And Neither of Them Was Barney Frank
If the scandal erupting over illicit emails sent by Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, to at least one 16 year-old House page has a familiar ring, it may because 23 years ago the House Ethics Committee charged Rep. Dan Crane, R-Illinois, with having inappropriate relationships with an underage female House page:
After his 1982 re-election, Crane was charged with having a sexual relationship in 1980 with an underage female congressional page. Crane plead guilty to the charge and issued profuse, tearful apologies. He was defeated for re-election in 1984.
During the same 1983 investigations, the Ethics Committee charged Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass, with having sex with a male page:
During the course of the … investigation, Studds publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, a disclosure that, according to a Washington Post article, “apparently was not news to many of his constituents.” Studds stated in an address to the House, “It is not a simple task for any of us to meet adequately the obligations of either public or private life, let alone both, but these challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as I am, both an elected public official and gay.”
As the House read their censure of him, Studds turned his back and ignored them. Later, at a press conference with the former page standing beside him, the two stated that what had happened between them was nobody’s business but their own.
Rep. Studds was reelected five times before he retired in the mid-1990s.
On C-SPAN this weekend, I heard a rightwinger bring up the sex scandal connected to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, as if to mitigate somehow the Foley scandal. But in the Frank matter, the congressman was not the one having sex, and no one involved was under 18:
In 1990, the House voted to reprimand Frank when it was revealed that Steve Gobie was running a prostitution business from Frank’s apartment. Frank had dismissed Gobie earlier that year after learning of Gobie’s activities.
The Boston Globe, among others, called on Frank to resign, but he refused. The House Ethics Committee recommended Frank be reprimanded because he “reflected discredit upon the House” by using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie’s parking tickets. Attempts to expel or censure Frank failed; instead the House voted 408-18 to reprimand him. This condemnation was not reflected in Frank’s district, where he won re-election in 1990 with 66 percent of the vote, and has won by larger margins ever since.
