Saying he was “deeply sorry,” Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned from Congress today, hours after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former congressional pages under the age of 18.
A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
It gets WORSE: Foley only took this action after some new info came out via ABC News.
Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former male pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.
In a statement, Foley said, “I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”
The full details will be included in a report tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.
Foley was in a modestly competitive race with Democrat Tim Mahoney. Bush won 54% of the district’s vote in ’04, comparable to AZ 08 — another top open seat pickup opportunity for Dems.
It’s hard to imagine that this doesn’t put FL 16 in the Dem column as Mahoney was self-funding and had also raised a decent chunk of change. While the Foley decision not to run again might give the FL GOP time to find another candidate, it’s unclear. We’re checking with the state right now to clarify the law. If Foley’s name can’t be replaced, it’s probably safe to say the Democrats would need just 14 seats to win Congress as this one would go to the Dems almost uncontested.
What was his office saying before the new info came out? From the Los Angeles Times earlier today:
Six-term Rep. Mark Foley, 52, is being forced to explain a series of e-mails he sent in 2005 in which he asked the page his age and requested a photo.
The e-mails, copies of which were obtained by the Los Angeles Times, indicate that the teenager then complained to another congressional staff member, noting: “Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out.”
In another e-mail sent to the page, Foley said of a second teenager working on Capitol Hill, “He’s in such great shape.”
A Foley spokesman acknowledged the congressman sent the e-mails. But he said they reflected nothing more than an innocent interest in helping young people.
“It was encouragement for a person who was interested in politics,” said Jason Kello, noting that the page had written Foley a thank-you note after his service was over. “This is character assassination in the worst,” Kello said, blaming the campaign of Foley’s Democratic opponent, Tim Mahoney.
Never mind…
UPDATE:
–There’s a lot of irony in Foley resigning due to this. READ THIS.
–Most Creative Headline of the Day. Rolling Stone National: “Rep. Foley Turns A Page.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.