My Political Performance Rant

My Congressman Tim Mahoney is a Hypocrite

October 19, 2008
After running a successful campaign on family values and demonizing his opponent (Mark Foley) for unethical sexual activities while serving in public office, Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL) has now admitted to having "multiple" affairs, some of which occurred while he was attacking his political opponent for the same behavior, as well as paying more than $140,000 hush money to keep the most recent affair with campaign staffer Patricia Allen quiet. Hey Mahoney - you idiot - ever heard that old adage about people who live in glass houses?

I'm less concerned about Mahoney's personal activities and more concerned about the trend of holier-than-though political self promotion which is nothing short of complete bigotry and outright lies to constituents.

Is this trend of publicly taking the moral high road and accusing others of being immoral while at the same time engaging in the acts politicians claim to rail against becoming politically acceptable? Should we care when self-proclaimed do-gooders such as Jesse Jackson claim to provide spiritual and moral counseling to President Clinton following his adultery only to later learn that Jackson himself was having an affair at that same time, fathered an illegitimate child and similar to Mahoney, paid-off the mother with hush money in order to keep it quiet (and not jeopardize his moral authority or his future stream of revenues in the forms of government grants). Should the voting public be bothered or insulted when presidential candidate John Edwards claims to be worthy of your vote based on his moral authority, however, we later learn that between campaign speeches he was himself having an affair? To me, the bigotry is outrageous.

More about Mahoney. As of yesterday, the first-term Florida Democrat admitted that one of the affairs began as he was running for political office on a family values platform to replace Mark Foley, the former Republican incumbent who resigned amid allegations that he sent sexual text messages to a male page who had worked on Capitol Hill. Mahoney, 52, apologized to his wife, his daughter and his constituents, even as he maintained he hadn't been hypocritical.

This particular affair was with Patricia Allen, 50, whom Mahoney met while campaigning in 2006. Allen later got a job in Mahoney's congressional office and then got a job on his campaign. Unfortunately for Allen, when the sex stopped so did the job. Allen was dismissed after which she then threatened to make a claim against Mahoney for sexual harassment. Conveniently, they reached a payout whereby Mahoney paid more than $140,000 to avoid a public airing. Mahoney claims Allen was fired for performance reasons, not because of the sexual affair. Uh huh, yea right.

In showing that Mahoney's behavior is much more of a trend than an instance, Mahoney also acknowledged he had a sexual affair with a high-ranking Martin County official in his district while simultaneously lobbying the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give that county $3.4 million in hurricane clean-up money. The money was then awarded in 2007. Mahoney insists that he did nothing more for Martin County than he did for others in his district. That makes me wonder if other districts have high ranking women officials getting similar favors.

Mahoney confessed to "multiple" other affairs, though he wouldn't say how many.

The FBI is now involved (my tax dollars at work) as part of an investigation into whether Mahoney hired Allen to keep her quiet about the affair and whether he showed any preferential treatment to Martin County in exchange for sex.

Keywords: bigot