Vance McAllister, R-La. Grimm, R-N. But as some of their predecessors in the House and Senate can attest, it can be tough to compartmentalize in the fishbowl that is the U. And yes, they are all men. John Ensign β Like McAllister, the former Republican senator from Nevada was ensnared in an interoffice romance with a married staffer.
Unlike McAllister, Ensign was all but forced to resign in May , in anticipation of a Senate Ethics Committee report so damning it probably would have resulted in his expulsion from the chamber. Mark Souder β Add the Indiana Republican to the list of lawmakers forced to resign for an affair with an aide β one with whom he had made a video promoting abstinence. In , six months after a park ranger found Souder and his paramour entwined in a parked car in a local nature preserve, the news surfaced and the gears were set in motion to advance his swift fall from grace.
Boehner, R-Ohio, who was then minority leader, urged the Indiana Republican to step down. Souder scored points in a tearful farewell address by not making his wife stand beside him, noting that he wanted her to maintain her dignity. Anthony Weiner β The bombastic former Democratic congressman from New York is a study in how not to handle the fallout of a sex scandal.
In the summer of , Weiner spent weeks denying that he had sent lewd photos of himself to women via Twitter. When he finally confessed, it almost made everything worse. House Democrats, still wounded by their relegation to the minority less than a year earlier, were mortified by the distraction their colleague was causing.
Earlier in the day, the website Gawker published a shirtless selfie of Lee, accompanied by an email the congressman purportedly sent to a woman he met on Craiglist. Trey Radel β The freshman Republican from Florida was best known for tweeting about hip-hop and Sky Mall magazine until October , when he was arrested by the D.
