What was the craziest political scandal to happen in your state?

38 comments

  1. “Hiking on the Appalachian Trail.”

    ~EDIT- for those who don’t remember or are otherwise unaware. Mark Sanford, while Governor of South Carolina as a family values conservative Republican, disappeared for a week. He apparently didn’t inform anyone in the state government he was going to be away. His office told enquirers he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Turns out he was in Argentina. With his soul mate. Who was not his wife and mother of his children.

  3. I think one thing we Pennsylvanians can agree on is that our state government is crooked as shit. I’m sure there’s plenty of scandals I’m missing, but probably one of the more famous scandals was the State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer. He was accused of bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud, and a few other counts. Prison was inevitable for him. A few days before he was to be sentenced, he called a press conference. At the conference, he pulled a revolver and shot himself on live TV.

    There’s a song by the band Filter called “Hey Man Nice Shot” and supposedly that was the inspiration for the song.

  4. So many to choose from. I’d say the craziest not the worse in terms of ethics but definitely wild. In 2014 it was revealed Ed Fitzgerald a candidate for governor was driving without a license for like 10 years, this came to light after he was caught in a parking lot at 3am with a woman from the Ukrainian diplomatic staff. And it make it worse, he is now a judge, judging people who get caught …driving without a license.

  5. I wanted to say McGreevey but then I realized a former Vice President literally shot and killed the Secretary of Treasury in Weehawken.

  7. That I remember?

    Well, there was the time the Governor got in trouble for wearing blackface (or a Klan outfit – he wasn’t sure) in college but wouldn’t resign because the Lieutenant Governor had been credibly accused of sexual assault by two different women and the next in line was a Republican. So everybody just said “oops” and kept on truckin.

  8. The entire city of Waterbury has been basically a series of ongoing corruption scandals since essentially the 1930’s. Frank Haynes, Joseph Santopietro, Philip Giordano, and former governor John Rowland are all former politicians from Waterbury (the first three were mayors) who served jail time.

    Giordano is the craziest, though. He was already under investigation for taking bribes from contractors tied to the mafia, it was discovered that he had used his city-issued phone to arrange sexual contact with multiple children. After being convicted of civil rights violations in addition to the charges related to the sexual contact, he had the audacity to sue for back pay and vacation time.

    ——-

    Currently, the city of West Haven is dealing with a huge scandal involving misuse of COVID funds. The state is probably going to take over the city’s finances entirely, and it’s well deserved at this rate.

  9. How much time do you have? Our most recent scandal was the governor having an affair with his advisor and attempting to cover it up by firing the state law enforcement secretary who had knowledge of the shenanigans.

    But boy howdy, do we have a lot more to choose from!

  10. Kansas – I am not sure if it is a scandal – but it ought to be. One of, if not the highest ranking state senator we have, works a job for an organization, that is funded by the same family that funds a lot of lobbying in the state.

  11. Not necessarily the craziest but it was on brand for Oklahoma when our prior Governor’s daughter was living in a trailer on the Governor’s Mansion grounds.

  12. Too many to choose: NJ. My favorite was kushners dad was arrested and found guilty of blackmail charges for setting up his brother with a prostitute at a motel I pass frequently. It give me a chuckle

  13. Missouri… way too many. But the most recent one is former Governor Eric Greitens.

    About a year after he was elected, it came out that he had been having an affair. He had taken non-consensual nude photos of the woman while she was tied up, and threatened to make them public if she ever told anyone about the affair. He was forced to resign over this.

    Then more stuff came out… like how he had stolen money from a veterans charity he ran. And how while he was Governor he illegally used messaging apps that did not keep records for discussing government business with state employees.

    And just this year, his ex wife brought charges that he abused her and their son.

    So it only makes sense that he’s now the Republican front runner for an open senate seat.

  14. Too many to count, governor’s office alone has had quite a few (Spitzer, Cuomo, Paterson….)

  15. budd dwyer, easily. be careful looking that one up, it ended with him shooting himself in the head on live tv during a press conference.

  16. Our AG is a piece of shit and so corrupt, even members of his party where like “dude, you crossed a line that you cannot cross” and those mother fuckers cross every line

  17. Not really that crazy, but was a huge deal here, when Liz Cheney was first running and she got a resident fishing license when she wasn’t eligible.

    A Wyoming scandal indeed.

  20. Probably that time we seceded from the Union because rich white people wanted to continue being allowed to own black people, then went to war and lost over it.

  21. There’s two more recent ones I can think of off the top of my head:

    Rita Crundwell was the treasurer of the City of Dixon and stole approx. $54 million from the city over 20ish years to fund her show horse hobby.

    Gov. Rod Blagojevich not so sneakily tried to sell Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder after he was elected president.

    But it’s Illinois, so the list could go on and on.

  22. The shit happening with Madison Cawthorn being “crass” right now is pretty spicy. Not because he’s bi or gay or whatever but because of how much of a homophobe he is. It’s also funny to watch with all the other dumb shit he’s done like beating up a rotten tree and trying to bring a loaded gun onto a plane. It’s not nearly as reprehensible as what John Edwards did though.

  23. Madison Cawthorn and all his lurid assertions and compromising photos and Russian asset ex-wife will probably be the ultimate winner here but that story is still ongoing so I will pick one that’s wrapped up.

    Up until then our most notorious one, because it had a national impact, was John Edwards and Rielle Hunter.

    Edwards was a Senator and John Kerry’s VP candidate in 2004. While on the campaign trail he had a affair with and knocked up his campaign photographer. He paid her off and also paid off one of his aides to claim the baby was his. The aide was married, his wife was in on it, and Rielle and her love child moved in with them briefly. Edwards diverted campaign funds for this purpose, which drew federal law enforcement interest.

    And oh by the way Edwards’ wife was dying of breast cancer throughout this. She had her own brand of crazy at one point famously whipping out her diseased boob on the tarmac at RDU Airport while yelling at him over some issue in their marriage (not sure if it was the affair or another issue).

  24. North Carolina is home to the only successful coup on an elected official in US history, the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898.

    Also, not a political scandal but that show The Staircase is based off a real event that happened in NC.

  26. Lots of obvious ones from NY, so I’m going to point out a more forgotten one that might be one of the most impactful scandals of the last 50 years: Gov Nelson Rockefeller destroying the influence of the moderate wing of the Republican Party because he married a divorcee with 4 kids a year after divorcing his own wife, and then having a kid with her. How times have changed…

  27. Devin Nunes trying to sue Twitter and a Republican political consultant for defamation based on a troll Twitter account called “Devin Nunes’ Cow” that posted unflattering tweets about him.

  28. Easily the 3 Governors Controversy (which I have brought up multiple times, but oh well lol).

    So in 1946 Eugene Talmadge won the Democratic primaries and back then the Republican party practically didn’t exist in Georgia (they didn’t even put up a candidate that year) so he had basically won the election already. Those close to him knew he was sick though and as his conditioned worsened they came up with a contingency plan to make his son Governor if Talmadge died before taking office.

    Basically, Talmadge’s supporters’ interpretation of Georgia’s Constitution was that if a Governor was elected, but died before taking office, then the Georgia Legislature would pick between the runners up of the election (there are a few months between the election and the start of a Governor’s term). So Talmadge’s supporters secretly wrote in Talmadge Jr.

    Well then Talmadge dies (after winning the general election, but before taking office) and nobody knows what to do. Melvin Thompson had won the Lieutenant Governor and he felt like Governorship should pass to him, just like if the Governor died while they were both in office. He also disliked Talmadge and was not willing to work with his son’s supporters. Talmadge Jr. had his plan and he also had more support in the Legislature. So the Legislature voted to refuse to certify the election (weakening Thompson’s claim) and chose Talmadge Jr. instead.

    Thompson was outraged. He refused to give up his claim and demanded the Georgia Supreme Court intervene. Meanwhile, the incumbent Governor (Ellis Arnall) refused to vacate *his* office until the matter was settled (he also disliked Talmadge and his supporters).

    Throughout the ordeal all three men and their supporters barricaded themselves in buildings around the capitol and demanded the other men stand down. Talmadge Jr eventually seized the Governor’s office with the help of State Troopers who had sided with him and the incumbent Governor (Arnall) was forced to set up a “Governor’s Office in Exile” in an information kiosk at the Capitol. He eventually surrendered his claim and it was down to Talmadge Jr and Thompson.

    However, neither “Governor” could get anything done because the Secretary of State (Ben Fortson) hid the Governor’s seal (needed to make any Executive Order official) in his wheelchair and decided to keep it hidden until the situation was resolved. Eventually the Georgia Supreme Court stepped in and ruled that Thompson should be made governor until a special election that next November when a new Governor would be elected.

    Talmadge Jr. slaughtered Thompson in the election and finally became Governor a year later.

  29. It’s a long list for Illinois… I think Illinois political corruption has its own wikipedia article.

  30. The largest municipal fraud scheme in history happened in Dixon, Illinois. The finance director, Rita Crundwell, embezzled $53.7 million and spent it on race horses. Before the fraud scheme was exposed, local officials said Crundwell “looked after our money like it was her own.”

    There was a documentary made about the scandal called “All The Queen’s Horses.”

  31. Not that long ago the city of Bell (~35k people) found a way to raise their pay for city managers to the highest in the country. If they hadn’t gotten caught the pension for at least one of them was going to be a million per year deal in retirement.

  32. The Flint Water Crisis.

    If we’re going for a distant second…

    The Love Story of Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat

    One of the craziest political scandals in Michigan history happed just a few years ago. Two married, Tea Party, “family values” legislators started an affair – Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat. Courser began getting blackmail texts from an unknown source who knew about the affair. In an attempt to hide it and save his political career, he came up with the ridiculous idea to spread an anonymous rumor about himself having sex with men behind a local bar. The idea was that this would be so absurd and easy to disprove that when/if the actual affair became public, he could easily brush it off as just another ridiculous political smear. He called this genius idea “inoculating the herd.” So he e-mailed an anonymous message to every state legislator with the fake story. Except it didn’t go the way he planned. His staffers had secretly recorded him detailing this harebrained scheme and ratted him out to one of the biggest newspapers in the state. The ensuing blockbuster news stories caused a major public uproar and scandal. A legislative investigation was started. During the investigation, misappropriation (aka stealing) of public funds and staff abuses were found in addition to verifying the details surrounding the affair and attempted cover-up. A legislative vote to remove both Courser and Gamrat for misconduct was held. Courser resigned before the vote and Gamrat got voted out. A state police investigation was then held to determine the extent of the misconduct and also the identity of the original “blackmailer.” It was Gamrat’s husband. In the end, Gamrat got divorced and Courser stayed married. They both had the audacity to try to run for office again, but lost. The abused staffers who leaked the story received a large taxpayer-funded settlement. In a strange twist of fate for me, one of those staffers had been my former intern.

  33. Our former state senator, Leland Yee, was busted for racketeering, money laundering, and arms trafficking. That was awkward.

  34. Florida here. There’s a veritable treasure trove. Rick Scott defrauding Medicare, making 1/3 of a billion dollars for doing so at the tax payers expense BEFORE being elected governor.

    DeSantis using an obvious racial epitaph during his gubernatorial race. Encouraging people across the nation to flee their states that took COVID seriously resulting in many thousands of body bags. He also authorized dumping 215 million gallons of toxic waste water into Tampa Bay.

    DeSantis currently about to sign a bill creating an “anti-communist” holiday.

    Bush Sr. Presidential election.

    Matt Gaetz still being in office and not in prison despite paying to rape multiple minor girls.

    I mean, it’s scandal all yhe way down.

  35. Florida’s government is incredibly corrupt and is almost entirely Republican.

    Right now we have:
    Pedophile Matt Gaetz being popular while being openly investigated for human trafficking.
    We have pedophile Brian Mast who made approving comments about raping 15-year-old girls.
    We have Senator Rick Scott who is a well-known fraudster.

    In the past, we’ve had a number of political scandals. I think Mark Foley is a pretty well-known one from the early 2000s when he was caught having sexually explicit text conversations with congressional pages.

    I can’t remember the full details, but Marco Rubio was investigated for corruption when he was in the state legislature. I literally can’t find any information on it anymore.

  36. Our governor and his staff pulled their families out of retirement/nursing homes right before they forced all of them to intake covid patents. It ended up killing tens of thousands of elderly people that were exposed. Many people lost parents/grandparents due to his actions.

    They knew that’s what would happen, and did it anyhow.

    This is the same governor that shut down where I work. At the time, I was designing and building ICU rooms. We appealed, telling them what we were building. We were told we had to close as ICU rooms are non-essential during a pandemic.

    I can’t tell you how many lives are on his hands. His hands are forever stained with blood.

  37. Hold my beer…

    The big one within living memory is Bridgegate, when Governor Chris Christie’s staffers intentionally closed toll lanes on the Fort Lee, NJ side of the George Washington Bridge during rush hour to create enormous traffic jams. This was revealed to be an act of political retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee for failing to endorse Christie during his reelection campaign in 2013.

    But here are some others: in the 1970s, the FBI pulled a sting operation by pretending to be Arab businessmen and offering bribes. Two NJ congressmen and the mayor of Camden, among other public officials, were convicted in the end.

    In 1985, a member of the state general assembly was brought up on corruption charges, so he went on vacation to the Bahamas and faked his own death in a scuba diving “accident”. He was arrested in the Maldives two years later.

    The FBI and the IRS kept an investigation open for 12 years called Operation Bid Rig to look into bribery and money laundering in New Jersey. There were a lot of arrests, but I think the most memorable of them happened in 2009 when they arrested 44 people in one go. Among them were the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, the Jersey City deputy mayor, the commissioner of the State Housing Authority, a group of Orthodox Jewish rabbis, and a guy who dealt in human kidneys.

    Oh, and one time, the vice president killed the former treasury secretary in a duel.

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