It turns out the candidate was moonlighting online as a content producer on a pornographic livestream website.
For those already convinced that politicians will do anything for money, boy do I have a story for you. Virginia’s legislature (the state house of which is narrowly controlled by the Republicans under Governor Glenn Youngkin) is set to hold its biennial elections this November. A newly drawn, hyper-competitive swing state-house district in suburban Richmond — mostly Henrico County, Eric Cantor’s old stomping grounds before Eric Cantor got unexpectedly stomped into the ground in 2014 — is the site of a tough open-seat race in an election that will be a referendum not only on Youngkin’s tenure but on the GOP as a whole in late 2023.
The Republicans have fielded some guy named Dave Owen for the seat. I don’t know him, you don’t know him, I hope he’s a nice guy who loves puppies and small children, and absent any unsurfaced felonies I hope he wins, because I am a Republican. The Democrats fielded an appealing first-time candidate as well named Susanna Gibson. Married mother of two, nurse-practitioner (they even have an adorable dog), she seems like quite the formidable package for a regional-level race in an evenly divided state-house district.
So I need to warn you now: Here’s where this story gets insane, sleazy, and darkly comedic all at once. For it turns out that Susanna Gibson, R.N., after announcing her candidacy and possibly tied directly to it, was also moonlighting online as a content producer on a pornographic livestream website called “Chaturbate” under the name “HotWifeExperience,” and . . .
. . . look, do you really want me to finish that last sentence for you? Haven’t you already finished it yourself in your own mind? (I’m fairly certain that, however you finished it, the reported reality is at least marginally worse.) Think carefully, because the actual details after that ellipsis are unfit for this website or even my own memories, which I wish after this morning I could selectively erase. (For those fascinated by cringe humor, the experience of reading outlets like the Washington Post or the New York Times delicately explaining the ins and outs of what “camgirling” entails to their readership rivals some of the most uncomfortable episodes of The Office for grimace-inducing comedy. Other sites had no such compunctions about their wording.)
The story’s details — and I will leave you to the links in this case rather than recounting them myself — are excruciating. (The sexual ones are unworthy of specific mention; the moment at which Mrs. Gibson pauses in the midst of said acts unworthy of mention to chirp that the payments for them are going to a “good cause” are an unfortunate matter for campaign-finance lawyers to scrutinize.) I want to start by clarifying that I understand that one must put on a brave face when caught in an intolerably embarrassing situation. Though I myself have never been caught running a pornographic live-cam side hustle after having asked a party’s voters to entrust me with its nomination, I think we can all agree that it’s the sort of “rookie mistake” anyone could have made.
But I am contemptuous of Gibson’s defense this morning — as mounted in a New York Times article on the scandal — that she is somehow the victim of a “leak” or an “invasion of privacy.” I can think of few things less capable of being characterized as an “invasion of privacy” than this situation. Mrs. Gibson made herself rather overly available to viewers — in fact charged quite a lot of money for it — and anybody who has so freely sold so much of themselves to so many strangers in such a public way cannot claim surprise to find it immediately being resold on the market when its value is the highest.
I actually find it more difficult to be funny about this story than I otherwise might, and the reason is that I’ll never understand the internal psychology of a person who engages in this sort of public exhibitionism, much less then goes out and seeks nomination for public office (Gibson’s primary was not a blowout by any means) with it not just in their past, but their active present. And, more than anything else, because — although this is obviously newsworthy — I shudder to think of the consequences for her family. There’s no punch line to end on here, just a lament about the tawdriness of our demotic era and the invisible damage done.