Adultery, bigamy, bastards and presidential sex scandals

WHILE the world waits to see whether Donald Trump can live down his scandalous remarks about women, there have been more than enough examples in US history of candidates trying to shake off a scandal.

LIVING down a sex scandal on the way to the White House can be difficult, as candidate Donald Trump is finding out. Despite brushing off his lewd remarks about groping and kissing beauty pageant contestants as being “locker room talk” during the presidential candidate’s debate yesterday the scandal still looks like damaging his election chances.

No presidential candidate has ever withdrawn and Trump looks unlikely to become the first, despite being abandoned by influential Republicans. If he intends to ride out the storm maybe he could take a tip from Grover Cleveland, who had to deal with his own sex scandal.

Cover of The Judge magazine from Sept 1884 showing Grover Cleveland's love child scandal.

Grover Cleveland in 1888, the year he was inaugurated President of the United States. Picture: AP

In 1884 there were hopes that presidential candidate Cleveland could break six election losing streak for the Democratic Party. Up against him was former Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, who had missed out twice on being nominated Republican candidate because of the “Mulligan Letters” scandal of 1876 — the discovery of a series of letters that showed Blaine selling his vote and influence in Congress to big businessmen.

Blaine only got the nomination because popular choices Civil War hero General William Tecumsah Sherman and Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert Todd Lincoln had both refused to run.

The Republicans had lingered too long in the White House and it looked like the more popular Cleveland could romp in, giving the Democrats their first victory since 1856.

But then newspapers began reporting that Cleveland had a secret love child to a widow named Maria Halpin. People were outraged. Wags chanted “Ma, ma, where’s my pa? Off to the White House, ha ha ha!” while others wondered whether Cleveland had the temperament to be president.

It seemed like the end of his campaign, but Cleveland openly admitted the child was his.

The pregnancy had happened while he was a bachelor, but Halpin had several lovers, some of whom were friends of Cleveland. He claimed the child to deflect attention from his married friends and had been paying child support despite not knowing if the child was his.

Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States of America 1767-1845.

People may have seen him as a “libertine” but at least he was honest, while Blaine found it harder to live down questions about his character raised during the campaign and an anti-catholic slur by a republican at a rally he attended in the last week of the campaign. While Blaine didn’t make the comment he didn’t speak against it and lost the Catholic vote. It was a close competition in terms of popular vote but Cleveland went on to become president, serving two terms.

Cleveland’s scandal was nothing to the somewhat scurrilous gossip that was used against candidate Andrew Jackson. Jackson had been robbed of the presidency in 1824 by a quirk of the constitution that saw the number of electoral votes deadlocked and the election being decided by the House of Representatives in favour of John Quincy Adams. At the time Jackson had accused Adams of striking a corrupt deal to gain the presidency so things were bound to get nasty when they both contested the 1828 election.

Donna Rice sitting on US Democrat Sen Gary Hart's lap

Adams’ supporters dug up a fact from his past that he had married his wife Rachel in 1791 only to later discover that she had not been properly divorced from a previous husband. The matter had been fixed up and Jackson legally married Rachel in 1794, but Adams’ followers accused him of sleeping with a married woman and of being married to a bigamist and adulterer. Fortunately voters didn’t take the bait and Jackson finally beat Adams fair and square in the election.

It doesn’t always work in a politician’s favour. Unfortunately for Gary Hart the whiff of scandal stopped him even becoming candidate in 1987. Hart was a popular frontrunner for the Democrat nomination when rumours emerged of his affair with Donna Rice.

He denied the accusations but reporters later found a picture of him and Rice enjoying each other’s company, not in the company of his wife, aboard a yacht called Monkey Business. Hart was forced to drop out of the running for the 1988 election.

Gennifer Flowers came out with revelations Bill Clinton had an affair with her.

During yesterday’s debate Trump also tried to diminish his own scandal by saying that his opponent Hillary Clinton’s husband Bill had done much worse.

But in 1992 Bill had almost had his election chances scuttled when Arkansas government worker Gennifer Flowers came out with allegations that Clinton had an affair with her.

Clinton denied the accusation and managed to win the election, possibly because the accusation helped lift him out of obscurity.

He served two terms, during which time it emerged that Flowers was right and that Clinton had many other dalliances.