Boehner’s Alleged Affair – and Gingrich’s Confirmed One – Go Unmentioned by the New Yorker – Yes, the New Yorker

Boehner, cover of Dec. 13, 2010, New Yorker
Boehner, cover of Dec. 13, 2010, New Yorker

Peter Boyer’s nearly 9,000 word profile of Speaker John Boehner in the New Yorker last month filled in a few gaps in what is commonly known about Boehner’s biography, but there was a notable item missing — the fact that just four months ago the Capitol was aswirl with rumors that Boehner was having an extramarital affair with a (female) lobbyist.

Similarly, in describing events that led to the ouster in 1998 of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Boyer omitted one of the central reasons — some would say the real reason — Gingrich was forced out: At the same time he was driving efforts to impeach Pres. Bill Clinton over a perjurious cover-up of an affair with a staffer, Gingrich was himself engaged in an affair with a congressional staffer, his current wife, Callista Bisek.

[…]

McCain’s Extramarital Affair with Cindy Ended His Friendship with Reagans in the 1970s

Strained: Reagan with McCain before she endorsed him earlier this year
Strained: Reagan with McCain before she endorsed him earlier this year

The Los Angeles Times published a story today, front page above the fold, detailing the adulterous personal history of a presidential candidate, a story that would be upending the dynamics of the 2008 presidential campaign — possibly even throwing the election to the other party — had the story been about a Democratic candidate.
The media will ignore this story, even when McCain campaigns in California for a constitutional amendment that protects marriage — not from adultery, the real threat to marriage — but from gay people seeking equal rights.
Instead, the story is about John McCain, the Republican, and is therefore bound to be ignored by the rest of the mainstream press.

The only possible interest the story might generate in the corporate media — and in conservative circles, where McCain is already not particularly well-liked — stems from the fact that McCain’s extramarital affair with his current wife, Cindy, permanently ended his friendship with Ronald Reagan and, especially, his wife, Nancy, around the same time Reagan was running for president 30 years ago.

The Times article opens with the strained moments around Nancy Reagan’s tepid endorsement of McCain earlier this year:

Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain and offered a significant — but less than exuberant — endorsement.

“Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed,” the Republican matriarch said in March. “Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party.” They were the only words she would speak during the five-minute photo op.

In a written statement, she described McCain as “a good friend for over 30 years.” But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain’s decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.

[…]

Rudy’s Adultery Problem Raises Its Ugly Head

During his term as mayor of New York, which coincided with his 16-year marriage to Donna Hanover, a local television personality, Rudolph Giuliani reportedly had at least two extramarital affairs. The first of these, as alleged by Hanover and a Vanity Fair article from the time, was with his press spokeswoman, Cristyne Lategano. Their affair apparently ended around 1999.

Mayor Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during his affair with Judith Nathan.

Soon afterwards, the mayor began seeing Judith Nathan, a pharmaceutical sales executive. In May 2000, Giuliani famously called a news conference to announce he was seeking a divorce from Donna Hanover — who learned about his plan to divorce her while watching his announcement on television.

The divorce proceedings were messy and played out like a reality show version of “Dynasty” or “Dallas” in the local news. Hanover and the Giuliani children remained at the mayor’s official residence while the mayor decamped to the apartment of a gay couple. His affair with Nathan was an open secret — she was barred by court order from visiting the mayor’s residence — but unacknowledged publicly.

Yesterday, news reports suggested that during this period, Giuliani may have cooked the books to hide expenses related to his visits to Nathan at her home in Southampton, in the Long Island suburbs:

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents … show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.”

The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.

The alleged billing shell game went on for three summers, from 1999 through the first weekend in September 2001, just days before the attack by al Qaeda that brought down the World Trade Center towers.

Giuliani and Nathan were married in 2003.

The Real Threat to Marriage: Top 10 GOP Adulterers

Ten Commandments

The traditional media may be interested almost exclusively in the sex lives of Democratic politicians, but on the hypocrisy index, it is hard to score higher than Republicans pontificating about saving the institution of marriage while so many of their leaders are serial and long-time adulterers:

1. President George H.W. Bush allegedly had an LTR with British-born Jennifer Fitzgerald that lasted at least two decades, all while married to Bar, who said, “He didn’t even notice when I stopped coloring my hair.”

2. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, famously married to Maria Shriver since 1986, is allegedly a purveyor of prostitutes, the father of at least one child out of wedlock and a serial groper of women in workplace situations.

3. Sen. John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential frontrunner, and admitted adulterer and alleged philanderer. [Update July 2008: McCain’s Extramarital Affair with Cindy Ended His Friendship with Reagans in the 1970s]

4. Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and another GOP 2008 presidential contender, betrayed his second wife, TV presenter Donna Hanover, with his “very good friend” Judith Nathan, whom he has since married. Hanover also publicly accused Rudy of having an affair with a staffer, Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas.

5. Rush Limbaugh, comedian, (a.k.a. “Rusty Sharpe”) dated Marta Fitzgerald while she was married to someone else. Marta later became his third wife. (He and CNN’s Daryn Kagin recently stopped dating.)

6. Bill O’Reilly, propagandist, who is married to Maureen McPhilmy, tried to have phone sex with Andrea Mackris, who sued him for sexual harrassment.

7. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is probably the most audacious serial adulterer in any political party.

8. Former Rep. Bob Barr’s notoriety as an adulterer was one of many ironies around the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) which he wrote, and which was passed with the leadership of fellow adulterers Sen. Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

9. Rep. Henry Hyde, who served as chairman of House Mangers in the adultery-related impeachment of President Clinton, was a home-wrecker himself. Hyde had an affair when he was a young and foolish man of 41 while he and his girlfriend were both very much married. Her husband later said Hyde broke up his family.

10. Gary Bauer, professional moralizing Christian nationalist, experienced a mutiny when he was running for president when actual Christians on the staff of his 2000 presidential campaign quit in protest over Bauer’s “inappropriate” behavior with a 26-year-old deputy campaign manager. Euww.

11. (Updated) Had to add this one sent in by reader S.O. that probably should have bumped poor old Henry Hyde on the list: Neal Horsley, and rightwing religious nut, freely admitted to a kinky sex life, including this outrageous exchange on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes:

AC: “You had sex with animals?”

NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”

AC: “I’m not so sure that that is so.”

NH: “You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?”

AC: “Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?”

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality… Welcome to domestic life on the farm…”

UPDATE: Thanks for all the emails. Our list attempts to identify the top 10 adulterers so there were several top contenders that didn’t make it:

  • Rep. Bob Livingston, the man who would have been House Speaker after Newt if Larry Flynt hadn’t uncovered some very kinky dirt on Livingtston. He was a top contender but since he never really served as Speaker, was bumped for Bauer.
  • It is true that Nancy Reagan was pregnant when she married Ronnie, but neither of them was married to anyone else at the time. By Republican standards of “abstinence only,” Nancy clearly did not say “no.”
  • We covered the rumors of troubles in the marriage of the president and Laura Bush but the evidence of this is spotty.
  • A definite top 10 contender is the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, a sanctimonius Clinton-hater, who, as reader TL reminds us, “[Apparently] had a fling with the DAUGHTER of someone he was having an affair with and then arranged for (or at least condoned) the abortion of their child.”
  • Back-bencher Rep. Don Sherwood of Pennsylvania, whose adultery with a younger woman was revealed after he tried to strangle her, didn’t make the cut, but someone please tell us he won’t be re-elected. (And thanks, M.H. and others, for the reminder!)
  • Reader Tim pointed out the track record of Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, who used his wife and autistic child as family values props then left them for a high-powered lobbyist after he was elected.

Keep ’em coming!