Not the patriotic Charlie Wilson from Texas.
Judging from what that group has been tolerating in its endorsees lately, surely a little wife-beating won’t be a disqualification. Or not so little, at that. From Charlie Wilson’s (D, OH-06) 1990 divorce proceedings:
Charles admits that early in the marriage he kicked and struck Plaintiff and accused her of adultery (Defendant’s Desposition, pp. 190, 192, 194). Clara shall confirm the beatings, slappings, and kicking at the early stage of her marriage to the point where she was afraid to anger the Defendant and instead yielded to his demands. She also lied to third parties as to the causes of her injuries. Mrs. Wilson was the typical battered wife.
…And Mrs. Wilson eventually ended up in the emergency room as a direct result of her attempts to finally assert herself (all of this is admitted to by Charlie Wilson, by the way). Her attacker went on to have a ten-year career in the state legislature, prior to being elected to Congress in 2006. No word of whether he regretted anything; the campaign clammed up the second this document came to life. Still, if the female members of Wilson’s staff were in the habit of wearing sunglasses indoors and long sleeved shirts all the time surely we would have heard by now; so that’s something at least, right?
You know, that’s one hell of a vetting job that the DCCC did, there. As Mike Flynn noted in his article, this has been public knowledge for a long time: but it didn’t get in Wilson’s way when he ran for state office, and it didn’t get in his way when he ran for Congress… and if somebody hadn’t tracked this down it wouldn’t have gotten in his way now, would it?
See also The Campaign Spot, who reminds us that the only way to cure an infection is to clean it out. Bill Johnson for Congress. He doesn’t beat his wife.
Moe Lane (crosspost) (perils of a group blog: somebody else had posted on this not fifteen minutes earlier)
*Not actually stolen from Three Beers Later; I ran across this when it occurred to me (and to my horror) after writing the headline that the organization very well could have endorsed this… person.
Mark Foley sends sexual text messages to young men, although it appears that all of them were over the age of consent. The news breaks: Republican leadership requests his resignation. Media: wall to wall coverage.
This jackhole hospitalizes his wife. The news breaks: Democrat leadership shrugs. Media: less than a shrug.
But there’s no media bias, nosirree bob.