9 Political Sex Scandals As Bad As Schwarzenegger’s

Thursday, May 19th, 2011 | View Comments

Feel better, Arnold Schwarzenegger! You’re hardly the first politician to be embroiled in a crazy sex scandal because of infidelity.

By Kevin Koenig

We’re not sure what’s more surprising: That Arnold Schwarzenegger had an illegitimate son with his housekeeper, that he managed to keep it out of the media for 10 years, or that the housekeeper kind of looks like the Predator.

Something that isn’t surprising? That yet another politician is embroiled in yet another sex scandal because of his infidelity. Most people know about Lotharios like Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton. But there are plenty of other political sex scandals you may not know about — or may not know all the gritty details about. So these are some of our favorites!

Newt Gingrich
In the late 1990s, current Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House and leading the charge to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. In fact, Gingrich used the opportunity to label not only Clinton but Democrats in general as people with no concept of “family values.”

Which in retrospect is hilarious because Gingrich was secretly cheating on his wife at the time.

Well, second wife. Gingrich allegedly told his first wife, who he met when she was his high school geometry teacher (seriously), that he wanted a divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery (seriously). Six months after the divorce became final, his mistress became Wife #2. In 1999, as Gingrich was trying to nail Clinton to the wall for perjury and obstruction of justice, Wife #2 was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Bad move, Wife #2. Turns out Newt had a side piece — a perfectly healthy Congressional staffer who was 23 years his junior. Soon after the diagnosis, Gingrich bailed and married her.

Not a great track record for a conservative candidate for president, eh? It’s cool though; as he recently told the Christian Broadcasting Network, his infidelity was merely the result of “how passionately [he] felt about his country.” Seriously.

Larry Craig
Craig, a conservative Republican Senator from Idaho, was an enthusiastic supporter of anti-gay legislation. Well, all things considered that’s not all that surpr — oh, wait.

Craig was arrested in 2007 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for propositioning an undercover cop in a men’s room. Craig allegedly waived his hand under the partition, tapped his foot several times, and pressed his foot up against the officer in the neighboring stall. This was apparently a secret code for dudes who liked to get it on in airport bathrooms.

When questioned about whether or not he was trying to solicit sex, Craig told cops he simply had a “wide stance.” Lol!

Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, but never admitted to soliciting sex from a man. Following the incident, eight gay men came forward claiming to have been either approached by Craig for sex, or to have actually boned Craig. He denied it as he served out his term. He did not seek reelection.

Jim McGreevey 
McGreevey served as a democratic Governor of New Jersey from 2002 to 2004, when he abruptly resigned and proclaimed that he was “a gay American.” A story that he was having an affair with a former Israeli Defense Force member who had worked on McGreevey’s gubernatorial campaign was going to break any day, and he thought coming clean would help him save face. It didn’t.

Further reports in the press made it seem as if his wife may not have been as shocked as the rest of the country. Teddy Pedersen, a former driver for the governor, came forward with a story about how the governor and his wife Dina regularly engaged in threesomes with him. Those romantic nights would allegedly begin at a local T.G.I. Friday’s and then move back to the governor’s home. Pedersen contends the three even had a special name for the trysts: “Friday Night Specials.”

The McGreeveys divorced in 2008.

Warren G. Harding
Our 29th president had two long-term affairs. Carrie Phillips was a family friend who began hooking up with Harding in the spring of 1905. Both spouses became aware of the romps and tried to stop it, but to no avail. It was only when Harding became the Republican nominee for president in 1920 that GOP officials stepped in and agreed to pay Phillips a yearly stipend and offered her and her husband an extended vacation out of the country to keep news of their affair away from the public.

Harding’s second “other woman” was 22-year-old Nan Britton, another family friend. She became infatuated with him, and eventually — according to her — the two began a sexual relationship during which the 51-year-old Harding would sweep Britton off her feet with regular trysts in … a broom closet at the White House.

In her 1927 autobiography, The President’s Daughter, Britton outlines their relationship and claims Harding fathered her child, Elizabeth Ann, in 1919. Her book is considered the first best-selling political kiss-and-tell, but some historians say it’s full of lies because Harding may very well have been sterile.

Mark Sanford
From June 18th to June 24th of 2009, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina was nowhere to be found. His wife claimed he was off “writing something.” His staff said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Neither was true.

Sanford was actually in Buenos Aires lamenting over a break-up with an Argentinean woman he’d been having a yearlong affair with. When his indiscretions became public, Sanford was censured by the South Carolina House of Representatives — a slap on the wrist — and his wife packed up and left. Both were embarrassing, but things got really weird when love letters he wrote to his mistress surfaced. A sample line: “To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background.” What a romantic!

Ted Kennedy
On July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy was a second-term senator who’d been married for 11 years. That night he left a party on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne. What happened — or was going to happen — between the two is speculation; shortly after leaving, Kennedy’s car rolled off a wooden bridge and fell into seven feet of water. Kennedy made it out alive. Kopechne drowned.

He called both his lawyer and Kopechne’s parents that night, but he didn’t call the police. This led many to believe he was drunk at the time of the crash. It didn’t prevent an abortive run for president in 1980, but it did haunt him for the rest of his political career.

John Edwards
John Edwards was one of the frontrunners in the race to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. But in October 2007, theNational Enquirer broke a story about Edwards’ out-of-wedlock child with a woman named Rielle Hunter. In August ’08, Edwards admitted to ABC News that he had made “a very serious mistake” with Hunter, but denied that the kid was his. It wasn’t until January 2010 that the senator finally came clean and admitted that he was the father. Oh, and Edwards was having the affair while his wife of 30 years, Elizabeth, was battling cancer.

Gary Condit
Condit served as a California Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989-2003. And most people probably would have never heard of the guy if it weren’t for a 24-year-old woman named Chandra Levy, a Washington intern who went missing in 2001. Reports soon surfaced that Levy had had an affair with the 53-year-old family man. This piqued the curiosity of the police, who questioned Condit three times before he finally admitted to the relationship. Condit was eventually cleared of foul play — another man was eventually convicted of murdering her — but the investigation into his relationship with Levy turned up another affair he was having with flight attendant Ann Marie Smith. Condit, of course, denies it happened. He ran for reelection in ’03, but lost.

John F. KennedyThis guy is the king of political infidelity. So much so that 40 years after his death, mistresses were still coming forward. While you’ve no doubt heard of his alleged affair with Marilyn Monroe, she was just one in a long line that included artist and D.C. socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer, Pamela Turnure (his wife’s press secretary), and former White House intern Mimi Fahnestock, who came forward in 2003.

While Monroe was the most famous mistress, Judith Exner may have been the most important. She was introduced to JFK by Frank Sinatra — JFK’s pal and her former lover — while Kennedy was still a senator and presidential candidate. But she too had a few boyfriends on the side. For instance, gangsters Sam Giancana and John Roselli. Some people still argue that it had something to do with his 1963 assassination.