A candidate in a high-stakes legislative contest in Virginia had sex with her husband in live videos posted on a pornographic website and asked viewers to pay them money in return for carrying out specific sex acts.
Screenshots of Susanna Gibson on the website were shared with The Associated Press. The campaign for Gibson, a Democrat running for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in a district just outside Richmond, issued a statement Monday in which it denounced the sharing of the videos as a violation of the law and her privacy. Gibson called the exposure of the videos “the worst gutter politics.”
“It won’t intimidate me and it won’t silence me,” she said in the statement. “My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.”
Yeah it shows really bad local party vetting/onboarding process which is par for the course for Virginia democrats. This would be a potential issue in a city council election, and this is state delegate level - you gotta get in front of that beforehand since you know it’ll be released. Unless they wanted the free publicity (totally possible advanced election calculus, but I doubt it), this seems crazy to let slide. I don’t know the district, but Richmond suburbs isn’t gonna be the most progressive area.