In politics, there’s not much more interesting than a ruined reputation, and nothing can top that better than a classic sex scandal. It’s the kind of thing that interests everyone, whether they like to admit it or not. What’s truly interesting isn’t that so many politicians get busted for bad sexual behavior, it’s the wide gamut of stuff they get caught doing. Once you filter out all the child molesters and guys who got caught with their boyfriends, what’s left is an interesting mix of some good old fashioned office-sneakery — and we all know that can be loads of fun. Some bring a hand to your face, some make you laugh, and a couple even make you jealous; these are the 15 hottest political sex scandals of the last decade.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey - The DC Madam
Nothing so steamy has rocked the capital like this since the days of Clinton and Lewinski. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, better known as The DC Madam, spend 13 years providing escort services to the greater DC area. When word broke that her escort service was not only one of the good ones, but that she had almost 50 lbs worth of phone records saved up on paper, many big offices in the district collectively shat bricks. Several men resigned their posts, others lost any chance at re-election. Sadly, Palfrey didn’t stick around to make things interesting, and hung herself before heading off to serve a prison sentence.
John Ensign
This guy was a real piece of work, but he wasn’t nearly so bad as his buddy’s wife, with whom he had an affair for quite some time before she finally turned on him — for cash. Ensign was a United States Senator from Nevada at the time, and still is, but this one hurt. What’s really troubling about this mess isn’t that he hooked up with his friend’s wife, but that his own wife is hotter than she is! Everyone is still together, both couples, so it’s alright to poke fun.
Jack Ryan
The name sounds familiar because it is; Jack Ryan ran for senate in Illinois back in 2004, and fought a losing battle against none other than Barack Obama until he withdrew from the race altogether. Why’d he withdraw? Because back in the ’90s, during divorce proceedings, his ex-wife, Seven of Nine a.k.a. Jeri Ryan, told courts that he tried getting her to go to sex clubs with him all over the country. The divorce records were made public, and Ryan’s senate bid evaporated overnight.
Kwame Kilpatrick – Sext Freak
Also one of the funniest, most modern sex scandals to date; Kwame Kilpatrick, Mayor of Detroit, got caught sexting his chief of staff. This wasn’t his first rodeo, either — the good mayor was already in pretty deep for mansion parties and the suspicious murder of a certain stripper, but this was the icing on the cake. Kilpatrick managed to rack up 14,000 text messages over the course of the affair, and they were all on city-owned equipment and data plans. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, this guy.
Gavin Newsom
Apparently, wives of political aides are notoriously easy, because there seems to be a trend growing here. In 2005, much-loved San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, while in the middle of divorcing his wife Kimberly Guilfoyle , had an affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk. Ruby was (and amazingly still is) the wife of Mr. Tourk, who was the Mayor’s campaign manager at the time. Even with this dirty little saga being out in the open, though, Newsom’s public image isn’t so bad — the guy’s got over 1.2 million followers on Twitter.
Vito Fossella
Representing the state of New York from 1997 to 2009, Vito Fossella got busted for having an affair back in 2008. He probably wouldn’t have, had he not been stopped for a DUI just three blocks from the home of Laura Fay, the other woman. This is one of the stories that get made into a trashy Harlequin romance novel; Fay was an Air Force intelligence officer working for the pentagon when they first hooked up. The affair got pretty hot and steamy, and even went international when the two carried it over to the UK in 2003. It got so serious, in fact, that Fossella and Fay had a kid together, but no marriage. She was, however, the one who bailed him out of jail.
Steven C. LaTourette
This guy moved to divorce his wife back in 2003, only to have her expose his affair to the public. She couldn’t quite prove it at the time, but it wasn’t long before pictures surfaced, showing the good congressman with his paramour and former chief of staff, Jennifer Laptook, whom he manned up and married in 2005. Not bad Steve. Not bad.
Jessica Cutler – The Washingtonienne
A Monterey, California native, Jessica Cutler hopped coasts for a while to work in DC as a congressional aide. While there, she realized that the pay wasn’t making her rich, and decided to start a provocative blog, The Washingtonienne, which is now defunct. The blog started off innocently enough; it was to detail her life and learnings while living in the nation’s capital. The fun part was when she started detailing how she got paid for sex. She quickly earned the title of The DC Slut, which was out of coincidence and not a matter of respect toward The DC Madam.
Bob Wise
Former Governor of West Virginia Bob Wise made the mistake of hooking up with Angela Mascia-Frye, who has since dropped the -Frye because her husband divorced her. Phil Frye, the pissed-off husband, not only called the two of them out on their shenanigans, but also up and ran for governor in a bid not for the seat (because he had no chance of winning), but simply to annoy Bob Wise and call more attention to his hot little secret. They do drama differently in Appalachia.
Mike Duvall
Mike Duvall was a California State Assembly member until just recently, and the end of his career wasn’t so unexpected. Fortunately for us, his story is hilariously entertaining. The guy was in the middle of a committee appropriations meeting, during a break, and didn’t realize that his mic was still live as he talked about his affair and all sorts of naughty things to his chuckling buddy. The whole conversation was recorded, and aired for the world to hear. Audio and transcript is available here, and it’s worth a listen. At least the guy had fun, right?
Antonio Villaraigosa
Ensuring the news is always as hot as the weather, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spiced things up in 2007 when he admitted to having an affair with local Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas, a move which no man could really blame him too much for. After all, his marriage was already just about kaput, and what could possibly be more LA than the mayor stepping out with a Telemundo reporter, and a ridiculously hot one at that? He’s still the Mayor, so tip o’ the hat to old Antonio for this one.
Tim Mahoney
This one’s a classic: Mahoney, a former Florida congressman, took his post originally as a replacement for a guy who was run out of office after getting caught sending dirty IMs to young male intern. By comparison, Mahoney wasn’t so bad at all, but his constituents still weren’t too happy about his affair with Patricia Allen, then a staffer of his. She found out he had other girls on the side and wanted either more, or nothing, so he fired her. That didn’t work out too well, and he ended up paying her and her lawyer $121,000 to keep quiet, only it was too late.
Don Sherwood
Don Sherwood was Congressman Sherwood from 1999 until 2007, and in 2004 he had an incident. Apparently he and a woman named Cynthia Ore, who was not his wife, liked to get a little rough. Sometimes they got too rough, and Ore called the cops from the bathroom of Sherwood’s DC apartment one weird night that Sherwood would sorely regret. Not only did his opponent bring the whole thing to light in 2005 during re-election campaigning, but Ore sued him, claiming multiple assaults throughout their relationship. Classy broad, that Cynthia.
Mark Sanford – Hiking in Appalachia
Mark Sanford, dirtbag husband though he may be, has graced the world with one of the funniest, most ridiculous affairs that has surfaced in a long, long time. He’s responsible for the phrase hiking in Appalachia now meaning to have an extramarital affair, and is probably the only governor of a US state to ever go missing for six days. Before vanishing off the face of the earth, he told his wife that he was “going hiking in Appalachia” to clear his head. He was actually meeting his mistress, María Belén Chapur, a fairly hot Argentinian woman in Buenos Aires. Sanford confessed his love and declared them soulmates, and in the meantime managed to lightly mention that he’d fooled around over a dozen other times in his 20 year marriage.
Eliot Spitzer
This former Governor of New York had a little hooker addiction, and he fed it with — you guessed it — really expensive hookers. The one that got him caught and busted for good, though, was one that used the name “Kristen.” Her actual name is Ashley Alexandra Dupré, and she was a call girl working for the Emperors Club VIP, now defunct. After the ensuing investigation, it’s estimated that Spitzer spent somewhere in the range of $80,000 on prostitutes during his time as Attorney General and Governor of New York. The scandal was so juicy that Law & Order used it for an episode, and Dupré has had offers from the likes of Penthouse and Hustler to do shoots with them. The best part of all this is that Spitzer’s replacement, David Paterson, admitted to having an affair just one day after taking office.
