U.S. Senator’s Mistress: The Politics Of Passion

You may remember this Boston Herald article from last month about the woman Nora Flax, who gave an interview in 1989 to Boston Woman magazine, telling about her affair with a married US senator, who is believed by many to be John Kerry. This is a reproduction of the original article:

A U.S. Senator’s Mistress Tells How Her Powerful Love Was Destroyed By His Love Of Power

Two years ago, Nora Flax (an assumed name) was the lover, confidante, and best friend of a prominent United States senator, who will remain unnamed. Nora met and fell in love with this man when she was in her mid-20s. The man was married, but had not yet embarked on the heady, fast track of American politics. Initially, the romance may have been no more than a harmless affair. But it became much more than that as, over the years, they traveled together, worked together in politics, and, eventually lived together.

It’s over now, after a long, painful breakup, and Nora is putting her life back together, reassembling her emotions. And for the first time, she’s ready to talk about it.

When they first met, says Nora, she and the senator were both young, attractive professionals. Both were ambitious, but neither was that well-known. For the budding politician, that would soon change. Nora did her best to help him become prominent enough that he might succeed in a political campaign. She worked with him, diligently and quietly, and allowed him to take credit and bask in the publicity for much of her work.

Looking back, it’s rather ironic, Nora says. The relationship eventually crumbled because of their success at making the senator a public figure, which caused his transformation into someone Nora no longer knows, and no longer loves. The senator’s swollen head caused the demise of their relationship, she says. He began to meet high-powered women. Movie stars. New York models. “When these guys are elevated to a public position - every day of their life, they have women throwing themselves at them,” says Nora. “It served his ego, this movie-star thing.”

While Nora is an extremely beautiful woman with deep-set blue eyes, she was no match for the women who fell into the senator’s path. He became a press agent’s dream, and the Hollywood image makers began to use him as much as he thought he was using them. “That’s not what attracted me to him - that he was a U.S. senator. In fact, it would have been a healthier thing for him to lose that election,” she says.

Then the lies began. She’d read things in the gossip columns about his flirtations, but when confronted, he would dissemble. “His number-one priority is himself,” she says. “The rest, what he told people, was all bullshit … what the public saw. It was all for show.” She adds, seemingly as an afterthought, “and he is a pathological liar.”

Political relationships: Can they work? Can powerful and well-known politicians sustain loving and healthy relationships, with all their attendant trials and tribulations? National politicians are pursued by the media, fawned over by sycophants, and chased by the beautiful people. Do they get fooled by their own hype and, in so doing, destroy their ability to carry on normal relationships?

Political life brings another demon: the loss of a private life. Whatever politicians and their families do, or whomever they see, might be displayed in the newspapers, magazines, and on the TV screens to be seen or read by an entire nation.

These days, it’s not always the woman who suffers on the sidelines when there’s political scrimmaging. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for office, her husband and his business dealings had to endure a comprehensive public scrutiny that almost never occurs in the private sector. That kind of publicity can be devastating to a politician and his/her family, especially when someone has something to hide, such as shady investments or a penchant for philandering.

Nora and the senator are just one side of the story. The fact that this senator already had a wife meant that Nora was both a symptom and a victim of a broken relationship. “You can’t generalize about political relationships,” says Nora. “Some work. Some don’t. Unfortunately, mine didn’t.”

Many political couples work out some way to sustain a normal, fulfilling private existence. Michael and Kitty Dukakis seem to have survived the strain of living under intense public scrutiny for over two years of presidential campaigning, as well as constant attention during the decade he has served as governor of Massachusetts. Raymond and Cathy Flynn also seem to have an intact, happy marriage, although they have had less publicity focused on them. But even here, political ambitions have taken their toll.

As mayor of Boston, Flynn has spent many late nights away from his five growing children. Even earlier, as city councilor, Flynn spent most evenings at neighborhood meetings and coffee klatches to familiarize himself with the problems and people of a city he wanted to lead. Cathy Flynn has often found herself facing family crises without her husband’s input. A shy woman, she says she has finally grown comfortable with the fact that she and her family are in the public spotlight. However, she admits that there are still times she grows nostalgic for the days when she could stroll on Carson Beach or walk to the market on Broadway without somebody saying, “That’s the mayor’s wife.”

Cathy Flynn has lost some of her privacy but has maintained her public dignity. Other women throughout history have not been nearly as lucky. Back in the 1820s, the press relentlessly attacked Andrew Jackson and his beloved wife, Rachel Robards, after an enterprising journalist uncovered the then-scandalous fact that “Old Hickory” had persuaded Rachel to desert her first husband and “live with him in the character of a wife.” The real story is that Rachel mistakenly thought she was legally divorced from her first husband when she married Jackson.

Jackson was depicted as a seducer and a home-wrecker. A pamphlet entitled “A View of General Jackson’s Domestic Relations” was widely circulated during the campaign. Even though Jackson ultimately won the election and became the nation’s seventh president, the personal assaults on his and his wife’s moral character took their toll. Shortly after the election, on December 17, 1828, Mrs. Jackson suffered a heart attack. Five days later she died. The president-elect was inconsolable, and locked himself up for weeks of grief-stricken seclusion. Jackson remained convinced that the viciousness of the public attacks contributed to his wife’s death and he never forgave his enemies.

Today the press is even more relentless. Ever since Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s wrong turn on the bridge in Chappaquiddick in 1969, the rules about media scrutiny of politicians’ private lives have shifted dramatically. An alleged private indiscretion became the biggest news story around. And for good reason: Kennedy’s alleged affair had led to the death of a young woman. Many reporters began to question whether it was possible - or desirable - to separate politicians’ public and private lives. All previous rules were lost beneath the chilly waters off the Chappaquiddick bridge.

Then came the book that helped put the icing on Sen. Kennedy’s political cake, published in 1985 by Joan Kennedy’s former aide, Marcia Chellis. In Living With The Kennedy’s: The Joan Kennedy Story, Chellis vividly describes the Senator as an uncaring and philandering husband, and Joan as a patient wife, very much in love with him. Chellis says that during the Senator’s 1980 presidential bid, he and his wife were married in public only; in private they lived apart. According to Chellis, Joan hoped to improve their marriage by playing the perfect political wife: she became a loyal and tireless campaigner.

Chellis’s revelations about this period are astonishing. In a scene right out of Dynasty, Chellis recalls the Senator rushing into a D.C. party with Secret Service agents. Chellis recounts Joan’s descriptions: “In a low voice, he said that she [Joan] must hurry. He’d decided that they were leaving for the Cape right away. … She gathered her things and once again they were off to the airport. After all, she thought, the Cape was really what she had been hoping for.” Was her estranged husband grateful for her campaigning, ready to come back to the family fold, Joan wondered. “The plane trip was so strange,” Chellis quotes Joan as saying. “He [Ted] said nice things. Even though he didn’t mention my work in the campaign, he did give me some nice compliments. It was very nice.”

Chellis depicts a childlike and unsuspecting Joan Kennedy - a woman who hungers for the tiniest bit of affection and who was always ready to stand in the ever-lengthening shadow of her political man. As Joan recounted the sequence of events to Chellis, Ted told the pilot to stop at Montauk, on the tip of Long Island. At Montauk Point, Kennedy left the plane with a short good-bye and no explanation to his devastated wife, jumped into a waiting car, and sped off into the night. The captain of Ted Kennedy’s boat, the Curragh, was waiting for the Senator in the harbor. Chellis recalls Joan’s words: “I think he’s gone off cruising in the Caribbean with some chick.”

Chellis writes: “I could imagine her intense feeling of being abandoned - once again. … The presence of the pilot and the driver would have kept her silent.” But Joan was not as angry as Chellis. “Well, I’m not furious anymore,” she said.

“After all that work and the changes you’ve made in yourself?” Chellis retorted heatedly. “Remember why I did it,” Joan responded calmly. “You and I know the real reason I campaigned.”

Another political wife recently outdid even Joan Kennedy’s loyalty in standing by her husband when he was accused of philandering. After presidential candidate Gary Hart allegedly spent the weekend with a model, nearly every media outlet in the country assigned reporters to investigate Hart’s personal life, which effectively destroyed his candidacy and changed the tone of 1988’s presidential politics. Lee Hart, meanwhile, quietly endured what was undoubtedly a humiliating and painful time and, when it was politically vital, appeared arm-in-arm with her husband, speaking out on his behalf.

What lengths will political wives go in order to save a marriage? Why does a Joan Kennedy, a Lee Hart, a Jackie Kennedy, or even the epitome of strength, Eleanor Roosevelt, allow herself to be privately betrayed and publicly humiliated by men to whom they devote so much support, energy, and love? Why is this particular pattern seen again and again in political relationships?

Dr. Richard P. Skodnek, a psychiatrist in Newton, thinks he has an answer. Skodnek has hosted his own radio show, “Love Talk,” and has been a frequent guest on local TV programs discussing love problems between men and women. Skodnek observes that women find men in politics very attractive.

“The number one factor women find attractive in a man is social dominance,” says Skodnek. “Dominance means somebody who is socially successful. That means access to power, money, and fame. … Take a five-foot, eight-inch stocky little man, with a big nose, a heavy German accent and an unattractive face - Henry Kissinger. He dated top actresses and models like Jill St. John. Why Jill St. John? Kissinger didn’t have money then. But he did have access to power.”

The women who gravitate to political men are essentially seeking three things: success, money, and access to resources, says Skodnek. That, he says, was what attracted Donna Rice to Gary Hart, a man almost twice her age.

Hart, thinks Skodnek, was looking for conquest and adventure, but not love. “He wanted a thrill; he was probably seeking a passionate affair. … Men of power often look for sex outside marriage because of the very real fact that passion subsides in any relationship after a year. Sex is very much related to power.”

But why does a woman hang in there? Why would someone like Lee Hart put up with the humiliation? Again, Skodnek has a theory. “Lee Hart was about fifty. What would Lee Hart’s life be like without Gary Hart?” he says. “The chances are that she wouldn’t get another man.” He explains this harsh observation by saying that age discrimination works against women in these situations. Women, he says, are judged more harshly by age than are men, and younger, more impressionable women will always find men with power attractive. “Gary Hart had options,” he concludes. “Gary Hart may have fallen, but he was still a famous man. Lee Hart was not famous.”

Women also tend to be more forgiving than men, because women value relationships more, says Skodnek. He speculates that Gary Hart must have begged Lee Hart to forgive him and to save his marriage and his public image. “Many men who are contrite become better husbands and work to improve their relationships with their wives,” he observes. He thinks there is a strong chance that the Donna Rice affair may, ironically enough, have deepened the relationship with the Harts. What ultimately cost Gary Hart his political career may have saved his marriage. All in all, perhaps, not a bad trade.

Neither Nora nor the wife of the senator she loved gained anything after their extended relationships with the same man - except, perhaps, a bit of cynical wisdom.

For years, the senator promised Nora that he would divorce his wife and marry her. But, because of his public career, he and his closest aides always worried more about the political fallout than about Nora. She says, with obvious pain in her voice, that his marital and social relationships were often the subject of staff discussions and strategizing.

After years of living with the senator and making sacrifices in her career while she shuttled back and forth to Washington, D.C., Nora finally decided to end it. About a year and a half ago, she says, “I kicked him out of my apartment.”

Although he recently got the divorce that Nora waited for, it was already too late. She finds she no longer really likes the man she once adored. She says he was involved in shady real estate deals, slick investments, and even drug use. He still calls her every week, Nora says, and has, on occasion, embarrassed her in public or in front of his staffers.

Nora’s only regret is that she let it go on for so long. This is a guy, she reminds you, who has become so big on image that there is precious little substance left. “He is,” she says, “the most egocentric person I’ve ever met.”

Unfortunately, Lee Hart, Joan Kennedy, and other politicians’ wives might say the same thing about their men. While no relationship is easy, political ones seem to come complete with more pitfalls than most. The hours are long, and public posturing is obligatory. The voracious media and a curious public are a constant strain. Finally, it is tempting for a politician to view the power and the publicity as earned rights, as signals that other people can and should be used, that the politician is somehow above the rules. Seen in this context, it’s surprising that political marriages ever survive. In fact, the public sees only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to personal problems. Many political marriages are private charades, held together only to avoid tarnishing that all-important image.

Sexual politics, 1980’s style. Perhaps as more and more women enter the political arena, and pursue their own careers, things will change. Meanwhile, women who become involved with political men will have to understand that the old saying, “Those who wait also serve,” has much more than a hollow ring of reality. Just ask Nora sometime.

Please don't broadcast this. If America thinks they have a chance of getting another womanizer in the White House.....it will be a landslide for Kerry. Many Americans just love sleaze.

I don't know how you tie this to Kerry, just because it is in a Boston paper. The only clue is that "the Senator recently got a divorce" which you could check against the publication date.

I think we'd better stay off his personal life. The lying about Cambodia and VietNAm is more serious IMHO

Too much ambiguity. It she would provide some facts, she might have an opportunity to get even or, perhaps, even better, break up Hanoi John's current relationship.

Why would this be important? An affair (x number of affairs) while married clearly demonstrates a lack of integrity and willingness to disregard what you promised today if something easier comes alnong tomorrow.

Sure would like to see some follow up on Traitor John and his girfriends. I promise I won't tell Terry.

Unfortunately, I think Kerry can be too. The articles says that when they met, "Both were ambitious, but neither was that well-known." Long before he got into politics, Kerry was very well-known as a result of his slander and activism against veterans in Vietnam. Nixon even targeted him.

>>> Or, more accurately, not enough people care.

Not so sure. Even though I do not think this is about Kerry, when the Alex Polier affair was exposed he took a hit in the polls.

Well, there is this note, that was in the Boston Globe on February 22, 1989, shortly after the Boston Woman article came out:

“Just last week, the magazine Boston Woman printed a story purportedly about a US Senator and the lover he abandoned after a long relationship. The story, which does not mention Kerry’s name, was widely believed to be an account of Kerry’s long, fitful relationship with Boston Attorney Roanne Sragow, but Kerry called the article fiction…The affair collapsed under the weight of repeated press allegations of simultaneous love affairs Kerry was conducting with Sragow and other women, most notably Fairchild [also mentioned in article: Emma Gilby, Catherine Oxenberg, Susan Sullivan and Michelle Phillips]. Kerry was divorced last August from his heiress wife, Julia…Sragow declined comment about her relationship with Kerry, but friends said she was deeply hurt more by Kerry’s denial of repeated printed revelations than by the revelations themselves.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.