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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Only God knows why the GOP hopeful called a press conference to deny he's having an affair with a pretty staff member.
Sep 29, 1999 | GOP presidential aspirant Gary Bauer held an odd, meandering press conference Wednesday in which he vehemently denied obscure and little-reported rumors that he was having an affair with an attractive, 26-year-old blond female aide.
Indeed, Bauer, who began by introducing his wife of 27 years, Carol, and their three children, insisted that he had "not ever had any physical contact with anybody -- in my campaign or out of my campaign -- other than my wife."
Bauer, a Christian activist and the former president of the Family Research Council, said that the "disgusting, outrageous, evil, and sick" rumor had been circulating in Washington for "five or six weeks." While never mentioning competing candidate Malcolm "Steve" Forbes by name, Bauer and several of his aides hinted strongly that Forbes' minions had been the ones spreading the story.
"There are people here in the media that have told us in recent days that a particular campaign's doing this," Bauer said. "I think it's a fair guess to suggest that somebody wants to drive me out of the campaign."
A Forbes aide dismissed Bauer's charges as groundless. "We did not hear about this thing until we saw it on 'The Hotline,'" a daily political news and gossip roundup, the Forbes aide says. "The whole thing is silly; it's absurd. Believe me, we're not spending any time worrying about Gary's love life."
Others were worrying, however. According to a Bauer campaign source, rumors about a personal relationship between Bauer and the aide had been circulating within Bauer's own campaign ranks for months before the report trickled out into the media on Tuesday. The source said that Bauer has been traveling with her on a daily basis and the two have been so inseparable that it was like a "husband-wife relationship."
Several times throughout the past few months, the aide said, top advisors have warned Bauer about the office rumors and advised him to distance himself from the woman. The aides worried about the "appearance factor," the source said -- that it didn't look good for Bauer to be spending so much time with an attractive young woman. According to Washington Post religion writer Hanna Rosin, many other Christian conservatives -- like the Rev. James Dobson and the Rev. Billy Graham -- have avoided traveling with women for that very reason.
"Bauer told them basically to buzz off -- that it was his personal business," says the Bauer campaign source.
When asked today if aides had ever expressed concerns about Bauer's travels or closed-door meetings with the aide, Bauer repeatedly dodged the question, saying only that he has "a right to meet with people on my campaign staff ... [and] to have strategy meetings."
Bauer told reporters he decided he had to act once he realized that the rumors had spread throughout the capital. "Everybody I know has heard this report," he said.
At first, Bauer said, he "didn't know how to handle it." He said he had shared the rumor with his family because of "the possibility that in a small town like Washington, D.C., they would hear this from" others.
"This was becoming so widespread, and each time it was passed around it had a different angle to it, or a different permutation to it, and it went directly to me and my wife and my children," he said. "And the prospect that I was facing is that this sort of rumor-mongering and character assassination would continue forever."
