Stout, open about past, won Richardson's seat

By Nancy Badertscher

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Paulding County lost a powerful state legislator to a sex scandal, then picked as his successor a man with his own infidelity issues.

Glenn Richardson, the House speaker and one of Paulding County’s two state representatives, resigned after his former wife said in a December television interview that she knew of his affair with a lobbyist. The interview silenced a sympathetic outpouring that followed his disclosure that he’d tried to kill himself.

In a special election last week, Daniel Stout, a 29-year-old community banker, won a three-way race for Richardson’s legislative seat, despite having to explain an affair he had with his mother-in-law 10 years earlier while he was married to his first wife.

The election was decided by less than 5 percent of the county’s voters. But some bloggers and political pundits -- locally and nationally -- have linked the two sex scandals and chided Paulding County.

Stout “at least kept his infidelities within the family,” a columnist said in a recent story on the Huffington Post.

Stout said Paulding County, where he moved after the affair, doesn’t deserve the unflattering characterizations.

“They [county residents] aren’t willing to accept misbehavior,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “At the same time, it’s a county that opens its arms, cares and forgives.”

That extends to Richardson, said Stout.

“They hate what happened, but they absolutely love Glenn Richardson,” he said.

In 2007, Democrats asked for an investigation into rumors Richardson had an affair with an Atlanta Gas Light lobbyist while pushing legislation that benefited the utility. The complaint went nowhere in the GOP-controlled General Assembly.

Stout said he wasn’t surprised when reports of his affair surfaced on blogs in the last few days of the campaign. Shortly after the affair, he confessed to his wife and pastor and asked forgiveness before members of the Dunwoody church he was attending.

“God took me, broke me and ground me,” he said. “The real story to me is not about judgment, but about forgiveness and change.”

In the final days of the campaign, Stout posted his cellphone number and welcomed voters to call if they wanted to discuss the affair. He also said in a Web post that the affair “stopped short of ‘sex,’” but was still adulterous, unfaithful and broke up his first marriage. He remarried in 2005 and remains close to the daughter from his first marriage.

Ron Davis, a software company administrator who lives in Paulding County and voted for Stout, said he doesn’t believe it’s fair to draw too many comparisons between Stout and Richardson.

Stout wasn’t a legislator at the time of the affair, Davis said.

“And he was forthcoming about it,” he said. “Richardson wasn’t so much.”

Davis said he also took into account Stout’s young age at the time of the affair and his support for pro-life legislation, smaller government and lower taxes.

Dannie Moore, a Paulding County resident and mother of six, said she’s known Stout for about two years through the local Right to Life chapter and supported him in the election.

“I think he’s proven himself to the people he works with and the people he’s been around,” she said.

Moore said she’s been impressed by his solid second marriage, his level of maturity and knowledge. She dismissed the affair as a mistake of youth.

“I don’t know that it was right to dig up something like that,” Moore said. “That’s not him.

Rep. Martin Scott, a longtime friend and three-term legislator from Rossville, said he was a member of the church in Dunwoody that Stout attended and was at services on the day Stout appeared before him and about 300 others to ask forgiveness.

“Every single person -- men, women and children -- got in line, hugged him and said they forgave him,” Scott said. “I’d never been in anything like that, and I hope I never am again. It was a powerful testimony of growth and repentance."

Stout could be sworn in later this week to fill Richardson's unexpired term through the end of this year.