Hot tub scandal
Republican Rep. Kevin Garn
Utah's House majority leader resigned from the state Legislature Saturday, two days after his confession about sitting nude in a hot tub with a teenage girl 25 years ago stunned this conservative state.
Republican Rep. Kevin Garn, in an e-mail message to House Speaker David Clark, apologized for becoming a distraction.
"After discussing this matter with my family, I have decided that it is in the best interests of them, my colleagues and the people of Utah," he wrote.
A message left on Garn's cell phone was not immediately returned on Saturday.
Garn, 55, acknowledged the indiscretion with the legal minor late Thursday immediately after the Legislature adjourned for the session.
"Although we did not have any sexual contact, it was still clearly inappropriate - and it was my fault," he told colleagues from the House floor Thursday night.
House members responded with thunderous applause for his honesty and embraced him.
Garn said he paid the woman, Cheryl Maher, US$150,000 (RM510,000) to keep quiet about the episode when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2002.
But the now 40-year-old Maher began calling local news media last week to tell them about being naked with Garn when she was 15. It's unclear whether Garn was 29 or 30 at the time of the incident. He's more than 14 years older than Maher, who now lives in Derry, New Hampshire.
Maher said Saturday she and Garn were in a hot tub together twice - once in late 1984 after she had just turned 15 and again a few months later in 1985. She declined to say if the pair were nude both times or to provide any other specifics of the hot tubbing episodes.
"I'm sure the resignation was really difficult for him, but it needed to happen," Maher said. "This is a secret that devastated my life and my family's life."
She said she thinks Garn still has a bright future out of politics.
"My intention was not to harm or hurt anyone, it's just to speak the truth," she said. "It's freedom for me to get it out in the open and I think somewhere down the line he will think it's freedom for him, too."
Garn's resignation is the second for a Utah Republican legislative leader in the past three months. Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack resigned from the senate in January following his arrest for driving under the influence.
Utah Republican Party Chairman Dave Hansen said the scandals are damaging, but the party will bounce back. Republicans typically win strong support from voters in the predominantly Mormon state: In the 2008 presidential election, for example, Sen. John McCain received 62.6 percent of the vote.
"I would've preferred neither one of them had happened, obviously, but they did," Hansen said of the Garn and Killpack resignations. "But I don't think in the long run it's going to have any effect." - AP
Published March 14 2010
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