OurView: Nothing new under the sun in Virginia politics

In late April, GOP lieutenant governor candidate John Reid posted a highly atypical campaign video on X.

His political enemies within the party, Reid alleged, were staging a “coordinated character assassination attempt to force [him as] the first openly gay candidate off the Republican statewide ticket.”

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Reid said, had asked him to exit the race after someone brought to Youngkin’s attention the existence of a Tumblr blog with the same handle Reid uses on social media that contained — gasp! — photos of nude men! (Oh my! Excuse us while we fan ourselves dramatically à la comedian Jon Stewart.)

The former conservative talk radio host and son of the late longtime Henrico County state Del. Jack Reid is adamant that the blog, which dated to 2020, isn’t his. As an openly gay Republican and a public figure for years on Richmond radio and TV, he’s the victim of political dirty tricks, says Reid, who is staying in the race.

Calling the matter “a total fabricated internet lie,” Reid further said, “It’s not my place to judge others, so I won’t, but I haven’t publicly performed or publicly posted anything pornographic. Have I seen porn? Yes. Have I had one-night stands? Yes.”

Maybe the blog is Reid’s and maybe it isn’t. You’d need someone with forensic computing skills far exceeding mine to make that determination.

But does it matter? Does it have anything to do with Reid’s qualifications for the job or his policy stances? Would it interfere with his ability to hold office?

It seems a bit disingenuous that we as Americans somehow act as if politicians belong to an upright, moral class far above us mere mortals when all the evidence presented to us for literally centuries speaks otherwise.

After all, Reid is hardly the first politician in the nation — or even Virginia — to be accused by opponents of salacious personal behavior. We don’t even have to go that far back — just to 2023 when Democratic state House candidate Susanna Gibson left the race after it came out that she had solicited tips for performing sex acts with her husband on a streaming internet site.

And the White House is far from pure on this front, either. Take Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved Sally Hemings. Or Grover Cleveland and the child he had out of wedlock. Or the indiscretions of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK or Bill Clinton. Or the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., who was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush payment to a porn star, not to mention the $88.3 million verdict in a sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit he’s appealing.

As the Bible says, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Beyond moral or ethical considerations, there is an argument that a tawdry personal life could leave an elected official ripe for blackmail by foreign enemies or other unsavory actors. But that would require shame — a commodity in short supply in a world of social media influencers and George Santos.

Personally, I’d much rather focus on the propriety of a public official say, accepting stacks of gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz from Egypt and Qatar, gifts that will see former Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, report to federal prison this summer.

Instead of the media worrying about the state of President Donald Trump‘s third marriage and why Melania has been largely absent from the White House, can we focus more on his intention to accept Qatar’s gift of a $400 million luxury jumbo jet to replace Air Force One? Or how he’s using the White House as the venue for a cryptocurrency moneymaking scheme? Or how about his administration’s stated goal of suspending habeas corpus? Or anything policy related, for that matter?

Because, as far as their personal lives are concerned, the only American public figure I expect to comport themselves like the pope is … well, the pope.