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Statehouses Often Look Like Frat Houses
Statehouses Often Look Like Frat Houses
Thursday, March 20, 2008 7:08:08 PM
By MICHAEL GORMLEY
Of all the wisecracks heard in the marble halls of New York's Capitol after Gov. Eliot Spitzer's downfall in a call-girl scandal, one jest enlightened as much as it stung: Spitzer's got to be the only guy in Albany who PAYS for sex.
It is an open secret that there is a lot of fooling around going on at the statehouse. And at other statehouses, too.
In fact, Gov. David Paterson, in an extraordinary news conference on Tuesday, his first full day on the job after taking over from Spitzer, acknowledged he had had extramarital affairs with a number of women while he was a state senator.
At night, legislators, young staffers, younger interns, lobbyists and reporters mix at two or three bars just blocks from the Capitol. And there are numerous receptions, campaign stops and caucuses where lawmakers, straight and gay alike, often have many opportunities for a hookup.
Up until just a few years ago, lawmakers would go "window shopping" for interns at the start of every legislative session. In a practice that went on for decades, the interns would be corraled in a Capitol newsstand so that legislators could pick their office help based on their looks, not their resumes.
The hanky-panky even has its own lexicon: There's the "Bear Mountain Compact," which says that what goes on north of the state park just outside New York City stays there. Lobbyists, staffers and reporters who seek to enhance their influence by bedding powerful lawmakers are known as "big game hunters." And the men who sleep with the women lawmakers are "boy toys."
"Unfortunately, many of the people who seek public office are flawed people to begin with and the environment in Albany just tends to bring that out," said Paul Clyne, former district attorney in Albany.
Clyne issued a scathing report in 2004 on the internship program at the Capitol, famously saying he would never let his daughter become an intern. The report led to reforms in the program, including an end to fraternization between lawmakers and interns outside the office.
"There was a lot hitting on us and boundaries being crossed," said one young woman lobbyist who was part of that scene for years.
In truth, the phenomenon is not new, and it's not confined to Albany. By all accounts, the same thing goes on at other state capitals, particularly where the statehouse is far from the main population centers and lawmakers stay overnight several times a week. Men and women outside politics are prone to some of the same behavior when they go on business trips.
"One of the things about Washington and every state capital is for some people it's like going to a convention," said state Assemblyman John McEneny, an Albany Democrat and former Albany County historian. "What happens is you get individuals who would not behave the same way if they had the disapproval of friends and neighbors keeping an eye on them."
In Colorado, state Rep. Michael Garcia resigned this year after a female lobbyist accused him of sexual misconduct at a bar. He said he engaged in "consensual" but "inappropriate" conduct.
Accusations of sex and politics have taken down congressmen and senators, and nearly brought down President Clinton in 1998. A sex scandal was the undoing of New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey in 2004 and derailed Colorado Sen. Gary Hart's 1988 presidential campaign.
"It really is not anything new," said Tom Fiedler, who covered Hart's downfall as a reporter with The Miami Herald and is now a visiting lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University "I would have no reason to believe any public officer is any less susceptible to temptations of the flesh than any one who is not in public office."
But the New York state capital -- a place of larger-than-life personalities like Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt and big ideas like the Erie Canal -- seems to have an outsized history of sexual conduct and misconduct.
Last week, Spitzer's career collapsed just days after the 48-year-old married man was identified by federal authorities as Client 9 of a high-priced prostitution ring.
Other Albany cases include Michael Boxley, the chief lawyer for the speaker of the Assembly, who was led out of the Capitol in handcuffs in 2003 and later pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct after a legislative aide accused him of rape. In 2004, a 19-year-old intern said state Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, a member of a legendary Harlem political family, gave her alcohol and took her to his motel room for sex. Powell, 42 at the time, said the sex was consensual; no charges were filed.
And in 1992, New York Chief Judge Sol Wachtler, a potential Republican candidate for governor, was charged with harassing a socialite and GOP fundraiser after she ended their affair. He admitted posing as a private detective to stalk the woman and mailing her menacing letters, including a threat to kidnap her teenage daughter. Wachtler served 13 months in prison.
Stories of mistresses followed Govs. Thomas Dewey, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland.
In 1961, a photo appeared in the press of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller helping his wife down the roof of the governor's mansion as firefighters battled a fire. Mary Rockefeller was in robe and nightgown while the governor was smiling, dapper in a suit and rakish scarf. He had reportedly been out for a night on the town before he rushed back for a photo.
Some cases quietly lead to resignations and job transfers before they ever reach the Legislative Ethics Committee, which is criticized by good-government groups as too passive.
A Republican former lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said lawmakers have become more discreet about their dalliances, because of such factors as more competitive campaigns, cell phone cameras, and political blogs that can instantly and widely circulate accusations.
"You take your life in your hands if you do this now," he said.
Politicians are people. It's absolutely absurd the standards we hold them to. Cheating on your wife? Yeah, that's bad. Lobbying for discriminating laws against homosexuality while secretly fucking young boys? Yeah, that's bad. But whether the guy who fixes my car does it or the guy who sits on Capitol Hill does it is completely irrelevent. These people, politicians and celebrities, are held up to impossible standards of living where they are expected to be "on stage" at all times. While it is true that choosing a job such as politician or actor or musician does naturally involve letting the general public partially into your life, what you do on your own time is your own time.
I am only concerned about what other people do when it A) breaks the law (then I either want them to be punished according to the law or I want to fight to change the law, depending upon what it is), B) affects how they perform their job and/or C) negatively affects other people.
If a man seeks a prostitute, who is wilingly engaging in the sex industry in an exchange of sex for money, that's his fucking business. If he cheats on his wife to do it, well, social disapproval for hurting the wife is fine, punishment for breaking the marriage contract (according to said contract, such as is spelled out in a pre-nup, as is any contract subject to violation consequences) is fine, but is otherwise none of the public's business. The wife giving him permission to do so makes it doubly none of our business. How he gets his jollies off in his free time has nothing to do with how he performs his job.
When it *does* affect how he performs his job, well, then it becomes my business as it pertains to his job affecting me. Putting someone who is unqualified in a job position because he's fucking her or him? Yeah, that's a problem. Using my tax dollars to pay for the hooker? Yeah, that's a big problem. But these kinds of things are *already* accounted for in our system. Fraud, embezzlement, nepotism, etc., are legitimate complaints against an employee or boss, regardless of the industry or the details of the infraction. Who my checkout clerk fucks when he's off the clock and not on work property should not matter at all in his ability to perform the job he was hired for. Who my senator fucks when he's "off the clock" should not matter at all in his ability to perform the job he was hired for.
Our politiicans are hired to manage legislation. They are not hired to be the living examples of morality standards for our country. And for that matter, what are "morality standards"? Everyone has their own set of ethics and religious beliefs and I think that's fine. We're supposed to be a country built on tolerance and a mixture of different cultural backgrounds. It's only when one set of beliefs infringes upon another's civil liberties that the government should have any say in it. Our government is not supposed to dictate "morality" - look at the countries that do and you can see how oppressive and intolerant they are (the Muslim nations, with their intolerance and death squads and severe oppression of women, for instance). The politicians will have all the same flaws and foibles that any other human has. And that's OK. When they break the law or otherwise do not perform the actual duties set out in their job description, that's when I care.
The idea that people should not "fraternize" at work is completely absurd. We expect to throw supposedly mature adults into an environment for 40+ hours a week, a good 1/3 of our waking lives (way more for some jobs like these politicians), expect them to get along with each other but not develop physical attraction or emotional attachment to each other? WTF? Where else are we supposed to meet people? Our co-workers often have reasonably similar education levels and backgrounds and some interests - after all, we were all attracted to the same job or company. That's a far better starting point than walking into a bar where you don't have any baseline at all for compatibility.
So the politicians get together for days or weeks at a time to do intense, politician-type stuff. In the few hours they have free, they go to the nearest establishment to blow off steam and tension with some drinking, some dancing, some flirting, some fucking. So what? This is surprising?
Sure, by all means, reduce sexual harassment (unwanted sexual advances, sexual offers or threats in exchange for work favors, hiring based on looks and not skill) and fraud. I'm all for that. But that goes for all industries and is actively fought in most industries. But just because they're famous, it doesn't mean they're not human. And some of our best politicians have widely-known sexual exploits, so clearly sex does not *automatically* negatively affect one's job performance.
So please quit wasting my time and tax dollars following people around and punishing them for what they do in their free time behind closed doors. And while we're at it, make prostitution legal so the government can regulate it and tax it, which will make it much less susceptible to oppression and abuse, because there's nothing wrong with two consenting adults engaging in a consenting sexual relationship. And we have the judicial precedent to back that up. Can you imagine what would happen to all the absuive pimps in the country if the hookers unionized? I can just see some asshole in a wife-beater, cranked up, and reaching up to smack some poor hooker, only to have his wrist grabbed by a large teamster with a pack of more teamsters standing behind him serving him with a set of contract papers and locking him in a room for the next 3 weeks while they "negotiate". This amuses me. But this is another rant.
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In this case, yes, he was hypocritical by visiting prostitutes while at the same time prosecuting them. And I have a BIG problem with that. But his visitation of the prostitute doesn't change how he runs his office - it's even more clearly spelled out in the case of hypocricy that his off-time habits don't change his on-the-clock behaviour. I think the whole hypocricy issue is seperate from the "look, this guy likes kinky sex, he can't therefore make policy about tax laws and city financial budgeting". But I totally agree with you on the issue of privilege.