From THINK PROGRESS:
[…] Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), a member of GOP leadership and a potential candidate for president in 2012, [held] a press conference […] in which he [acknowledged] having an extramarital affair “with a campaign staffer who was married to an employee in Ensign’s Senate office.” Ensign flew back to Las Vegas to make the public announcement.
Ummm, Senator? In this case, what happens in Vegas ain’t gonna stay in Vegas!
(top to bottom: thrice-married Newt Gingrich, serial adulterer; David Vitter, diaper-clad whoremonger, John ‘Pot-calling-the-kettle-black’ Ensign, new kid in the club, thrice-married Rudy Giuliani, cross-dressing serial adulterer)
Since his election to the Senate in 2000, Ensign has been a leading conservative voice who demanded the resignation of former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig in September 2007. Ensign called Craig a “disgrace” after he was arrested in June 2007 in an airport men’s restroom on disorderly conduct charges. But when Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) acknowledged having an affair, Ensign didn’t call on him to resign.
Ensign has also been an ardent opponent of gay marriage. In Feb. 2004, Ensign announced his support for an amendment to the Constitution that would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
…snip…
[Ensign said,] “Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution.”
…snip…
In 1998, while running for Nevada’s Senate seat against Harry Reid, Ensign called on President Clinton to resign in light of his admitted affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky […]
From POLITICO:
The Nevada Republican admitted in Las Vegas Tuesday that he had “violated the vows” of marriage by having an affair with a staffer. He did not identify the woman except to say that she and her husband were both “close friends” who worked for him, and that “the closeness” of their relationship had “put me in situations which led to my inappropriate behavior.”
But current and former aides to the Nevada Republican say the woman was 46-year-old Cynthia Hampton, a campaign staffer whose husband was a top aide in Ensign’s Senate office.
“It was known in [Ensign’s] inner circle that they were involved,” a former aide told POLITICO.
Hampton served as the treasurer for Ensign’s reelection campaign and for his leadership fund, Battle Born PAC. According to people familiar with the matter, Ensign’s affair with Hampton took place between December 2007 and August 2008. FEC records show that she ended her affiliation with the two committees in early 2008.
Hampton is married to Douglas Hampton, who, according to Senate records, served as Ensign’s administrative assistant in his personal office from November 2006 to May 2008 — around the same time Cynthia Hampton left Ensign’s committees.
…snip…
Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign’s administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 – required for senior congressional staffers – showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined.
A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent.
Political insiders in Nevada and in the Senate said that Ensign decided to acknowledge the affair publicly after the husband of the woman he had been seeing asked him for a substantial sum of money.
…snip…
Ensign informed fellow Nevadan Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, about his situation prior to making his public announcement.
“I don’t know the details. I talked with him today,” Reid told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon. “Of course, he’s my friend. This is a private, family matter. I just hope that Darlene and he work things out.”
…snip…
Rumors of the affair circulated through the Capitol Tuesday in the hours before Ensign made his announcement. Republican senators were stunned by the news, and Ensign’s future as chairman of the GOP Policy Committee – the No. 4 job in the GOP Senate leadership – was expected to be a topic for discussion among senators Wednesday.
Elected in 2000, the 51-year-old Ensign has moved up the leadership chain in the Senate. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2008, Ensign oversaw the devastating losses by GOP candidates. But his party largely spared him of blame, casting it instead on an unpopular president who dragged down the party’s brand.
…snip…
A staunch fiscal and social conservative, Ensign has been considered a rising star in his party, recently making headlines by speaking at events in Iowa, raising speculation about his interest in a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.
A born-again Christian, Ensign has been a member of the Promise Keepers, a male evangelical group that promotes marital fidelity.
When former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in an airport men’s room in the summer of 2007, Ensign was among Craig’s toughest critics, saying Craig should step down because he had been charged with a crime.
“I wouldn’t put myself, hopefully, in that kind of position, but if I was in a position like that, that’s what I would do,” Ensign told The Associated Press at the time.
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
What a sleeze…
i hope you mean ensign and not me, p of v! 😉 when will the idiots in politics realize that we don’t really care about them having affairs. we’re just sick and tired of being lectured to about family values by idiots who are getting their dinkies stinky with someone other than their spouses.
So it’s really quite accurate to say the GOP are literally a bunch of f@#k ups!
Maybe she can become the ambassador of Monogamy???
Bristol Palin became the ambassador of abstinence
Ohhhh they can have a whole battalion of the Parade of Oxymorons.
This is the 21st century Circus Freak show!
isn’t it ironic that princess sarah and her faux outrage got put on the back burner, because one of her fellow rethugs admitted to getting his dinky stinky with someone other than his wife? 😆
parade of oxymorons!!! i love it!! 😀
So he can stop calling himself a social conservative now ? What’s conservative about putting the wood to your employee’s wife ? Hmmm, on the other hand he may have a point….
i guess he doesn’t screw liberally!
The big GOP picture is becoming clearer by the day. Apparently, infidelity and hypocrisy play major roles in the advancement of their most valuable players.
i bet none of these guys ever got laid when they were young. it took getting some power or money to make them attractive to anyone, and then they can’t keep their zippers under control.
It’s the Rethug credo, do as we tell you, not as we do. Besides, it wasn’t another guy so no big deal, right?
Rethug hypocrisy doesn’t even register with me anymore since I just expect it as a matter of course.
I have passed the saturation point, as well. How sorry they are, to be caught. They all know right from wrong, but they don’t let it effect their behavior. The “Ruling Trash”.
fotc,
it’s like an onion. the affair itself is just the top layer. as you dig deeper, it gets more interesting. read what i posted in reply to jeb. this apparently isn’t the first time the senator has gotten his dinky stinky with another woman. the next layer is the payoffs. the couple and their son did very well financially after the dalliance. at first, i figured ensign would do his penance, and his career would survive. now, i’m not so sure. then there’s another tantalizing layer–did the rnc get involved? it looks like there were payoffs to the other woman’s son. they’ll either come off as complicit or stupid.
it’s not just the hypocrisy! this is from the reno gazette-journal:
The disclosure resurrected questions about a two-week period in 2002, when Ensign abruptly dropped from public view. A person familiar with that episode, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Tuesday the senator told a close associate the absence followed an earlier affair.
…snippy, snip…
Federal records show Cynthia Hampton was on the payroll of Ensign’s Battle Born Political Action Committee at $1,385.24 a month until she was appointed treasurer and her salary was doubled to $2,771.50 starting in February 2008.
Her salary also doubled at Ensign’s campaign committee, where she was treasurer, beginning around the time the affair began. It went from $500 a month to $1,000 a month.
Records also show Doug Hampton received a monthly salary of $13,555 as an administrative assistant in Ensign’s Senate office. He received a payment of $19,679 for his final month of employment and was off the payroll on May 1, 2008, according to Senate records.
Additionally, the National Republican Senatorial Committee made twice-monthly payments, generally $500 apiece, to Brandon Hampton, who Republican officials said was the couple’s son. The payments began in March of last year and ended in August, when Ensign’s office says the affair ended.
cover-up!!!!!!!! i can’t wait until the details come out!
Ensign decided to acknowledge the affair publicly after the husband of the woman he had been seeing asked him for a substantial sum of money.
HAHAHAHAHA!! Yeah, right. Every cuckold in history is just a pimp for their ole lady— “Let’s see now, JOHN, that’s 147 rendezvous for the missionary position, 206 blowjobs, 57 fantasy meet-ups with assorted costumes… that comes to a grand total of, oh, say, 1.2 million spooge-covered dinaros…”
there’s something else going on here. why the need for “a hastily arranged news briefing”? the more i think about it, the more this stinks. if ensign was worried about being blackmailed, why not call the fbi? why is this all being done through press conferences? the kicker for me is that the nrsc was paying the son when ensign was head of it. apparently, this wasn’t his first affair, his wife knew about it, and a lot of other people did, too. it sounds like ensign had been paying the hamptons for their “services” all along. why should we believe that they suddenly started to blackmail him now? there’s gonna be some dirt dug up, and i can’t wait!
I hope his once and future campaign donors realize their money might be going again to his mistress, her husband and their son as hush money.
I guess once Newt crawled out from under the rock again, these family value cocksmen figured all would be forgiven.
John Edwards is trying the same thing, and he’s just as bad as these Republicreeps if you ask me.
Never expect someone who cheats on his or her spouse to show any loyalty to anyone, especially voters.
i don’t think anyone should judge someone else on whether they cheat on their spouse or not. there are 2 sides to every story. in some cases, maybe it’s some kind of deal they have going. one spouse may not enjoy sex, one might be need a beard, and the beard is fine with it if she gets to live in the nice house and have the prestige, or it could be that both of them are screwing around. they might stay together for the children (bad idea, by the way, the kids know you hate each other). we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. that said, those in power had better be damned careful that there is no quid pro quo going on, and keep your mouth shut about family values when you have none. there’s only one way off a pedestal, especially when you’re the one who put you on one.
So he wasn’t caught with a dead girl or a live boy. That’s why he and Vitter are still in the Senate while Larry Craig isn’t.
i still don’t think the shit has hit the fan yet in the ensign affair. too much doesn’t make sense, and there’s the matter of money. the rethugs were ripped off. they were paying for his affair, and there will be some donors who won’t be very happy that their money went to his paramour’s teenage son.
Senator Ensign is a veterinarian by training. How can his extra-marital fence-jumping habit be broken?
“Neuter and Spay, it’s the Only Way.”
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/john-ensign-promise-keeper/
hello mike licht,
welcome to the raisin! 😀
maybe ensign should see a fellow vet for some delousing. then again, that might may him disappear entirely! 😉
i like that these guys keep entertaining us and give you a ton of great fodder.
hello mudder, hello fodder! i really have to send the rnc a thank-you card for all the material they supply.