Holy cow! History — Blackmail and the blind senator

J. Mark Powell

Submitted photo

In the end, the jury didn’t buy it. They deliberated only seven minutes before finding in Gore’s favor. The public believed the senator had been trapped in a politically motivated set-up. In the Democratic primary that August, he carried 74 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties and breezed to re-election”

OPINION — Sex, scandal and politics have been an unholy trinity in America’s history since Day 1.

In 1792, for example, three members of Congress quietly investigated Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s hanky-panky with a married woman and the subsequent shakedown of $1,000 hush money — about $35,000 today — from her husband.

Satisfied the cash had come from Hamilton’s personal pocket and not public funds, the matter was discreetly dropped. A major scandal erupted when the public found out a few years later, forcing Hamilton to produce a remarkable tract where he admitted to moral failings while simultaneously lauding himself for faithfully protecting the public trough.

And so it went from then right up to Bill Clinton’s exploits and the allegations that drove Graham Platner from the Maine U.S. Senate race.

When sex and politics collide, the wreckage can be messy. And it can carry enormous personal cost for the accused. Consider what happened to Sen. Gore. No, not that Gore. This one came long before Mr. Lockbox.

As a teenager, Thomas Gore was a talented debater and a spellbinding orator. He could hold an audience in the palm of his hand and leave it begging for more. He was involved in politics before he was even old enough to vote. So it was no surprise when the populist Democrat was chosen to be one of Oklahoma’s first senators in 1907.

Gore was also blind. Two separate childhood accidents left him unable to see. The press nicknamed him the Blind Cowboy. His disability didn’t hinder his Senate career. Gore quickly established himself as someone to reckon with. An early supporter of Woodrow Wilson, he declined a position in the new president’s Cabinet in 1913, opting instead to seek re-election in 1914. Gore soon found himself in one of the dirtiest campaigns in American history.

Powerful forces wanted him removed from Oklahoma’s political landscape. The year before, influential lawyers had claimed huge legal fees against the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian tribes. Gore opposed that claim. When attempts to buy off the senator with cash bribes failed, they tried a new tactic.

A woman named Minnie Bond invited Gore to her Washington hotel room. She said she wanted to discuss enlisting the senator’s help in getting a job for her husband. According to Minnie, as soon as the door was closed, Gore grabbed her hand. When she drew away, he lunged and tried to sexually assault her. Minnie screamed; a man burst into the room. She said Gore begged her not to tell anyone about what had happened.

Instead, Minnie and her husband went to D.C.’s district attorney. After listening to her tale, the DA said there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant pressing charges. But Minnie wasn’t finished.

She threatened to file a $50,000 civil lawsuit (about 25 times the average annual income at the time), arguing that her reputation had been ruined. If Gore dropped out of the race, she would drop her suit.

Then, as now, allegations of attempted rape were enough to ruin a political career. The Blind Cowboy’s response to Minnie’s offer? Bring it on. The lawsuit went to court.

The trial made sensational headlines from coast to coast. With Gore up for re-election, the stakes were high. Reporters hung on every word of Minnie’s lurid testimony. Gore’s attorneys denied everything. It was a classic case of he-said, she-said.

In the end, the jury didn’t buy it. They deliberated only seven minutes before finding in Gore’s favor. The public believed the senator had been trapped in a politically motivated set-up. In the Democratic primary that August, he carried 74 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties and breezed to re-election.

The Gore case became an object lesson for all politicians. For example, a young Harry Truman had followed the trial in the newspapers. When he later became a county commissioner and U.S. senator, he had a fear of being alone with any woman in a hotel room that bordered on paranoia.

Monkey business, politics and public perception remained remarkably intertwined all these years later. A slip in one area can prove fatal in another.

History, it seems, never tires of repeating itself.

J. Mark Powell is a former TV journalist and author of “Witness to War: The Civil War Told by Those Living Through It.” He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/lettersor email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.