Photo via United States House of Representatives, @asmith83/Twitter
April 8, 2021, 11:17 am
Republican Senate candidate and Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has dropped out of the race after recordings forced him to admit that he was cheating on his wife with another woman. Merrill was expected to replace Sen. Richard Shelby at the end of his term, when he says he will be retiring from the senate.
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The candidate initially denied the allegations of having an affair after the woman came forward, accusing him not only of acting inappropriately with her but of using racist language in their conversations. She eventually decided to record a couple of these discussions and released them to the press with a short statement.
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“I don’t want to say anything other than here’s the proof that John Merrill is a liar,” she said. “Here’s the true John Merrill.”
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According to AL.com, the recording was of a phone call in which the pair discussed “various sexual acts they performed during dozens of romantic encounters” between November 2017 and November 2020. It was in between these dates that Merrill declared that the moral decline of the U.S. was being driven by “homosexual activities” and “wife swap shows.”
“The foundational principles which we have grown up as a nation are no more,” he said in July 2019. “There’s no more TV shows like ‘Gunsmoke’ or ‘Bonanza’ or ‘The Virginian’ or ‘I Love Lucy’ or ‘Andy Griffith.’ [I] said people are too interested in homosexual activities. They’re too interested in the wife swap TV shows and the shows that are not morally uplifting. That’s the problem.”
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Turns out that might not be the problem. Either that, or Merrill has been having a secret love affair Wife Swap as well. As for “homosexual activities,” we can assume this was just your everyday Alabama Republican homophobia.
Either way, Merrill is now very sorry for what he did for three whole years and for the impact it’s had and will continue to have on his family, and will not be running for another political office any time soon.
“It’s clear that I had an inappropriate relationship with her, and it is not something that I am proud of or something that is something that — I’m very disappointed in myself,” he said to AL.com. “I’m also disappointed that I allowed my family to be embarrassed by this action. And it’s something that I certainly will always regret because of the pain that it has caused my family.”
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“I will obviously not be a candidate for the United States Senate nor will I be seeking any other elected position in 2022, because I think it’s important to me to make sure that I become the man that I have been before and that I am working to put myself in the position to be the leader that I have been before, as a husband, as a father, as a friend and as an elected official.”
No word yet on if and when he’ll be apologizing for lying about it.
*First Published: April 8, 2021, 11:17 am
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