Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Abrigant.

This day, September 30, 2006, Florida GOP representative Mark Foley resigned abruptly in a one-sentence

letter to the Florida Governor, Jeb Bush. This resignation came after Foley had been

confronted with a series of sexually explicit internet messages that he was

reported to have sent to underage congressional pages.

This became known as the Congressional Page scandal or if you read some articles, the Mark Foley

scandal, it is never a good sign listeners when the name of the scandal is just your name.

But here to discuss Foley's behavior, his resignation, the politicians, if any.

And also I will note the last time a GOP congressman from Florida became embroiled in a scandal over underage affairs.

It has never happened again.

No record or evidence of that.

No record evidence.

Let this be the last time we even glancingly refer to Matt Gates on this

podcast. I'd be very glad to not do that, but I can't, couldn't help but think of

that current scandal. But anyway, here to discuss the Mark Foley scandal, the

Congressional Page scandal, are as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there.

So this is full of euphemisms, but I think we should go right into just what is it that fully did.

You know, so there's sexually explicit messages and so forth.

And you know, Foley did do a little bit of trying to say, well, you know, these were sort of innocent remarks or whatever, but I don't know.

One of you want to dive in and just sort of talk us through how these were far from innocent exchanges with basically congressional interns.

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