Politician’s salacious sexual actions continue to make news – Evansville Courier & Press
INDIANAPOLIS — One of the first stories I wrote for this newspaper was about a politician’s salacious sexual actions.
It was 2006, and I was a summer intern in Evansville. John Gerard, who was a township assessor in Vanderburgh County — a position that no longer exists — had been caught masturbating in a public restroom in Indianapolis and exposing himself to a plainclothes police officer.
My assignment was to pose the question to him: Will you resign? And, to others in the Republican Party’s local infrastructure — Gerard was a Republican, after all — the question: Are you all pressuring him to resign?
The answer to both questions was yes. And I hoped I’d never have to write a story like that one again.
Ha!
The latest instance of a politician’s salacious sexual actions becoming a news story occurred Friday when it was reported that state Rep. Phil Hinkle, R-Indianapolis, offered to pay an 18-year-old Indianapolis man as much as $140 “for a good time” at a downtown hotel.
Hinkle was responding to the man’s Craigslist ad, in which he said he was searching for a “sugga daddy.”
The man, Kameryn Gibson, and his family provided an email exchange setting up the meeting to the Indianapolis Star. Gibson said he did not go through with the rendezvous, though Hinkle tried to keep him in the room when Gibson sought to leave.
Later, Gibson told Indianapolis TV station WTHR that he decided to go public with the ordeal because Hinkle is a state legislator who voted in favor of a constitutional same-sex marriage ban earlier this year.
Interesting story, but one we should approach with a heaping dose of skepticism.
Anyway, the reputation of the 64-year-old Hinkle, who has a wife and two children, is tarred, and it’d be a surprise if he doesn’t resign soon — perhaps as early as Monday.
It’ll change the dynamics of the debate over local government reform, since Hinkle chaired the House panel that had tackled the issue in recent years and that had approached it only grudgingly. But little else will change, since Republicans have a 60-40 House majority.
This sort of thing has become all too common.
In the last two years in Indiana, we’ve seen U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, a Republican who represented the Fort Wayne area in Congress, resign after admitting an extramarital affair with a staffer that included being caught having sex in a state park.
Last October, Bureau of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Andy Miller resigned after being arrested at Claypool Court in Indianapolis, the same place Gerard was arrested, doing almost exactly the same thing.
Back in 1998, U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican who represents parts of northeastern Indiana still, was an outspoken critic of President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. That’s what ultimately forced Burton to acknowledge that he fathered a son out of wedlock.
These are all Hoosiers, and their getting caught has little to do — unlike some other recent instances in Congress — with technology.
In the cases of Hinkle and Burton, the story is hypocrisy. With Gerard and Miller, it’s breaking the law.
There are so many other instances where lawmakers and politicians push the boundaries — for example, the time state Rep. Dennie Oxley Jr., D-English, was caught impersonating a state legislator after leaving a 21-year-old woman who interned at the Statehouse passed out in a gas station parking lot — but don’t necessarily get caught.
Either way, the take-away lesson remains that if you’re going to engage in salacious sexual behavior, you probably ought not also turn yourself into a public figure.
n Eric Bradner can be reached at bradnere@courierpress.com or by phone at 317-631-7405.