The confession came from Rep. Helen Chenoweth, who was forced to go public by The Idaho Statesman after she committed what proved to be a tactical error: demanding Clinton's resignation and declaring in a campaign commercial, "I believe that personal conduct and integrity does matter."
"Fourteen years ago, when I was a private citizen and a single woman, I was involved in a relationship that I came to regret, that I'm not proud of," Chenoweth, 60, told The Idaho Statesman. "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it."
Last week, another Clinton critic and Republican hard-liner, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, acknowledged fathering a child during an extramarital affair in the early 1980s.
"If you are going to throw stones and you live in a glass house, expect the glass house to be broken," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "I'm worried that we're going to have an interminable national Jerry Springer show."
Democrats have been warning for months that those who pursue the Lewinsky case run the risk that their own peccadilloes will be exposed.
"What this tells you is that Republicans who are trying to gain political capital out of the president's problems better look in the rear-view mirror before attacking their Democratic opponents," said Dan Sallick, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He said Chenoweth "displayed sheer hypocrisy."
Chenoweth campaigned on family values and first got elected in 1994 after it was disclosed that her opponent had had an affair.
09-11-98
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