The city’s mayor had come into office with historic popularity that suddenly took a shot over one of the oldest indiscretions in politics. The mayor’s long marriage was in trouble. Worse, the faithful wife had filed for divorce. Worse still, there were rumors about another woman.
The mayor’s entire political career now seemed in jeopardy. Once regarded a frontrunner to succeed the incumbent governor and possibly even of national aspirations, his future had gone into crisis control mode.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa?
Hardly.
The mayor in trouble was then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now the frontrunner among Republican presidential candidates – showing that there can be political success even after divorce, infidelity and scandal.
“Giuliani broke the mold,” says national political watcher Steve Benan, who writes for Washington Monthly magazine. “Giuliani marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade with his mistress and then announced that he was getting a divorce in a press conference – before his wife knew anything about it.
“And his first marriage to a (second) cousin ended in an annulment.”
“Villaraigosa’s divorce and any scandal that may result wouldn’t be the death knell for his career. He could do the same thing Giuliani did and be back strong in the national (political) picture. What are the Republicans going to say when so many of their own have done the same thing or worse?”
Indeed, successful candidates with infidelity in their closet is a fairly new wrinkle in politics that should give encouragement to Villaraigosa backers and pause to naysayers who may have been too quick to suggest that the mayor’s marital breakup – and any scandal associated with it – could tarnish his rising political star.
The Los Angeles Times, until recently on an extended political honeymoon in its coverage of Villaraigosa, reported that “even some of Villaraigosa's closest friends say they do not expect him to emerge unscathed, particularly if more damaging revelations emerge.”
Even pundits like Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund "Pat" Brown Institute at California State University, Los Angeles, who usually makes nothing but positive assessments of Villaraigosa, warned that the mayor’s breakup could present problems if “this proves to be something that has legs.”
“If there is a nasty divorce with repercussions,” said Regalado, “then it becomes (politically) dangerous.”
Villaraigosa has admitted infidelity in the past – an affair that prompted Corina Villaraigosa to file for divorce in 1994.
A New Yorker profile on the mayor last month detailed how on the morning after his first political election -- an Eastside state Assembly primary -- Villaraigosa disappeared out of town with the wife of a campaign fund-raiser and mother of his godchild. Corina Villaraigosa, who was recovering from a reoccurrence of thyroid cancer, learned of the affair only after calling the campaign office looking for her husband.
Corina Villaraigosa immediately filed for divorce, leading to a separation that lasted almost two years.
In the wake of the Villaraigosas’ most recent breakup, the mayor has refused to comment on questions about another woman – setting off a fury of suspicion and curiosity about who the woman might be.
In the past week, speculation about the purported other woman’s identifications along with theories of the extent of the suspected romance have been continuing topics on KFI’s “Ken and John Show” as well as on the MayorSamSisterCity.com blog – both longtime critics of Villaraigosa.
It has been part of a feeding frenzy on the Villaraigosa breakup that, like all political divorces and scandals, may shock and titillate – but which surprisingly may not have a lasting impact on the futures of those politicians.
It is stunning given that as recent as 1988 a highly publicized extramarital affair killed the presidential campaign of then Colorado Senator Gary Hart, who at the time was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
But pundits like veteran Los Angeles political consultant Joe Cerrell say that today divorce and scandal may create headlines but that they no longer break political careers.
“It’s a new ball game,” says Cerrell. “All you have to do is look at Giuliani, and he’s not alone.”
They point to the top three polling Republicans in the presidential mix – Giuliani, Arizona Senator John McCain and former Tennessee Senator/actor Fred Thompson – as candidates who apparently have overcome divorces and, in the cases of McCain and Giuliani, scandal. Thompson, who is not yet a declared candidate, has been divorced twice.
Another GOP candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Gingrich, has been divorced twice amid scandalous circumstances. According to his first wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, the forced her to discuss the divorce terms while she was recovering from cancer surgery, according to her account.
Gingrich’s second divorce in 2000 came after an acknowledge affair with his current wife – which he admitted was carried on while he was pushing for Clinton's impeachment.
According to published reports, in 1979 McCain began courting a 25-year-old former cheerleader while still married and living with his wife who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam. McCain divorced his first wife, remarried the ex-cheerleader months later, then launched his political career with his new wife's family money.
About the same time, Ronald Reagan proved that Americans were willing to elect a divorced man as president. He had been married to the actress Jane Wyman before his marriage to Nancy.
Political historian Michael Beschloss says that from the beginning of the republic through the 1960s and early 1970s the press had kept stories of presidential peccadillos under wraps because "the tacit assumption was that the American people were not grown up enough to assimilate that kind of news."
But, says Beschloss, the Watergate scandal of political corruption illustrated how important character and integrity was, and that "if candidates can't bear up under full disclosure, they have no business being in politics."
Beschloss and others point to the 1990s and the extramarital troubles of President Bill Clinton as the time when the political climate for infidelity among politicians began changing to include a higher tolerance among voters for indiscretions in those areas.
“It wasn't until 2000 that McCain, possibly emboldened by Clinton's survival of his scandals, became the first confessed adulterer to have the nerve to run,” says Benen, whose also blogs at TheCarpetbaggerReport.com. “Now, just a few years after infidelity was considered a dealbreaker for a presidential candidate, the party that presents itself as the arbiter of virtue may field an unprecedented two-timing trifecta.”
Experts say it all augurs well for all politicians, especially rising darlings like Villaraigosa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has also been mentioned as a future gubernatorial contender. Earlier this year, Newsom admitted to an affair with the wife of his re-election campaign manager.
It also speaks to a curious phenomenon among voters, say experts -- that they will tolerate in their political leaders what they would not in their spouses.
“People have a certain image of a political leader and, if that image is strong enough, it can’t be shaken,” say Steven Mintz, co-chair of the Council On Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research think tank on families based at the University of Houston. “The image people have of Giuliani is that of a strong leader, and it’s helped him survive.”
Mintz also believes the country has gone through what he calls “morality fatique.”
“When something like this occurred the first time, society was disapproving,” says Mintz. “But then there’s a second time and a third and so on, and society gets accustomed.
“When Nelson Rockefeller ran for president (in 1964), his divorce destroyed his campaign. But by 1976, people were accustomed to politicians who had been divorced, and Ronald Reagan was able to make a serious run at the (Republican) nomination. By 1980, he could get elected without divorce being an issue.”
In fact, only a small minority of voters – mostly evangelicals and political conservatives -- actually do care about candidates infidelities.
According to a study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 62 percent of Republican respondents but only 25 percent of Democrats said they would be less likely to support a candidate who had an extramarital affair in the past.
"Americans understand that political marriages are complicated -- that they're not exactly like every other marriage or romance under the sun," says "Usually, politicians are very ambitious. You have to be driven in ways that most people aren't. I would never say that all of these are marriages of convenience, but it's more common than in normal marriages."
Mintz also draws a distinction between Villaraigosa’s marital breakup and any possible new romantic precipitating it with the political demise of onetime Democratic darling Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio and Clinton administration Cabinet member.
“Cisneros was haunted by an affair that ruined his political career,” said Mintz. “But what made his situation different was the financial shenanigans that showed this to be more than a sexual affair.”
Cisneros, according to reports and count documents, reached a secret agreement to buy his mistress’ silence, then lied about it to the FBI during his Cabinet appointment vetting – a felony that led to his forced resignation and plea bargain agreement, though Clinton later pardoned him in the final days of his administration.
For his part, Villaraigosa has made all the right crisis control moves, experts agree. Even his much-criticized press conference where he would not address questions about the breakup served its purpose – to publicly accept full blame for the failure of the marriage.
“I know it may seem like the end of the world for Villaraigosa right now,” says Benan, “but in the overall scheme of things, history is on his side.”
