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Pol's Career Was A Brief Affair

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Daniel Ruth

druth@tampatrib.com

Published: October 18, 2008

You have to give Florida Congressman Tim Mahoney, D-What's Your Sign?, back-handed credit for at least this much.

Jeepers, this guy didn't even wait to get elected on his phony family values, morality in government, sanctity of marriage, blah, blah, blah campaign balderdash before he started chasing more skirts than Hugh Hefner as a scholar-in-residence at the Trollop Academy for Loose Women.

Few politicians were ever as blessed to have a congressional seat dropped in their laps. Unfortunately for Mahoney, according to ABC News, the space was also occupied by his consort, Patricia Allen.

Mahoney ascended - in more ways than one - to the Palm Beach Gardens congressional seat formerly occupied by Republican Mark Foley, who saw his once-promising political future crash and burn in the wake of the disclosure of a series of lurid, suggestive Internet messages the pol was sending out to teenage male pages on Capitol Hill.

Putting The 'He' In Hedonism

Now you would think if you owed your entire electoral career to the fact that your opponent had turned into a Captain Naughty-Pants Boy, you would take that object lesson to heart when it came to your own personal conduct upon arriving in Washington, or as it is otherwise known, Hedonism II-On-The-Potomac.

And if one especially had used Foley's ethical shortcomings as part of one's own campaign to tout the importance of a moral compass and family values, you would suspect Tim Mahoney would have been doubly circumspect about his behavior.

Alas, it seems Mahoney's moral compass was pointing due south.

At the same moment Mahoney, D-You Have Beautiful ... Eyes, was on the stump doing his Ward Cleaver meets Billy Graham shtick, he was apparently playing Roberts Rules of Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo with Allen, whom he eventually hired as an aide in his congressional office. No doubt her aid was invaluable.

Obligatory Piffle

In time, the romance between Mahoney and Allen entered that "War of the Roses" phase and the congressman canned his paramour, but not before, as ABC News revealed, paying her off with $121,000 to keep her yap shut about what a cheesy, hypocritical, declasse low-life her ex-boss/ex-boyfriend really was.

Indeed, a recording of a bullying, hectoring, threatening, oafish Mahoney, D-Al Bundy, firing Allen over the phone makes Captain Bligh look like St. Francis of Assisi - hardly the stuff to win over the women's vote.

For his part, the soon-to-be former one-term congressman delivered the obligatory piffle about taking full responsibility for his actions and causing pain to his family, la-dee-dah, la-dee-dah.

And, of course, Mahoney muttered the usual bogus gibberish about insisting on a private life.

If Tim Mahoney wanted a private life, he never should have pursued such a public one, accompanied by more baggage than Cher on tour.

It's also a bit late in the day to use your wife and family as little more than convenient props in a campaign and then plead you have a right to privacy.

That barn door was left open a long time ago. Zippers, too.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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