One socially conservative Michigan lawmaker was expelled from office and another resigned early today after they rocked the Legislature with an extramarital affair and a botched attempt to conceal it with a fictional, sexually explicit email.
Republican Rep. Cindy Gamrat became just the fourth legislator to be kicked out in state history shortly after 4 a.M. An hour earlier, Rep. Todd Courser resigned, effective immediately, when it became clear that majority Republicans had secured enough support from Democrats for his expulsion by promising to ask the attorney general and state police to investigate the lawmakers.
Both were immediately escorted from the chamber.
"I put everybody through a whole bunch across the state, my own family, the constituents, the people in this room," Courser told reporters. "Whether it was the third vote or the fourth vote or the fifth vote, they were going to eventually get me."
Gamrat, who was tossed on a 91-12 vote, declined comment as she left the Capitol with her teen son, her sister and her attorney at the end of a drama-filled, marathon 16-hour session.
"I have done everything I can to redeem the situation," she said in her speech asking for a censure, which would have let her stay on the job with restrictions. "I am sincerely sorry for what it's caused."
Courser, 43, admitted sending an "outlandish" phony email to Republican activists and others in May claiming he had been caught with a male prostitute. The email was intended to make his affair with the 42-year-old Gamrat appear less believable if it was exposed by an anonymous blackmailer who Courser said had demanded his resignation.
The self-smear email called Courser a "bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant" and "gun toting Bible thumping ... freak" and Gamrat a "tramp."
Gamrat, said she discussed the plot with Courser but did not know the email's graphic content before it was sent.
The scandal unfolded last month after two staffers the couple shared were fired in July. One, Ben Graham, gave The Detroit News a secret audio recording of Courser demanding that he send the email to "inoculate the herd," an apparent reference to Courser's supporters. While Graham refused and the email was likely legal, the plot was unethical, according to a House Business Office probe that alleged dishonesty, misconduct, and misuse of public resources for political and other purposes extending beyond the affair and fictional email. The pair admitted to misconduct following that investigation.
