My Political Rant

My Congressman is a Hypocrite

October 18, 2008
After running a campaign on family values and demonizing his opponent (Mark Foley) for unethical sexual acts while holding public office, U.S. Representative Tim Mahoney has admitted to having "multiple" affairs, some of which were occurring while he was attacking his political opponent for the same behavior, and paying more than $140,000 hush money to keep the most recent affair with campaign staffer Patricia Allen quiet. Hey Mahoney - you idiot - ever heard that old adage about people who live in glass houses? I'm less concerned about Mahoney's personal activities and more concerned about the trend of holier-than-though self promotion which is nothing short of complete bigotry and outright lies to constituents.

Is this trend of publicly taking the moral high road while at the same time engaging in the acts politicians claim to rail against becoming politically acceptable? Should we care when do-gooders such as Jesse Jackson claim to provide spiritual and moral counseling to President Clinton after his affair only to later learn that Jackson himself was having an affair at the time, fathered an illegitimate child and similar to Mahoney, paid hush money for it to stay quiet. Should the voting public be bothered when presidential candidate John Edwards claims to be worthy of your vote based on his moral authority, however, we later learn that while between campaign speeches he was himself having an affair? To me, the bigotry is outrageous.

More about Mahoney. As of yesterday, the first-term Florida Democrat conceded that one of the affairs began as he was running on a family values platform to replace Mark Foley, the then Republican incumbent who resigned amid revelations that he sent sexual text messages to male pages who had worked on Capitol Hill. Mahoney, 52, apologized to his wife, his daughter and his constituents, even as he maintained he hadn't been hypocritical.

That particular affair was with Patricia Allen, 50, whom Mahoney met while campaigning in 2006. Allen later worked for Mahoney's congressional office and then worked on his campaign. When the sexual relationship later soured, Allen was dismissed and which she then threatened to make a claim against Mahoney for sexual harassment. They reached a settlement whereby Mahoney paid her off in order to avoid a public airing. Mahoney claims Allen was fired for performance reasons, not because of the sexual affair. Uh huh, yea right.

It what shows Mahoney's behavior is much more of a trend than an instance, Mahoney also acknowledged he had an affair with a high-ranking Martin County official in his Florida district while simultaneously lobbying the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give the county a $3.4 million in hurricane clean-up funds. The funds were awarded last year. Mahoney insists that he did nothing more for Martin County than he did for others in his district. That makes me wonder if other districts have high ranking women officials getting similar favors.

Mahoney confessed to "multiple" other affairs, though he wouldn't say how many.

The FBI is now involved (my tax dollars at work) as part of an investigation into whether Mahoney hired Allen to keep her quiet about the affair and whether he showed any preferential treatment to Martin County in exchange for sex.