Politico has a story on four former politicians who left office after sex scandals and the lessons they learned. One is former Tennessee state Sen. Paul Stanley.
Stanley, 49, served in the Tennessee state Senate from 2006 to 2009 before resigning after news of his affair with his 22-year-old intern broke. A week after the two ended what Stanley describes as a “purely sexual” and very brief “fling,” the intern’s boyfriend attempted to extort $10,000 from him by threatening to turn over pictures of the two to the press. Hours later, Stanley reported the incident to law enforcement and the intern’s boyfriend was arrested. Stanley told his wife about the affair the next day, but the story about the Tennessee legislator didn’t hit the news until four months later. The Republican lawmaker resigned his seat on Aug. 10, 2009.
The now-divorced father of two children, ages 12 and 8, is a writer living in Savannah, Tenn., his hometown. Stanley works as the politics editor for The Christian Post and is writing a memoir tentatively titled, “The Extortion of Forgiveness.” He is a born-again evangelical Christian and was at the time of the affair as well.
“You need to be honest with yourself. You know what you’ve done. You know what happened. Go to the ones you love… and tell the truth. When you do that, tell the entire truth. Don’t parcel it out, just tell it and ask for their forgiveness. When it becomes public, you’ve got to repent to God first. And then you need to genuinely say you’re sorry. Let me emphasize the word genuine. People will smoke you out in a heartbeat if your apology is superficial. They’re probably going to be disappointed in you, which they should, but the vast majority of them will forgive you.”
“I knew it was the best thing for my family at the time [for me to resign]. And without a doubt, without any question, I had been gone a lot as a politician. Politicians aren’t home a lot. For the next nine months, I was able to develop a very deep relationship with both my children… It’s made me a better person. I’ve told God on a number of occasions, I’d certainly like to go rewrite the ending, but he took me out of there the way he did and he did that for my own good. It wasn’t the way I would’ve liked to go out, but it was the right thing to have happened to me at the time.”
“My affairs were purely sexual. There was no emotion in them. … There need to be some ground rules in relationships — you don’t ever need to be alone with someone of the opposite sex after 5 p.m. or after business hours. There’s nothing good that can come of it.”
“Far too often politicians get thrown off course with people telling them how great they are, how wonderful they are. Even if you disagree with them, you’re complimenting them to get what you want. … You would think I would have learned from other people’s stories and other politicians from my story. … As you rise through political rings, more people pay attention to you and pay you compliments, accolades, and you have more power to control legislation. A lot of times, where there are females who are showing you that attention, you have to be very careful and have ground rules.”
“The No. 1 thing, and this is what threw me off, my spouse and I grew apart over time, and we didn’t deal with the issues when they occurred. That put me in a position where I was extremely vulnerable. I was a big boy and knew exactly what I was doing, but it put me in a place when I had more authority and more perceived power and I was getting attention — that was something that wasn’t good for me.”