July 11, 2009 12:14 AM UTC

At Least Your Parents Aren't Paying Your Mistress

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

In another edition of our long-running “At Least They’re Not Your Legislators” posts, we take you to Nevada, where, well, according to a post from “The Fix” yesterday:

Nevada Sen. John Ensign has acknowledged that his parents paid his mistress and her family $96,000 in April 2008, according to a statement made by his attorney moments ago.

“After the Senator told his parents about the affair, his parents decided to make the gifts out of concern for the well-being of long-time family friends during a difficult time,” said Paul Coggins, counsel to Ensign…

…Ensign’s acknowledgment comes less than 24 hours after Jon Ralston, the king of Nevada political reporters, sat down with Doug Hampton — the husband of Ensign’s mistress — and made a string of allegations including that Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn had tried unsuccessfully to force Ensign to end the affair.

Ensign has insisted he has no plans to resign his office, telling the Las Vegas Sun today that “I always planned on serving and working hard — working harder than I ever worked — and I’m going to continue to do that.”

As we have written before (in relation to one Mark Sanford), stories like this one often spiral out of control of the person at the center of the storm. Ensign had weathered the initial bad press surrounding his affair but this detail may be too much.

We hadn’t really said much about Ensign’s affair(s) here before, but this is too much to pass up because of its sheer weirdness. His parents paid his mistress? How does that conversation even get started?

Uh, mom? Dad? Can I borrow some money?