Toronto is collectively confused this morning as a rising political star with a week-old mayoral campaign has confirmed he had “an inappropriate relationship with a young woman.”
Adam Giambrone, seen above with partner Sarah McQuarrie, has apologized for his relationship with university student Kristen Lucas. He is no doubt mortified–but that won’t be enough to stop the questions about the future of his campaign.
This isn’t over by a long shot. Why? As evidenced by last week’s casual outing of a Conservative Minister, it’s often the case that elected-people will simply refuse to comment on their “private lives”. As a result, the story simply goes away. It happens more than people would think.
However, when the private life and the public life collide there is bound to be an issue. Like with Maxime Bernier. His issues with Julie Couillard only became a full-fledged scandal when she went “public” about her time with the Minister, and in the course of those interviews she revealed that secret-level documents were left at her home for weeks.
Giambrone stands accused of staging the announcement of his partner to benefit his campaign (and attempting to keep an ongoing fling with Lucas), telling her about TTC fare increases and, as the Toronto Star reports, several more salacious details:
Giambrone told Lucas that he hoped they could continue seeing each other,and assured her, “I had to have someone political.” In recent interviewswith the Star, Lucas said she’s been involved with Giambrone sincelate 2008 and, on several occasions, had sex late at night on a couch in his City Hall office.
In short, watch out: it’s going to be a feeding frenzy. The private and public just collided.
Giambrone was already in for a rough ride. “Troubled” is the most frequent adjective attached to the Toronto Transit Authority–of which Giambrone is chair. The Toronto media, egged on by frustrated transit riders, have been sticking it to the troubled TTC’s service “issues” for a few weeks now.
But the real problems are right in the facts as presented in the Toronto Star. The two parties are kilometers apart. He says the relationship “consisted of text messages and conversations in public places only.” She says it was a year-long, intimate affair.
His campaign needs to sort out the truth, get him onto the most sympathetic TV set (with partner Sarah) and tell the whole story. All of it. The only real hope is being more human than the people who are gloating gleefully about the scandal.
Whether or not he can recover from this depends less on his team orsupporters and more on his partner’s reaction.
So, is this what you sign up for when you are elected? What do electors have the right to know? How much should a citizen need to know before casting a ballot? Please comment below.
