Dirty Politics
Mike Maroney booking photo
“West Virginia State Senator Charged in Prostitution Sting!”
We all love a salacious headline, don’t we? (Don’t lie.) When it involves allegations of sexual impropriety by one who has a political affiliation opposite your own, we are especially prone to indulge in schadenfreude and the inclination to utter a Nelson Muntz-like “HA HA!” is strong.
Senator Mike Maroney
Mike Maroney won the state senate race for the 2nd District of West Virginia in 2016. He is a doctor, a veteran, a father of two, and a Republican. He is also apparently a man of sexual appetites who sought the services of a sex worker, whom he solicited via text message this past May. The sex worker in question became the subject of investigation by local authorities, who found the texts and traced them back to Maroney. Police filed misdemeanor criminal charges, and Maroney turned himself in.
Reaction was swift, with the chair of the state Democratic Party calling for Maroney’s removal. Of course, this would occur from either side of the aisle, for any elected official from the opposing team charged with any sort of crime. And that’s fair enough, since the lawmakers should not be violating the law. If Maroney is proven guilty, his ouster is appropriate, though I am of the opinion that, barring serious violent crimes or crimes against the public coffers such as corruption, such ouster should occur at the voting booth.
According to CNN, the sex worker involved is challenging the constitutionality of the state’s prostitution statute. Good; I personally do not believe that voluntary sex work should be a crime, so I’m interested in the outcome of that argument. Senator Maroney is not married; his sex life is his own, and though he, like many other politicians, has espoused “Christian values”, I leave the judgment of his actions to the god he worships, and the judgment of his perceived hypocrisy to his constituents. And like most modern political scandals, there’s an ironic tweet:
Socialism, dismantling of Christian values and guilty until proven innocent. These components of the liberal agenda will be refuted in a big way in WV.
— Dr. Mike Maroney (@DrMikeMaroney) September 26, 2018
But there is another side to the story that I find harder to wave off. Maroney is chair of the senate health and human resources committee, which oversees legislation regarding, among other things, public health and child welfare. The news reported that the sex worker he solicited is a heroin addict working supporting her habit. Her house was said to be strewn with uncapped needles and human waste, but in one of the texts, Maroney allegedly said he “didn’t care about a messy house”. A google search of the woman’s name reveals she was charged a few years ago with child neglect after calling 911 to report a drug overdose and responders found children living in the same conditions described in the recent police report. If Maroney ever actually met with the woman, which is unclear, the circumstances of her living conditions and likely evidence of her addiction would have been obvious. One would hope a man who has taken on the responsibility of fashioning policy to address desperate situations like hers would have sought help for her, rather than enable.
Senator Maroney has reached a position of respect and influence, no doubt through much hard work and ambition. The story here isn’t that he was looking to pay for sex; it is that he became a first hand participant in some of the worst issues faced by our state. Did he direct her to resources to help her as he zipped up his pants afterward? I mean, maybe he did. Best case scenario is that being face to face with her desperate situation inspired some sort of internal call to action that the senator would put into motion at the next legislative session.
We likely won’t know. The news is not interested in another drug addict with a sad story selling her body or how she got to that point; it is more interested in a politician’s fall from grace. It’s not an opportunity to discuss the scourge of the heroin epidemic or the dire circumstances some of the state’s citizens find themselves facing; it’s an opportunity to cluck self-righteously at another elected official who has failed to live up to the esteem of his position.
It is not often that West Virginia makes national news, but when it does, it is rarely a positive thing. Fortunately for us, politicians embroiled in sex scandals is a universal phenomenon rather than an oddity for which our state can be singularly scorned. To be honest, it pales in comparison to the embarrassment that was our state Supreme Court being impeached in its entirety last year, or another of our legislators threatening to drown his own children if they are gay, or our governor with his platter of actual bull shit at a live press conference. A garden variety senator-with-a-call-girl barely rates in the top ten most shameful actions of West Virginia politicians this decade.
State Republicans will do their best to pretend this didn’t happen and move on. The Democrats will make what hay they can of it and then drop it. Mike Maroney will probably step down after quietly pleading guilty, and likely continue to be a doctor and raise his children. The woman whose services he purchased will likewise make her way through the court system, and if she’s lucky, get some treatment and help to fix her life, though statistics are against her on that front.
We will forget about them both, especially her.
He should be given a good whack in the head for that tweet.Report
I strongly concur with almost everything in this post, but I take exception to the following
If Maroney is proven guilty, his ouster is not inappropriate, though I am of the opinion that, barring serious violent crimes or crimes against the public coffers such as corruption, such ouster should occur at the voting booth.
If a state senator is found guilty of any misdemeanor, he should suffer the same consequences any other person would suffer. If a misdemeanor is cause for someone to lose their job, it should be enough for a state senator to lose his.
If hiring a sex worker is a misdemeanor, but not the kind that should really matter, or have consequences for a politician, then it shouldn’t matter for anyone, and it should be stricken out of the WV penal code. Which is what should actually happen, by the way.
But the concept that misdemeanors and other petty criminal laws are for the little people, and not for those important enough, is an abomination to my eyes.
*steps off soap box now*Report
I doubt the rest of the Senate would do more than censor him, and our form of government doesn’t allow an elected representative to simply get fired, which would require a boss who is above the will of the people.Report
I agree he should lose his job, if the people who hired him think he should. That’s the same thing that anyone else is subject to. It is unfortunate that it’s not immediate like it would be for you or me.Report
This relates to a belief that I have held for years, which is this: public figures (especially politicians) who gain wealth or power by dictating who in society we should judge harshly are usually the ones who dictate how we judge them.
A candidate who rails against his opponent for never having run a successful business inevitably makes it news if it turns out he or she has a long string of Chapter 11s in their past. A white Hollywood celeb who gets lots of press for shaming other white people for not being “woke” enough has necessarily made it more of a story if they get caught on tape saying something racist, or paying their hispanic nanny sub-minimum wage under the table. And, of course, a politician or pundit who says they or theirs should be given more power because of they are more morally disciplined than everyone else has themselves said they should be run out on a rail long before they were caught with their pants down.
It’s common in all of these cases for public defenders and their critics to cry “hypocrisy” whenever they get caught, but that’s not really what it is. We largely let people with power and fame dictate the terms which we judge them, and how we punish them.
What I find most interesting, however, is how routine it is for the public figures who ask us to be concerned about other people doing X end up being people who do X far more than most. Does anyone know if there’s ever been a comprehensive study about this? It is a very weird thing.Report
The expression I have seen used is “every accusation is a confession.” I don’t know how one would study it except for statistics purposes. I suppose you can see if the people who do this would submit to psychological profiling and neurological evaluation. I doubt they would though.Report
I think the tweet shows why there is a push to get rid of the bozo now. Negative partisanship is quite high and no one knows how to reduce it or get rid of it. Well maybe there is some clutching of the tea cups and saucers and misremembered nostalgia of Tip and Ronnie banging out a solution over whiskey.
But the issue of the fact is that hatred of the other party runs high. Odes to the ballot box often feel like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.Report