Sitting in a Tree
Roll Call Staff
Sorry, guys. The newest, most eligible bachelorette in Congress appears to be off the market.
Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D), who just won the special South Dakota election, had a boyfriend waiting for her on Capitol Hill when she arrived last week.
He’s Democratic Rep. Max Sandlin, a four-term Texan.
The couple met during Herseth’s failed 2002 election bid against then-Rep. Bill Janklow (R-S.D.), who recently was released from prison for his second-degree manslaughter conviction. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has its own version of a “big buddy” program, appointed Sandlin to be Herseth’s mentor during that campaign.
Maybe the DCCC should have a match-making business on the side?
“Representative Herseth and Representative Sandlin met during the last election cycle. They remained friends after the 2002 election and have had a relationship for approximately a year,” her spokesman, Russ Levsen, told HOH.
Sandlin, who is divorced with four children, also worked hard to campaign and raise money for his girlfriend during her winning campaign against GOP state Sen. Larry Diedrich in the June 1 special election.
He said having just arrived in Washington, the new Congresswoman has not found permanent housing yet. For now, he said, she’s staying at the Capitol Suites.
But Herseth, 33, and Sandlin, 52, were seen Wednesday morning in front of Sandlin’s apartment building near D and First streets Southeast.
Rehberg, Horsing Around? A mystery e-mail making rounds in Montana political circles claims that a Republican delegation trip involving the state’s Members of Congress to Kazakhstan last month devolved into utter drunken debauchery.
The subject of the e-mail, which was sent anonymously to reporters and Democratic operatives, read: “Anonymous tip about Burns and Rehberg’s Kazakhstan visit Antics.”
The sender, who implied he or she was connected to the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan, wrote that that the visiting delegation, which included Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), “embarrassed the Embassy and the UNITED STATES with their antics.
“Every single one of them was drunk the entire time. Congressman Dennis Rehburg [sic], Rep, Montana, who had drank [sic], according to witnesses, some 20 shots of vodka, ran into the woods, returned on a horse, fell over (stumbling drunk) and was trampled by another horse.”
The mysterious missive continued: “He also made fun of the Kazakh national costume doing a ‘Coneheads’ routine from Saturday Night Live, over and over (including making beeping sounds like an alien) at an official delegation.”
HOH was not able to verify the origin of the e-mail. But we did verify that very much of what was said in the e-mail did happen, in some way, shape or form.
Rehberg and Burns confirmed they did go on the CODEL to Kazakhstan. Rehberg was trampled by a horse. He broke one rib and bruised several others. And they did drink. But not as much as the anonymous e-mail claimed.
“If I had 20 shots of anything I’d be dead!” Rehberg declared in an interview with HOH, adding that he doesn’t normally drink hard liquor.
Rehberg says he only had “three, four, something like that” shots of vodka with dignitaries of Kazakhstan at a ceremonial dinner in the mountains. “It wasn’t like it was an all-day event,” he said.
But he says he was not drunk when he fell off the horse and was trampled by another. It’s just that as a rancher from Montana, he’s not used to riding the style they ride in Kazakhstan. The official from Kazakhstan riding a horse next to him tried to help Rehberg off his horse, but when he did, the Congressman says, “he grabbed the reigns [sic] and I wasn’t comfortable so I fell back and sat down.”
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My hometown of Prescott is a small community in southwestern Arkansas with about 3,700 people. It’s a quiet and cordial town where people still know their neighbor’s name, still say “hello” to one another in the grocery store and still help one another out when times are tough. And times certainly are tough. Read Full Article
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