
with just 61 percent of the vote. The scandal wouldn't go
away, and in 1978 Young was defeated in a Democratic primary
runoff.
Rep. Allan Howe (D-Utah)
On June 13, 1976, Howe was arrested in Salt Lake City on
charges of soliciting two policewomen posing as prostitutes.
Howe insisted he was set up and refused to resign. But the
Democratic Party distanced itself from his candidacy and he
was trounced by his Republican opponent in the November
election.
Rep. Fred Richmond (D-N.Y.)
In April 1978, Richmond was arrested in Washington for
soliciting sex from a 16-year-old boy. Richmond apologized
for his actions, conceding he "made bad judgments involving
my private life." In spite of a Democratic primary
opponent's attempts to cash in on the headlines, Richmond
easily won renomination and reelection. But his career came
to an end four years later when, after pleading guilty to
possession of marijuana and tax evasion – and amid
allegations that he had his staff procure cocaine for him –
he resigned his seat.
1980
Rep. Jon Hinson (R-Miss.)
On Aug. 8, 1980, during his first reelection bid, Hinson
stunned everyone by announcing that in 1976 he had been
accused of committing an obscene act at a gay haunt in
Virginia. Hinson, married and a strong conservative, added
that in 1977 he had survived a fire in a gay D.C. movie
theater. He was making the disclosure, he said, because he
needed to clear his conscience. But he denied he was a
homosexual and refused GOP demands that he resign. Hinson
won reelection in a three-way race, with 39 percent of the
vote. But three months later, he was arrested on charges of
attempted oral sodomy in the restroom of a House office
building. He resigned his seat on April 13, 1981.
Bauman campaign button Rep. Robert Bauman (R-Md.)
On Oct. 3, 1980, Bauman, a leading "pro-family"
conservative, pleaded innocent to a charge that he committed
oral sodomy on a teenage boy in Washington. Married and the
father of four, Bauman conceded that he had been an
alcoholic but had been seeking treatment. The news came as a
shock to voters of the rural, conservative district, and he
lost to a Democrat in November.
1981
Rep. Thomas Evans (R-Del.)
The Wilmington News-Journal reported on March 6, 1981, that
three House members – Evans, Tom Railsback (R-Ill.) and Dan
Quayle (R-Ind.) – shared a cottage during a 1980 vacation in
Florida with Paula Parkinson, a lobbyist who later posed for
Playboy magazine. All three proceeded to vote against
federal crop-insurance legislation that Parkinson had been
lobbying against, and questions were raised whether votes
were exchanged for sex. Railsback and Quayle denied having
sex with her. Evans said he regretted his "association" with
Parkinson and asked his family and God to forgive him. But
he forgot to include the voters, who in 1982 threw him out
of office.
1983
Reps. Dan Crane (R-Ill.) and Gerry Studds (D-Mass.)
The House ethics committee on July 14, 1983, announced that
Crane and Studds had sexual relationships with teenage
congressional pages – Crane with a 17-year-old female in
1980, Studds with a 17-year-old male in 1973. Both admitted
the charges that same day, and Studds acknowledged he was
gay. The committee voted to reprimand the two, but a
back-bench Georgia Republican named Newt Gingrich argued
that they should be expelled. The full House voted on July
20 instead to censure the two, the first time that ever
happened for sexual misconduct. Crane, married and the
father of six, was tearful in his apology to the House,
while Studds refused to apologize. Crane's conservative
district voted him out in 1984, while the voters in Studds's
more liberal district were more forgiving. Studds won
reelection in 1984 with 56 percent of the vote, and
continued to win until he retired in 1996.
1987
Rep. Ernie Konnyu (R-Calif.)
In August 1987, two former Konnyu aides complained to the
San Jose Mercury News that the freshman Republican had
sexually harassed them. GOP leaders were unhappy with
Konnyu's temperament to begin with, so it took little effort
to find candidates who would take him on in the primary.
Stanford professor Tom Campbell ousted Konnyu the following
June.
1988
Sen. Brock Adams (D-Wash.)
On Sept. 27, 1988, Seattle newspapers reported that Kari
Tupper, the daughter of Adams's longtime friends, filed a
complaint against the Washington Democrat in July of 1987,
charging sexual assault. She claimed she went to Adams's
house in March 1987 to get him to end a pattern of
harassment, but that he drugged her and assaulted her. Adams
denied any sexual assault, saying they only talked about her
employment opportunities. Adams continued raising campaign
funds and declared for a second term in February of 1992.
But two weeks later the Seattle Times reported that eight
other women were accusing Adams of sexual molestation over
the past 20 years, describing a history of drugging and
subsequent rape. Later that day, while still proclaiming his
innocence, Adams ended his campaign.
Rep. Jim Bates (D-Calif.)
Roll Call quoted former Bates aides in October 1988 saying
that the San Diego Democrat made sexual advances toward
female staffers. Bates called it a GOP-inspired smear
campaign, but also apologized for anything he did that might
have seemed inappropriate. The story came too close to
Election Day to damage Bates, who won easily. However, the
following October the ethics committee sent Bates a "letter
of reproval" directing him to make a formal apology to the
women who filed the complaint. Although the district was not
thought to be hospitable to the GOP, Randy "Duke"
Cunningham, a former Navy pilot who was once shot down over
North Vietnam, ousted Bates in 1990 by fewer than 2,000 votes.
1989
Rep. Donald "Buz" Lukens (R-Ohio)
On Feb. 1, 1989, an Ohio TV station aired a videotape of a
confrontation between Lukens, a conservative activist, and
the mother of a Columbus teenager. The mother charged that
Lukens had been paying to have sex with her daughter since
she was 13. On May 26, Lukens was found guilty of
contributing to the delinquency of a minor and sentenced to
one month in jail. Infuriating his fellow Republicans,
Lukens refused to resign. But he finished a distant third in
the May 1990 primary. Instead of spending the remaining
months of his term in obscurity, Lukens was accused of
fondling a Capitol elevator operator and he resigned on
October 24, 1990.
Rep. Gus Savage (D-Ill.)
The Washington Post reported on July 19, 1989, that Savage
had fondled a Peace Corps volunteer while on an official
visit to Zaire. Savage called the story a lie and blamed it
on his political enemies and a racist media. (Savage is
black.) In January 1990, the House ethics committee decided
that the events did occur, but decided against any
disciplinary action because Savage wrote a letter to the
woman saying he "never intended to offend" her. Savage was
reelected in 1990, but finally ousted in the 1992 primary by
Mel Reynolds.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
In response to a story in the Aug. 25, 1989, Washington
Times, Frank confirmed that he hired Steve Gobie, a male
prostitute, in 1985 to live with and work for him in his
D.C. apartment. But Frank, who is gay, said Frank campaign
button he fired Gobie in 1987 when he learned he was using
the apartment to run a prostitution service. The Boston
Globe, among others, called on Frank to resign, but he
refused. On July 19, 1990, the ethics committee recommended
Frank be reprimanded because he "reflected discredit upon
the House" by using his congressional office to fix 33 of
Gobie's parking tickets. Attempts to expel or censure Frank
failed; instead the House voted 408-18 to reprimand him. The
fury in Washington was not shared in Frank's district, where
he won reelection in 1990 with 66 percent of the vote, and
has won by larger margins ever since.
1990
Rep. Arlan Stangeland (R-Minn.)
It was reported in January 1990 that Stangeland, married
with seven children, had made several hundred long-distance
phone calls in 1986 and 1987 on his House credit card to or
from the residences of a female lobbyist. Stangeland
acknowledged the calls and conceded some of them may have
been personal. But he insisted the relationship was not
romantic. Voters of his rural district were not buying,
choosing a Democrat in November.
1991
Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.)
On April 25, 1991, with NBC News about to go on the air with
allegations he had an extramarital affair with Tai Collins,
a former Miss Virginia, Robb made a preemptive strike. The
Virginia Democrat, married to Lyndon Johnson's daughter,
said he was with Collins in a hotel room, but all that took
place was a massage over a bottle of wine. Collins, in a
subsequent interview with Playboy, said they had been having
an affair since 1983. It was thought that these charges,
along with long-circulated but unproven allegations that
Robb had attended Virginia Beach parties where cocaine was
present, would jeopardize Robb's 1994 bid for re-election.
But the GOP nominated Oliver North, the Iran-Contra figure
who had his own credibility problems. Robb squeaked by with
46 percent in a three-way race.
1992
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
In October 1992, Republican Senate nominee Rick Reed began
running a campaign commercial that included a
surreptitiously taped interview with Lenore Kwock, Inouye's
hairdresser. Kwock said Inouye had sexually forced himself
on her in 1975 and continued a pattern of sexual harassment,
even as Kwock continued to cut his hair over the years.
Inouye, seeking a sixth term, denied the charges. And Kwock
said that by running the commercial, Reed had caused her
more pain than Inouye had. Reed was forced to pull the ad,
and while many voters took out their anger on the
Republican, Inouye was held to 57 percent of the vote – the
lowest total of his career. A week later, a female
Democratic state legislator announced that she had heard
from nine other women who claimed Inouye had sexually
harassed them over the past decade. But the women didn't go
public with their claims, the local press didn't pursue the
story, and the Senate Ethics Committee decided to drop the
investigation because the accusers wouldn't participate in
an inquiry.
Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.)
Less than three weeks after Packwood narrowly won a fifth
term, the Washington Post on Nov. 22, 1992, reported
allegations from 10 female ex-staffers that Packwood had
sexually harassed them. The Post had the story before the
election, but didn't run it as Packwood had denied the
charges. With the story now out in the open, Packwood said
that if any of his actions were "unwelcome," he was
"sincerely sorry." He then sought alcohol counseling. But
his longtime feminist allies were outraged, and with more
women coming forward with horror stories, there were calls
for his resignation. It wasn't until September of 1995 when,
faced with the prospect of public Senate hearings and a vote
to expel, Packwood announced his resignation.
1994
Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.)
Freshman Reynolds was indicted on Aug. 19, 1994, on charges
of having sex with a 16-year-old campaign worker and then
pressuring her to lie about it. Reynolds, who is black,
denied the charges and said the investigation was racially
motivated. The GOP belatedly put up a write-in candidate for
November, but Reynolds dispatched him in the overwhelmingly
Democratic district with little effort. Reynolds was
convicted on Aug. 22, 1995 of 12 counts of sexual assault,
obstruction of justice and solicitation of child
pornography, was sentenced to five years in prison, and
resigned his seat on October 1.
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