Sex Scandals in Congress: Tip of an Iceberg?

“Be extra careful of the male lawmakers who sleep in their offices – they can be trouble. Avoid finding yourself alone with a congressman or senator in elevators, late-night meetings or events where alcohol is flowing. And think twice before speaking out about sexual harassment from a boss – it could cost you your career.” CNN, November 14, 2017

The issue of sexual shenanigans in Congress has been around as long as America itself. Politicians, both from Article I and Article II branches (and Article III, too, although that’s less well publicized), are well known. I’m not sure of the first one, but my guess is that it involved founding father and our nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton when, in 1797, he published a tell-all pamphlet about the sordid details of his earlier affair with a married woman, Maria Reynolds, and the blackmail payments he made to her husband to cover up the affair. Some say the scandal torpedoed his presidential ambitions.

John F. Kennedy was a notorious philanderer as president, and some believe it may have contributed to his assassination. Bill Clinton was impeached over one indiscretion and was infamous for many more prior to the presidency. Donald Trump has been accused of and sued over all manner of sexual indiscretions, but none during his presidency. Most U.S. presidents seem to be the subject of rumors of affairs, especially in modern times. Most may be false, but who knows?

"In the hypercompetitive, testosterone‐infused Kennedy family, unbridled womanizing seemed as much about keeping score as it did the thrill of the conquest," wrote historian and former LBJ Presidential library director Mark Updegrove in his book, “Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency.”

You wouldn’t be wrong to replace the words “Kennedy family” with one word: “Congress.” Or, "White House."

I can think of very few movies about campaigns and politics, going back to “Advise and Consent” by the late Allen Drury, that didn’t involve sex scandals. Drury, a former UPI reporter who covered Congress, wrote in 1959 about a mythical gay love affair between two soldiers during World War II, one of whom became a US Senator from Utah and was being extorted by a malevolent colleague to secure a confirmation vote for a controversial nominee for Secretary of State. It remains a classic, and the only movie filmed in part at the US Capitol and what is now the Russell Senate Office Building. It remains one of my top five favorite movies.

In recent times, Beau Willimon’s “House of Cards,” a progressively dark six-season series on Netflix starring Kevin Spacey as House Democratic Leader-turned-President Frank Underwood, was rife with sexual misconduct, some of it leading to murder. It also starred Robin Penn as Underwood’s also profligate spouse and eventual successor in the White House.

Sexual indiscretion gone public that led to murder is also a feature of my tours of the US Capitol, which still feature the blood stains from 1889 involving a former congressman-turned-lobbyist shot by a reporter, Charles Kincaid, for the Louisville Courier. Kincaid, based on a gossip column in the Washington Post, wrote about the US Rep. William Taulbee (D-KY) being caught in the embrace of a young woman, not his wife. He was sponsoring her for a federal job at the Patent Office (now the Donald Reynolds Portrait Museum in downtown Washington, DC). Taulbee, the “Mountain Orator,” former Methodist minister, and father of five, had been bullying Kincaid in and around the Capitol after he was forced to drop out of a reelection campaign following the diminutive journalist’s disclosure of the scandal. Taulbee died from his wounds - a shot to the head on Capitol steps descending from the House chambers to the first floor - and, with the help of two sitting US Senators serving as his lawyers, Kincaid was found not guilty (self-defense, even though Taulbee was unarmed). It’s quite the story and a favorite part of my tours.

I’m certainly no expert on the topic, and during my 40-year career working in and around Congress as a staffer, Senate official, and lobbyist, I witnessed no evidence of sexual indiscretions (except one). But rumors were legendary. Especially concerning US Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), the Nancy Pelosi protege, who you may remember, let his ample ego and hubris launch a campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in 2019.

Swalwell came to Congress in 2013 after unseating the legendarily cantankerous US Rep. Fortnoy “Pete” Stark (D-CA) in a contentious primary. I remember a female lobbyist, whose name I don’t remember, entreating me to meet Swalwell, which I never did. “He’s the real deal,” I remember her telling me, “someone we can work with.” While I was quite familiar with Swalwell’s hometown of Dublin, where a former employer in the food industry operated a food processing laboratory, we have never met to this day.

But his reputation as a “player” on Capitol Hill began to spread not long after he arrived. Knowing this, I was a little surprised that he launched a presidential campaign after just 8 years in Congress. Fortunately for him, perhaps, his short-lived campaign escaped the kind of scrutiny that clearly followed his now-abandoned gubernatorial campaign this year.

And Swalwell might drag his BFF, freshman US Sen. Reuben Gallego (D-AZ), down with him. From radio talker and Atlanta attorney Erick W. Erickson’s Substack:

Remarkably, Senator Ruben Gallego of New Mexico (sic), who left his pregnant wife for his mistress, you should know, claims to be shocked and appalled by Eric Swalwell’s behavior. He met for 35 minutes with reporters, and he was well known to be Swalwell’s wingman for years in Congress. In fact, there were numerous pictures of them floating on social media, drinking together, shirtless on camels together. There have even been rumors that Gallego’s been caught up in some of the prostitution activity of Eric Swalwell. He’s come out and vigorously denied it all with his arms crossed very defensively. He sounds like he’s trying to get ahead of rumors, and the rumors are beginning to circulate that he will be implicated in some of Swalwell’s shenanigans. He vehemently denies all of that.

And not all congressional sex scandals, at least in recent years, involve females, nor do they necessarily result in the end of political careers. In 1983, then-US Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) was censured by the House for sexual misconduct with House pages (high school juniors), plying the underage youth with Cape Codders, a mix of vodka and cranberry juice. Studds, defiant and unapologetic, continued to handily win reelection in his overwhelmingly Democratic Provincetown, Massachusetts-based House district.

It seems Democratic voters are more tolerant of the sexual shenanigans of their politicians than Republicans.

“There are no secrets in politics, and if there is something, it will come out.”

Former State Rep. and ex-gubernatorial candidate Ian Calderon (D-CA)

US Reps. Dan Crane (R-IL) and Mark Foley (R-FL) were not so fortunate. Crane was censured at the same time as Studds for an affair with a female intern that involved a six-pack of Heineken beer, and was summarily bounced out of office by his conservative constituents. Foley tried to pick up male Senate pages around 2001, usually after consuming too much alcohol, and left Congress in disgrace. More famously, the late Denny Hastert’s (R-IL) career as Speaker of the House ended in disgrace after it was disclosed he’d been secretly paying male sexual abuse victims from his time as a high school wrestling coach.

According to one Senate page, writing for Politico, Hastert, as Speaker, had been warned of his colleague Foley’s indiscretions and did nothing. Hastert left Congress in 2006 after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about $3.5 million in hush-money payments from his own scandal.

I knew and highly respected Hastert. He was the overwhelmingly popular choice among his colleagues to succeed Gingrich. His scandal shocked me. In many respects, the mild-mannered and genial Hastert was the perfect replacement for the sharp-edged and controversial Newt Gingrich, the thrice-married Speaker who is largely credited for masterminding the 1994 GOP takeover of the House after 40 years in the wilderness. Hastert, an old-fashioned Midwestern Republican, was a calming, trustworthy influence, well-liked by his colleagues, and showed no hint of scandal. He was the anti-Gingrich.

After repeated scandals involving House pages, then-Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who succeeded Hastert, eliminated the historic program. The Senate page program continues and is largely scandal-free. It helps that Senate pages, whose education I was once responsible for as Secretary of the Senate, are housed at Webster Hall, a former mortuary near the Capitol, under the watchful eye of proctors and Capitol police.

So, it doesn’t surprise me when I read unscientific polling from justthenews.com, a favorite conservative news aggregator and political reporting site, that most of their readers think the scandals involving Swalwell and US Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX) — who is also resigning over an affair with a staffer who later committed suicide — are just the “tip of a much larger iceberg.”

Given the salacious nature of sexual misconduct and the eyeballs they attract from front-page, above-the-fold news coverage, I get why it may be easy to believe this. Capitol Hill staffs brim with smart, young, attractive, ambitious, extroverted, under-30 somethings (I married one nearly 42 years ago) in close-packed, high-energy, politically-charged environments. People get close in more ways than one. Staffers not only work side by side in close-knit quarters but also socialize after work. Many, if not most, are single. And in this sense, Washington is NOT “Hollywood for ugly people,” if you catch my drift.

Proximity to power, along with power itself (those with the power to vote and veto in Washington), is a powerful aphrodisiac.

Members of Congress, like Hollywood producers, when they’re in DC, are treated like royalty. The Capitol complex and its 25,000 or so staff and workers revolve around them. Elevators are often open, held, and operated for them. They saunter around magnetometers and sometimes get huffy when a Capitol policeman doesn’t recognize them immediately. Constituents, lobbyists, and tourists beg for photos. Staffers hover to meet their official (and even a few unofficial) needs. It’s easy to see why vulnerable, hubris-laden members, like Swalwell - who is fighting to keep FBI files from an alleged sexual affair with a Chinese Spy, Christine Fang, under wraps — could succumb to sexual indiscretions.

Call me naive, but I firmly believe that it is not the problem many voters think it is. The vast majority of House and Senate members in both major parties are above-board, loyal to their spouses and significant others, and don’t mess around with staff, interns, or pages. It’s the same with staff and officials. The price of ruining your career, especially given the increasing transparency of life in politics, especially on Capitol Hill, is too high. It just takes one mistake.

One trend that remains concerning is the propensity of House members, and perhaps a few Senators, to use their congressional offices as sleeping quarters.

Estimates are that, at one time, upwards of 100 of the 435 voting members of the House sleep in their offices, using the members’ gym in the Rayburn House Office Building to work out, shower, and dress the next morning (they each pay fees to use the gym). “There’s something unsanitary about bringing people to your office who are talking about public policy where you spent the night, and that’s unhealthy, unsanitary — and some people would say it’s almost nasty,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, in 2018. Some members have suggested the practice is both wrong and illegal, but it continues.

Why? Members spend about half the year in DC while maintaining residences in their districts and states, on a salary of $174,000 per year, which hasn’t been raised in more than 17 years and hasn't been adjusted for inflation. Outside income, other than unearned income from book royalties, is strictly limited. A lot of members, especially Senators who aren’t independently wealthy, room together in Capitol Hill and other nearby apartments, condominiums, and townhouses. That helps with accountability; sleeping alone in your office after an evening of fundraising dinners, receptions involving alcohol, with fawning, ambitious staff and lobbyists, perhaps not so much.

I remember the fetching Mrs. Johnston and me sitting with then-US Rep. John Ensign (R-NV) at a major annual black-tie fundraising event for the national GOP campaign committees in the mid-1990s, not long after he’d been elected to the House. He was quietly approached by two well-dressed, attractive blond women who whispered something in his ear. He indignantly waved his left hand, pointed to his wedding band, and blurted, “I’m very married.” The ladies, if I can call them that, quickly departed into the cavernous crowd. He turned to us, muttering that he was offended to be approached like that.

Sadly, Ensign, who has returned to his veterinary practice, would resign from the US Senate in disgrace many years later after an indiscretion involving the spouse of his then-chief of staff.

A few, including Rep. Thompson, have suggested Congress consider building dorms for members of Congress. Well-regulated dorms, that is. It’s not happening anytime soon, given the expense involved and Congress's tendency not to spend too much on itself, which always engenders controversy.

House members can now be reimbursed for DC housing expenses (rent, utilities) up to roughly $34,000 annually, passed in 2023 to assist with high living costs, but this does not apply to senators and excludes mortgage payments. Previously, there was a $3,000 tax deduction, but it was eliminated in 2017. US House office accounts, known as the Members' Representational Allowance (MRA), provide each representative approximately $2 million annually (as of 2025) to pay staff, travel, and run district/DC offices. These funds are calculated based on district distance from DC, rent costs, and constituent numbers, allowing flexibility within House rules. They have increased in recent years, mostly to improve staff pay, which can exceed a member’s salary.

The bigger scandal, in my opinion, is trading in equities (stocks) by members of Congress.

But none of this helped Swalwell, Gonzalez, and others evade indiscretions and scandals. Chalk it up to old-fashioned Adam-and-Eve or King David-style yielding to temptation. Serpents and apples are everywhere. It’s both a feature and a bug of the human experience, and neither members of Congress, their staff, lobbyists, nor any of us are truly immune. Fortunately, Bible studies, support groups, and accountability groups are abundant, from the Faith and Law Institute to the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) and many others.

That’s not to excuse anyone from their sexual sins. But I’ll continue to assert that it’s not as widespread a problem as many believe, at least in Congress, until proven otherwise. But, like the poor, sexual scandals in politics will always be with us.