Top 10 Political Scandals of the Decade

Politicians seemed especially entertaining this past decade. Here are ten of my favorite scandals.

Let's start with the political scandal that gave us a new word for the public lexicon - "sexting." Not since Nixon gave us the "gate" suffix to attach to political scandals (such as Monicagate, after Monica Lewinsky's relationship with then U.S. President Bill Clinton or Camillagate, the tape of telephone conversations between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles while Charles was married to Princess Diana) have we had a political scandal word to add to our dictionaries.

1. Kwame Kilpatrick, Mayor of Detroit, was caught "sexting" his chief of staff. The mayor got into hot water in 2002 for his Manoogian Mansion (the property was owned by the State of Michigan) parties and the suspicions of him about the 2003 murder of a stripper named Strawberry. Mr. Kilpatrick lied under oath about having an affair with an aide, and was found guilty of perjury. Kilpatrick racked up a mind-numbing 14,000 text messages over the course of the affair, and all messages were sent and received on his city-owned equipment. He served his four-month sentence and was released on Feb. 4, 2009. I've selected this scandal because it was groundbreaking in that it gave us a new word - "sexting."

2. Whoopi Goldberg's blog perfectly speaks what is in on my mind about Sarah Palin. Whoopi states, "I also thought that this idea of America first coming from her was kind of strange because she was one of the people who wanted to secede from the United States. She was part of a campaign to secede Alaska from the United States of America. So I'm glad she's back, putting America first. I also thought it was disingenuous for her to open with her record on the Bridge to Nowhere. When she was running for governor in 2006, she was all for the bridge and once she won she was against the bridge, this was also a woman who wanted books banned. I just find it extraordinary. She feels that her governorship qualifies her to be the VP. She has no foreign policy experience, she doesn't have very much experience with anything but Alaska, and being governor, as we know, is not necessarily a carte blanche to being president. We just came through eight years with former Gov. Bush and that didn't work so well."

3. Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic governor of Illinois, was impeached and removed from office on January 29, 2009 after it was decided that he had been abusing his power. According to Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich) "in a complaint issued shortly after FBI agents arrested Blagojevich in a pre-dawn raid on his home on Chicago's North Side, federal prosecutors asserted in a nationally televised press conference that Blagojevich tried to use the Cubs sale as leverage in obtaining favorable treatment in the editorial pages of the Chicago Tribune. Blagojevich is accused of saying, on a recorded wiretap, that if the Cubs wanted IFA financing for the sale of Wrigley Field or grants for remodeling of the ballpark, the Tribune had to "fire all those [expletive] people, get 'em the [expletive] out of there, and get us some editorial support." Prosecutors also said that they had information suggesting Blagojevich was about to appoint someone to fill Obama's Senate seat after he put it up for sale, and cited this as the main reason for why they arrested him. Rod will appear on Season 9 of The Celebrity Apprentice in spring 2010."

4. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was supposed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, but he was really in Argentina, presumably to end his five-year relationship with a woman there. He effectively left the state unprotected since he lied about his whereabouts and did not officially transfer the Governor's power to the Lieutenant Governor. ABC News reported that, "What ignited national curiosity was that Sanford's security agents were unaware of his whereabouts and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer -- who would be in charge in the governor's absence -- said he didn't even know Sanford was going away." Thus, Sanford affectively went AWOL and left the state of Illinois in danger.

According to Politico.com, Sanford stated, "'I have been unfaithful to my wife. I developed a relationship with what started out as a dear, dear friend from Argentina. I'm a bottom line kind of guy I'm just gonna lay it out. It's gonna hurt and I'm going to let the chips fall where they may,' said Sanford, often touted as a potential 2012 presidential hopeful."

ABC News reported that Sanford said, "his wife of nearly 20 years was aware of his affair before he left for Argentina, and that the family had been trying to work through the situation for 'about the last five months.'"

5. I have an especially negative view of John Edwards. Yes, I understand that some politicians cheat on their wives. I'm not saying that all politicians cheat any more that I'd inaccurately deduce that all actors, actors, or rock stars have affairs. However, what made Mr. Edwards' political scandal so heinous wasn't that he cheated on his wife, which is, unfortunately so common, but that his wife had a recurrence of cancer and he was cheating on her as she was battling this life-threatening disease.

6. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer really enjoyed hookers and the amount of money he spent on them, upwards of $80,000, showed that the infamous "Client 9" really enjoyed his extracurricular activities. Edwards favorite, "Kristen" (real name - Alexandra Dupré), is a prostitute who worked at the now defunct Emperors Club VIP. The scandal was so juicy that Law & Order used it for an episode. Dupré has had offers from Penthouse and Hustler to do shoots with them. The poetic justice is this: Spitzer resigned and his replacement, David Paterson, admitted to having an affair just one day after taking office.

7. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, better known as the D.C. Madam who serviced Washington's elite and politicos for 13 years was, according to CNN, "convicted April 15 in connection with a high-end prostitution ring catering to Washington's elite. She had said in interviews that she would kill herself before going to prison." According to Time magazine, "It was Palfrey's phone records that led to problems for prominent Washington figures once her prosecution got under way. She had thousands of pages, including 10,000 to 15,000 numbers of clients calling in to her California residence. Besides Sen. Vitter, others whose names appeared on those records included Randall Tobias, a senior State Department official in charge of foreign aid - who had publicly inveighed against prostitution and who quickly resigned after his name was made public. Harlan Ullman, a well-known military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, was also identified."

True to her word, after servicing a client, the D.C. Madam was found hanging in her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, Florida in early May, 2008.

8. Rep. Mark Foley, from Florida resigned amid allegations that "he had sent sexually explicit Internet messages to at least one underage male former page." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901574.html

9. In 2006, Jack Abramoff, a powerful Washington lobbyist, pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion, and mail fraud. His cooperation with prosecutors helped their investigation of influence peddling that threatened powerful members of the U.S. Congress. The fallout from Abramoff and Foley lead many Republicans, including then White House political adviser Karl Rove to believe that the defeat of many Republican congressional representatives at midterm was directly related to the Abramoff and Mark Foley scandals.

10. Finally one of the funniest, most modern sex scandals to date; Mike Duvall was a California State Assembly member who was in the middle of a committee appropriations meeting. During a break, Duvall didn't realize that his microphone was hot so he talked about his affair and many naughty things to his friend. The whole conversation was recorded, and aired for the world to hear. You can read the transcript here.