Covering a scandal

Let's say you're the editor of a prominent newspaper covering a competitive election. Your reporters are hearing rumors about a sex scandal involving one of the leading candidates, but your newspaper has endorsed the other candidate. It's just a few days before the election. Do you run the story, potentially affecting the outcome of the election? If you do, what if it turns out the rumors were wrong? On the other hand, if you sit on the story, what happens if it turns out the rumors were right, and through your passivity, voters elect a time bomb?

Well, we needn't speculate further, because this is happening right now. Last Tuesday, Denver voters elected Michael Hancock as their next mayor over Chris Romer by a 58-42 margin. Yesterday's Denver Post, however, detailed a story that the Post had clearly been sitting on for some time: the records of a defunct prostitution service known as Denver Players show that a "Mike Handcock"* who worked for the city and had the same cell phone number as the mayor-elect had hired hookers from them on at least three occasions.

This is actually a pretty interesting case study in media politics in a one-newspaper town. These allegations were first publicized by a local Drudge-style blog shortly before the election, but were never circulated in the print or televised media or even most major blog coverage. I was following the mayoral race pretty closely, and I never heard anything about this until election night, when a reporter made an offhanded comment about it to me (even though he didn't actually report on the story). And one can certainly sympathize with the Post's awkward position** -- this could have tipped the race. Yeah, I know Hancock won by 16 points, but my impression is that a lot of those votes were pretty malleable and would have been swayed by this sort of news.

I'm curious where this goes from here. Does anyone know of a similar situation, where a candidate is elected but a serious scandal emerges before he/she takes office? What happens?


*Hee hee.
**Interestingly, the Post's coverage yesterday was not "Hancock has a hooker problem" but rather "Hancock promised us his phone records and is now reneging."

Weinergate

I must be hopelessly jaded, but I am just failing to find Rep. Anthony Weiner's actions a resignable offense. I've been kind of fascinated by the topic of scandal-related resignations... well, for a long time... but really since reading Cramer's What It Takes, which chronicles some high quality presidential candidates (Gary Hart and Joe Biden) dropping out of the 1988 race because they were plagued by scandals (allegations of infidelity and plagiarism, respectively). What fascinated me in those cases was that the candidates didn't necessarily have to drop out. As far as we know, no one pulled an endorsement or threatened to stop funding them (although that may have happened if they'd stayed in the race), and the pullouts happened long before people started voting. They just became convinced that the horrible media coverage of them would never end, and that only by dropping out could they stop the assault on their lives and their careers.

Of course, had they stayed in the race, the horrible coverage would have ended, or at least changed focus in some way. Bill Clinton proved that. If you just take Matt Yglesias' advice and don't resign, the media will eventually find something else to discuss, or even find a different way to discuss you. Clinton, after all, went from the dope-smoking, draft-dodging womanizer to the Comeback Kid in just a few weeks.

Now, there are scandals and there are scandals, but given that Weiner, as far as I know, didn't engage in criminal activity and didn't send his tweets to a minor, I don't see why this is anything beyond bad judgment, which happens once in a while when middle-aged guys use social media. (Believe me, I know.) If Weiner finds the current media barrage intolerable, then sure, he should resign. But if he thinks he can handle it for another few days until the press finds something else to express moral outrage about, then he should stick it out.

Another option, as Jon Bernstein notes, is the Phil Gramm model: resign and then run in the following special election. It recognizes that there's a question over your conduct, and you submit yourself to the voters (who really have more of a say in this than Nancy Pelosi or Eric Cantor or I do) to see whether you should remain in office.

Would Weiner survive such an election? John Sides highlights an interesting piece of research from David Doherty, Conor Dowling, and Michael Miller showing how the public feels about various hypothetical scandals. Voters, it seems, don't like immoral actions, but they're more tolerant of those than they are of financial scandals or abuses of power. So, as scandals go, this one's probably relatively mild in the eyes of Weiner's constituents.

As for the question that so many news commentators are asking -- "How can Weiner survive?" -- the answer is pretty straightforward: by turning off his TV, and not reading (or posting on) Twitter for a few days.