I’ve been leafing through the nominations for the Golden Dukes, and here’s one entrant from the local venue category I had not even heard of, from TPM Reader BB …
This local scandal is the best of the year because it’s both hilarious and heartwarming. It was an open secret mayor of my very conservative town, San Angelo, TX, was gay. Nobody particularly cared, though, because he was the first competent mayor we’d had in several decades.
However, this happy equilibrium was disturbed when he resigned because he wanted to pursue a relationship. With an illegal alien.
Oh, and he phoned in his resignation to the local newspaper from an undisclosed hotel in Mexico. And he resigned only 10 days after winning another landslide victory to send him into his fourth term.
Mr. Lown had been involved in the relationship with the illegal alien for a few months, but decided that he couldn’t take the oath of office when he was knowingly harboring an illegal alien. Instead, he resigned after traveling to Mexico, forcing San Angelo to hold an expensive special election in which only crazy people ran for office.
But the most amazing thing is that the main criticism of the relationship in San Angelo wasn’t that it was between two gay men – it was that the relationship was with an illegal alien and cost the city thousands of dollars. So, in a way, this is great progress: a town in George W. Bush’s home district was able to overcome their hatred of gays and focus on what really counts: hating Mexicans.
Don’t forget to get your nominations (see instructions here) in by the end of this week. If your nomination wins, you get prize TPM/Golden Dukes swag!
