It’s enough to make Tiger Woods blush.
Tales of strippers and Georgia state lawmakers cavorting on the coast. A state school superintendent fleecing taxpayers to fund a face-lift. A powerful state senator using his businesses to steal campaign money — he also looted charities.
Welcome to Georgia’s gold-domed Capitol, which has been the backdrop for a spate of salacious scandals over the years. Most involved sex or money — or both. The most recent, which forced the Dec. 3 resignation of House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) over allegations of a marriage-wrecking affair with a lobbyist, is just that — the latest in a long line of lawmakers behaving badly in Georgia and state capitals across the nation.
“Power is an aphrodisiac,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The temptations just overwhelm some of these guys. You’re never going to stop it.”
There are about 7,400 state lawmakers across the nation, about three-fourths of them men, Sabato said. They hold vast law-making power over businesses worth billions of dollars. They operate in a landscape defined by the constant need to raise campaign cash. They are away from home for months at a time and are wined and dined by armies of lobbyists, including many attractive young women.
It creates a political petri dish, with all the right ingredients for trouble.
“The lobbyists are on the like bees on honey, and the legislators are the honey,” Sabato said. “They are the money, they are the regulators and all the rest. They are where the power is.”
Last week, Missouri newspapers were filled with the sordid tale of former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton, charged with battering a woman in her home in a sexual interlude that apparently began as a consensual rendezvous. Then there’s the recent case of former California lawmaker Mike Duvall, a married man forced to resign after he was caught bragging about having sex with two women, one of them an energy lobbyist.
Georgia’s list of Capitol miscues began long before Richardson. Consider these:
● 1995: Lobbyists treat five Georgia lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — to a golf outing on Daufuskie Island, S.C. Four strippers from Atlanta’s Cheetah Lounge tag along for reasons that are never explained. Lobbyists and lawmakers swear nothing inappropriate occurred. The incident spurs calls for tighter ethics rules and tarnishes several political careers. Among the attendees was current House Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek).
● 2005: Former state Senate Majority Leader Charles Walker (D-Augusta), one of the state’s most powerful men, is sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges that include illegally profiting from advertisers in his Augusta newspaper, defrauding campaign contributors and illegally doing business with the state through two public hospitals.
● 2006: Former state school Superintendent Linda Schrenko, a Republican with gubernatorial ambitions, lands in federal prison after pleading guilty to embezzlement and money-laundering charges in a plot to steal federal funds intended for deaf and honor students. Schrenko used $9,300 of the loot for a face-lift.
“I don’t know if there are more scandals than there used to be, or you just hear about them more,” said Alan Rosenthal, a Rutgers University political scientist and author of the 1996 book “Drawing the Line: Legislative Ethics in the States.”
In the past, Rosenthal said, there was no blogger-crowded, gossip-saturated Internet. Print and broadcast journalists largely ignored politicians’ sexual dalliances.
And there is the Clinton factor, he said. Then-president Bill Clinton had an affair with a young intern, lied to the nation about it, then tried to redefine not only what sex is, but what “is is.” But his wife stood by him and he survived an impeachment attempt.
Rosenthal said there is little doubt the Clinton affair had an impact on politicians who followed.
“When the president is involved in a scandal with an intern in the While House and gets away with it, then other people say ‘Why not?’ ” Rosenthal said.
Despite the headlines, Rosenthal believes legislative standards have improved over the last few decades.
“But that doesn’t mean there aren’t rogue legislators,” he said.
‘Mood right’ for change?
The Georgia Capitol is a cacophonous zoo during the 40-day legislative session. It’s a place where school kids crowd the marble corridors alongside high-paid lobbyists, more than a few in high heels and form-flattering outfits. Sometimes the packed halls look as if a school bus collided with a modeling agency.
Also crowding the place are the state’s 236 lawmakers. They are lawyers, teachers, farmers and business owners. Each makes a base salary of just $16,000 a year. They must run for office every two years, which means they are always running for office. Even a mid-level campaign can cost $50,000.
“The system is skewed to allow lobbyists to have an incredible amount of influence,” said state Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-Atlanta).
She said “inappropriate relationships” were a part of the Capitol long before Republicans took power a few years back. Democrats ran the state for more than a century before that.
“Our abuses of power led in part to our loss of the majority, and now we see the same issues bringing down the Republican Party,” Benfield said.
State Rep. Wendell Willard (R-Sandy Springs) said he plans to introduce legislation limiting lobbyist spending to $100 per lawmaker per session.
“We can do things to control the issues regarding money,” Willard said. “You can’t do much to legislate morality.”
But Benfield, the mother of two small children, said she believes that problem can be addressed as well.
“If more women were in leadership positions, I doubt we’d see the sexual indiscretions that have been plaguing the Georgia General Assembly,” she said. “I’d love to see a woman with the gavel in the state House or Senate for a change.”
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