1828: Andrew Jackson’s inauguration is marred by the media’s attacks on his wife, Rachel. Some 40 years before, Mrs. Jackson had married the president-to-be before her divorce from her first husband was final.
1829: Jackson dissolves his entire cabinet following the uproar surrounding the wife of Secretary of War John Eaton. Young and previously married, Peggy Eaton had been deemed unacceptable for the presidential social set. Her public and private ostracism eventually brought about a social and then political impasse. Says Mrs. Eaton, “God help the women who must live in Washington.”
1834-53: Rumors swirl around the nation’s only bachelor president, James Buchanan, and his relationship with Sen. William R. King (D-Ala.). King shared rooms with the president, and his peers called him “Aunt Nancy,” “Aunt Fancy,” and Buchanan’s better half.
1859: Rep. Daniel Sickles (D-N.Y.) learns that his wife, Theresa, has had an affair with U.S. Attorney Phillip Barton Key (son of “Star-Spangled Banner” composer Francis Scott). Sickles shoots and kills Phillip Key in Lafayette Square Park after yelling, “Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my bed—you must die!”
1884: Grover Cleveland is elected president despite his admission that he fathered an illegitimate child.
1893: Rep. William Campbell Preston Breckinridge (D-Ky.), a frequent lecturer on the evils of “useless handshaking, promiscuous kissing, and “needless touches,” is sued by Madeline Pollard for $50,000 for breach of contract. According to Pollard, Breckinridge had seduced her when she was 17. But after two miscarriages and one child, he failed to marry her as promised. The jury awards Pollard $15,000.
1906: Sen. Arthur Brown (R-Utah) is shot and killed by Anna Addison Bradley. Brown and Bradley had carried on an eight-year affair while both were married. After the death of Brown’s wife, Bradley had divorced her husband, expecting to marry the senator, then learned of yet another mistress, Annie Adams Kiskadden. In a rage, she attacks Brown with the gun he’d given her years before for protection against his jealous wife.
1927: Nan Britton publishes The President’s Daughter, an account of her affair with Warren G. Harding and the love child born as a result.
1943: Six women wearing government identification badges are arrested for prostitution at the New York Hotel at 612 F St. NW. Quickly dubbed “girls performing their patriotic duty,” the women claim that in reality they no longer work for the government.
1963: In January, the FBI, on orders from J. Edgar Hoover, secretly tape-records a party at the Willard Hotel attended by Martin Luther King, several of his colleagues, and two women. On the tapes are sounds of people having sex.
1974: At 2 a.m. on Oct. 7, the limo of Wilbur Mills, the 65-year-old chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is pulled over by Park Police for speeding and driving with his lights off. Mills’ passenger is discovered to be aging stripper Fanne Foxe, the “Argentine Firecracker.” Foxe, in an apparent suicide attempt, jumps off the Kutz Bridge into the Tidal Basin, and an officer must rescue her.
January 1976: Rep. Joe D. Waggonner (D-La.) is arrested for soliciting an undercover policewoman.
February 1976: The Raleigh House, D.C.’s largest and maybe oldest “bawdy house,” closes.
May 1976: The Washington Post runs a story of 65-year-old Rep.Wayne Hays’ (D-Ohio) affair with 33-year-old Elizabeth Ray. For two years, Hays had kept Ray on the federal payroll as a secretary, even though she couldn’t type, file, or answer phones. Ray claims to have been involved with other politicians, including Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
June 1976: The First World Meeting of Prostitutes is held at the Sheraton Park Hotel.
September 1976: Prostitute Loretta Butler goes public with the information that she had oral sex with Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Robinson Jr.
1979: Bonnie Nora Davenport, formerly a male District police officer who underwent a sex change operation, is certified to return to duty—becoming the first transsexual officer in D.C. history.
August 1980: At a press conference in Jackson, Miss., Republican Congressman Jon Hinson announces (and politically survives the admission) that he is a homosexual. But he resigns his office in April 1981, after pleading no contest to charges of attempted oral sodomy in the public restroom of a House office building.
October 1980: Rita Jenrette, wife of Rep. John Jenrette (D-Ga.), poses nude for Playboy and pens a steamy book, My Capitol Secrets, to help pay her husband’s legal costs. (The representative had been convicted of bribery and conspiracy.)
October 1980: Four weeks before election day, Rep. Robert Bauman (R-Md.) is charged with soliciting sex from a 16-year-old nude male dancer.
November 1980: Alleged drug dealer Karen Johnson confides to her diary that D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is “very verbal in bed
1981: Lobbyist Paula Parkinson sparks an FBI investigation into allegations that she traded votes for sex. Parkinson took nine men to Florida for a golf vacation in 1980, and shared a cottage with three congressmen: Tom Railsback (R-Ill.), Dan Quayle (R-Ind.), and Thomas B. Evans (R-Del.). The congressmen maintain that nothing improper occurred, but Parkinson claims to have had relations with Evans and to have had sex with “less than a dozen” congressmen.
1989: In the early morning of the July 25, D.C. police round up 24 prostitutes working the corner of 14th and L Streets NW, and order them to march the mile-and-a-half to the 14th Street Bridge and cross it into Virginia.
August 1989: The Washington Times reports that Steve Gobie has been running a “call boy ring” out of the home of his lover, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). According to the Times, an unnamed Senate aide discovered the escort service when he responded to an ad in the Washington City Paper. Upon arriving at the given address, the aide recognized it as Frank’s. The scandal deepens when it is discovered that many of the clients hold high-ranking positions in the Reagan and Bush administrations.
1990: On Jan. 18, Mayor Barry is arrested after being videotaped by the FBI smoking crack in a room of the Vista International Hotel. Barry claims he was lured to the room with the promise of sex with informant Hazel “Rasheeda” Moore.< mc> October 1991: Anita Hill testifies against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hill states that while she was employed at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Thomas sexually harassed her by remarking on pubic hair on his soda can, Hill’s physical appearance, porn movies, the size of his penis, and his ability to please women through oral sex.
December 1991: While in a Pennsylvania prison, ex-Mayor Barry allegedly receives a blowjob from visitor Patricia Holbrooke, a 39-year-old court stenographer.
December 1991: The Washington Post reports charges brought against Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) for sexual misconduct from 1969-90. Almost two dozen women eventually come forward to accuse the senator of offenses including unwanted kissing and chasing them around desks.
January 1994: Following President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address, Rep. Martin Hoke (R-Ohio) is videotaped noting that a female TV producer has “beega breasts.”