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View from the Hill

Michigan senators try to cover up sex scandal with another sex scandal

So you’re a married public official and you have an affair with another married public official. You decide to:

  1. Come clean, apologize and hope voters will forgive you.
  2. Stay quiet, focus on your job and hope it blows over.
  3. Leak fake anonymous emails calling yourself a “bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant” and accuse yourself of buying sex from a male prostitute. 

Michigan state Rep. Todd Courser, R-Lapeer, found himself in this situation and chose the third option.

Courser and fellow Michigan state Rep. Cindy Gamrat, R-Plainwell, had an affair that at first seemed like your normal, everyday extramarital fornication scandal. No biggie. Things got exciting when Courser tried to cover it up — by releasing scandalous (fake) information about himself. 

According to The Detroit Free Press, Courser claimed he was blackmailed into sending the fabricated, explicit emails — but in May he asked a House aide to send the emails for him and the aide recorded the conversation. In the recording, Courser describes his plan to release the outlandish rumors about himself: if the story of his actual affair got out, people would think it’s just another baseless rumor. This kind of makes sense in a twisted sort of way, as long as you don’t think about it too hard.

The plan didn’t work, the sound recording got out and an investigation into the matter by the Michigan Attorney General’s office and the Michigan State Police is underway. Courser resigned last week when it became apparent that there were enough votes against him in the Michigan House of Representatives to pass a measure expelling him. Gamrat said she only expected the House to vote to censure her, but ultimately she was expelled.

Paul Shumaker, political consultant and founder of Capitol Communications, Inc., said Courser would have been better off choosing the first option: come clean, apologize and hope voters will forgive you.

The best way to deal with a scandal is to be honest with the public and the media and to apologize for any mistakes. “The cover-up becomes more of a story and makes it worse than the scandal itself,” he said. 

Dee Stewart, political consultant, public relations advisor and CEO of The Stewart Group, Inc., said honesty would have been the best option in this specific case, but also said the best response to a scandal or controversy depends on the individual situation.

So what’s a fornicating politician to do after word of an affair gets out? How the public perceives politicians’ personal live in relation to their public duty can be a major factor in the responses to such sex scandals. For many voters, indiscretion in private life can indicate potential indiscretion in public life.

Chris Cannady, sophomore advertising major, said he takes issue with political sex scandals both on moral and religious grounds and on character considerations. 

“It makes me view [a politician involved in a sex scandal] as someone who does not have good self-control,” he said. “That could bleed into not very good self-control in their job or control of the nation.”

For some students, a public official’s private life is irrelevant to his or her professional duties. “Who you are as a person is different than who you are as a leader,” said Autumn Griego, first-year chemistry major. 

She mentioned former President Bill Clinton, the classic example of a high profile politician facing a sex scandal. “Just because he didn’t make the best decisions in his private life doesn’t mean he didn’t make great decisions as president," she said. 

This idea of a dividing line between private and public lives may be disappearing from modern American politics. 

“Scandals of a publicized nature are more publicized now than in the past, when they weren’t talked about," Stewart said. “We live in a more transparent and confessional culture.”

state@dailytarheel.com

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