Fossella: A family man with two families

Give Vito Fossella credit for some honesty, said the New York Daily News in an editorial. When Virginia police nailed the Republican congressman from New York’s Staten Island for drunken driving two weeks ago, and he said he was en route to see his daughter, “he was telling the truth.” Trouble was, the stalwart “family values’’ conservative wasn’t referring to any of the three children he’d had with his wife, Mary Pat. Following “five days of evasions,” Fossella confessed to having a second family in Alexandria—mistress Laura Fay, a retired Air Force officer, and their 3-year-old daughter. Their secret life began six years ago, said Adam Lisberg, also in the News, on a taxpayer-funded congressional junket across Europe. Though Fossella has apologized, he’s refusing to bend to widespread calls for his immediate resignation. “Making any political decisions right now,” he said last week, “are furthest from my mind.”

How rich this scandal is, said Gail Collins in The New York Times. Fossella’s constituents “seemed prepared to forgive him for the drunken driving, but the second family threw them for a loop.” Fossella, you see, has heavily relied in his traditional district on his image as an upstanding family man. He voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment, supports public posting of the Ten Commandments, and said “nay” to the funding of adoptions by gay couples. Liberal politicians caught with their pants down don’t have to explain such contradictions, a fact that helps them survive. Look at Democratic congressman Robert Leggett of California, who in 1976 was re-elected after admitting to supporting a girlfriend and two children, even buying a house for them in his wife’s name. “If you are going to go in for this sort of thing, your first step should really be to vote liberal.”

That double standard simply isn’t fair, said Alicia Colon in The New York Sun. No matter how egregious their behavior, Democrats always seem to emerge scot-free from the kind of Washington sex scandals that ruin Republicans. Witness Barney Frank, whose apartment housed his aide’s “male sex-for-hire ring,” or his fellow Massachusetts congressman Gerry Studds, who seduced a male page. Both retained their seats. Partisan whining aside, said the Staten Island Advance, Fossella can’t possibly remain in Congress. He was caught driving with a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit, misled Fay when he said he was separated from his wife, and duped his family for years. The man’s a liar of the lowest order, and the sooner he resigns, to “recede into ignominy,” the better.

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