 |
 |
| ‘It became clear to me that there was a culture in Washington that knew about this activity and condoned it by doing nothing about it,’ says Lane Hudson, the gay blogger credited with triggering the scandal that brought about the resignation of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley. (Photo by J.R. Davis) |
|
|
| | |
| |
|
|
| | |
HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: LOU CHIBBARO J COMMENTS
 
continued...
done the same thing,” he said.
Hudson said he could not have been more pleased when he began work in September for HRC.
Politics has been his passion since he was a teenager. His experience in Washington began in 1994 when he served briefly as a page for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). His tenure as a staffer for Hollings provided him with valuable experience on the workings of Congress. He continued to work for Hollings in the senator’s Charleston office while attending the College of Charleston.
‘A predator in Congress’
Hudson said he is especially upset over accusations by conservative and GOP bloggers that he timed his release of the Foley e-mails to orchestrate an “October surprise” to help the Democrats in the election.
“The criticism is moot,” he said. “It only serves to distract from the real issue here. And the real issue is that there was a predator in Congress who, over the course of his 12 years of service, was continuously seeking out pages with unethical, immoral and inappropriate intentions. And now he’s not there,” Hudson said.
“And anyone who wants to say anything different is endorsing the idea that these activities should have continued.”
He points to press accounts indicating that other news organizations, including newspapers in Florida, knew of Foley’s e-mails to the Louisiana page and chose not to report them. He said he became convinced that GOP leaders in the House, who knew of Foley’s inappropriate overtures to pages several years ago, chose not to act because of political repercussions.
“I was mad about it,” he said. “It disappointed me hugely that the gilded halls of Congress, one of the longest, continuously operating governments in the world, allows stuff like this to happen.
“And I wanted to do something about it. Now, I’m also very active politically. And I understood that my actions have political implications. I didn’t know how much it would affect these elections but it’s now clear that it’s affected them quite a bit. And I’m OK with that because politics is a tough game and this could have gone very badly and it didn’t.”
| 
