Claim to Shame

I suppose I would be remiss to ignore the recent Kelley Wirth debacle. Kelly Wirth, until recently, represented Corvallis and parts of Philomath in the Oregon House of Representatives. She was considered something of a wonderchild -- a young, attractive, single mother who championed liberal causes with a healthy idealism for three straight terms. During the last term, she started showing signs that things were amiss, behaving erratically and not bothering to show up for congressional sessions and votes. She allegedly was also boinking one of the Congressional janitors, until his girlfriend found out and ran Ms. Wirth down with her car, causing some fairly serious leg injuries.

For a town this size, that would have been enough to call "scandal." But no, there's more.

When the Salem police asked to search Ms. Wirth's car, a routine procedure during a criminal investigation, she refused. A warrant was obtained and lo! She was refusing the search for a very good reason: she didn't want the cops finding out about her meth stash. After her mugshot made the rounds of the local press, even the most loyal Democrats were calling for Ms. Wirth's resignation.

She did announce her resignation, but delayed the official date by a couple of weeks. She still had to attend to one final task.

Nobody really paid attention to the list of aides working for Ms. Wirth during her legislative tenure. It wasn't particularly newsworthy that Ms. Wirth's mother was listed as a legislative aide -- a practice banned in the U.S. Congress, but permitted in a state where legislative salaries are quite low. Apparently, nobody cared that Ms. Wirth's mother was raking in $3,000 in public tax money per month, despite never actually being seen around the office. But it did draw attention when Ms. Wirth gave her dear Mom a pay raise, first to $3,500 per month immediately after her arrest, and then to a whopping $6,500 per month on November 1st. All in all, she quadrupled her staff salaries during her last month in office. When the Oregonian published this bit of news, she rescinded the raises, but at that point, her fall from grace was pretty much complete.