Posted on 10/13/2008 3:53:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
For the second consecutive election year, West Palm Beach has produced a potentially devastating congressional sex scandal – but this one involves a Democrat.
ABC News reported Monday that Rep. Tim Mahoney — the Florida Democrat who replaced disgraced Republican Mark Foley in 2006 — paid $121,000 to a staffer with whom he had an affair. The news gives Republicans a desperately needed new line of attack just three weeks before Election Day.
Mahoney, 52, paid former staffer Patricia Allen $61,000 — plus $60,000 in legal fees — after she threatened to sue him for sexual harassment and intimidation, the network reported, citing unnamed Mahoney staffers and Allen’s legal papers.
The congressman – who promised to restore honor and morality in a district rocked by revelations of Foley’s inappropriate behavior toward House pages – reportedly moved the 50-year-old Allen from a job in his office to a $50,000 position with an agency that handles his campaign advertising.
A Mahoney spokesman didn’t comment on the story but said the first-term representative never used campaign funds to pay off Allen.
The National Republican Congressional Committee blasted copies of the story shortly after it appeared on ABC’s Web site – and Mahoney’s Republican opponent Tom Rooney has planned a press conference on the story with NRCC Chairman Tom Cole in the district on Tuesday.
The scandal breaks at the worst possible time for Mahoney. He was facing a highly competitive race against Rooney, one of the GOP’s leading recruits. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already spent $430,000 on ads on behalf of Mahoney.
A poll conducted for Rooney in September showed Mahoney with a 48 to 41 percent lead.
Now Democratic operatives are privately glum about their prospects of holding onto the seat.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
OK so how could this guy in good conscious even RUN for this office given who [Foley] he was replacing.
Golly, I don't remember reading lines like this in the Foley coverage.
WoW! That is a *devastating* audio recording.
Yep! and if I’m not mistaken, it is progressive and passed to spouses. Was it Jesse Helms who had the young wife to whom we will pay, and pay, and pay, and pay ... and she never even “served.”
Frankly, it is past time that we, the employers, decided on pay packages, insurance, and retirement.
That was how I first heard it phrased; only later did I discover that the person who said it to me was a serial "dipper" who spoke from much experience.
Mr. niteowl77
I guess you missed the part where it said that ABC broke this story, and has the phone call on their website.
That's lower than Nan's sagging cans can limbo.
MAHONEY: "I'm the judge and jury. You're fired. Hear me?"The quarterback is toast!MAHONEY: "You work at my pleasure. You know what that means? It means you work at my pleasure. If you do the job that I think you should do, you get to keep your job."
MAHONEY: ".. and guess what? The only person that matters is guess who? Me. You understand that?"
Wow, ABC....I’m so impressed. So, think the others will pick it up, have a self-proclaimed national outrage, and have a “throw the bums out mantra?” Nahhhh, don’t think so.
Bubba...have many mummies been following you :)
Talk about strange bedfellows! This guy is toast.
I can already see the bestseller now.
Thanks for the audio link. Classic moment in the history of jerkdom.
Oh, that's rich. Get him over the election hump then it falls into a blackhole much like in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.
Good thing he's not the Senate Minority Leader wishing a 155 year old retiring Senator happy birthday. (Lott and Thurmond)
That must be the perv district.
Hey, you’re the one saying that there “hasn’t been a peep from the MSM”, when in fact as MS a M as you can get broke the story.
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