Great Democrats in History -- Gary Condit

Democrat Gary Condit was born on this date, April 21, in 1948 In May 2001, Condit became the subject of national news coverage after the April 30 disappearance of Chandra Levy, a young Jewish woman working as a Washington, D.C. intern originally from Condit's district. Police questioned him twice, and Condit denied having an affair with her; however, after Levy's aunt went public with conversations she had had with her missing niece about the adulterous liaison, police questioned him a third time, and Condit confessed to the relationship. When the affair began, Condit was 53 and Levy was 23. While Condit was not named as an official suspect in the disappearance, Levy's family (and subsequently the national media) suspected that Condit was withholding important information about the intern's disappearance. Public interest was very high, and Condit's reputation suffered not just from the contrast between his "pro-family" politics versus his adultery with a woman two years younger than his daughter, and his attempts to mislead the police, but in particular, from an incident in July, 2001, two months after Levy vanished, in which Condit was caught trying to hide evidence of yet another affair—a gift box—in a dumpster in one of Washington's Virginia suburbs. Suspicion deepened when Condit tried to avoid answering direct questions during a televised interview with news anchor Connie Chung on August 23, 2001. This followed news reports that Condit had an affair with flight attendant, Anne Marie Smith. Condit faded from the news following 9/11, only to reappear during his announcement to run for an eighth term on December 7, 2001. Condit lost the primary elections in March 2002 to his former aide, then-Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, and left Congress at the end of his term in January 2003. It was the first election Condit ever lost. Condit's most notable vote in his last months in office was the House resolution to expel Congressman James Traficant after his conviction on corruption charges. In the 420-1 vote on July 25, 2002, Gary Condit was the sole "nay." After an extensive search, Levy's remains were discovered May 22, 2002 in a secluded area of Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. In May 2002 a medical examiner officially declared that Levy's death was the result of homicide. As of March 2007, the case remains unsolved.