What Happened in Vegas

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

The reason the Republicans lost so many Senate seats last November is now becoming clear. No one had any time to think about the campaign. They were too busy worrying about Senator John Ensign’s sex life.

Last month Ensign, a Nevada Republican, called a press conference to confess that he had had an affair with a former staff member. That was when we learned, to general surprise, that Ensign had been widely regarded as a possible future presidential candidate. Also, that he is currently the only veterinarian in the U.S. Senate.

Nobody paid a great deal of attention. Really, there are only so many randy Republicans we can keep track of at once. But lately, the Ensign saga has become more and more fascinating. Every social conservative in Washington seems to have been involved.

Most of the juicy details have been supplied by Doug Hampton, Ensign’s former chief of staff, who says his wife, Cindy, a bookkeeper for Ensign’s political action committees, was seduced by the senator while they were guests at the Ensign home over the Christmas holidays in 2007. Hampton, 47, gave a long TV interview in Las Vegas this week — a disjointed account of betrayal in which he concluded at one point: “All of those tentacles were birthed because John needed things to go down like this.”

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