Photo: Facebook
He's with the party of "family values."
By Dan O'Reilly — Written on Feb 08, 2022
Oregon Republican gubernatorial candidate Stan Pulliam is taking hits from all sides thanks to leaked pictures and messages from private Facebook that have recently surfaced.
Pulliam, who is the current mayor of Sandy, and his wife MacKensely have been forced to address rumors that they are involved in a Portland swingers community.
Stan Pulliam admited he and his wife once joined a swingers Facebook group.
In the leaked pictures and messages, Pulliam and MacKensely were revealed to have been active in the group.
This comes as a bit of a shock as the gubernatorial candidate is running as a Republican candidate, a party that isn’t typically very receptive to free love and any sort of non-traditional sexual relations.
While Pulliam didn’t publicize the information, he has largely leaned into the accusations, claiming that it was a private matter but that he and his wife weren’t ashamed of it.
Credit: Reddit
“The decisions that we made were for MacKensey and I to make in the privacy of our own homes," he said in a statement.
"We’re certainly not asking anybody to participate or practice or do any of the things that we have decided to do in the past. But we’re also certainly not ashamed of decisions that we’ve made in the past either, as they’ve made us stronger.”
Pulliam seems to be trying to ride a fine line between his Trump platform and this new, not-so-traditional aspect of his personal life.
The conversation surrounding Pulliam’s swinger past are generally disparaging; there are some that are supportive of Pulliam’s claims to privacy, but most on both the left and right are taking this as an opportunity to make jokes and call for Pulliam to step down.
One Twitter user posted a tweet making a joke about the “swing” vote at Pulliam’s expense, saying, “Someone should let Pulliam know that’s not what people usually mean when they say ‘swing voters’.”
Pulliam has been trying to control the conversation on his swinger past.
Pulliam has tried to spin the situation back into an example of the policies that are a part of his platform, saying, “In Oregon, we really cherish values of individuality and liberty.”
However, being the staunch Trump-supporting Republican, Pulliam also felt the need to qualify his actions by specifying that he was neither bisexual, nor gay, saying, “I’m a heterosexual male, and I’ve only personally engaged in heterosexual activity.”
Before the scandal, Pulliam was a popular candidate in the race for Governor of Oregon. It remains to be seen how his newly unveiled swinger past will affect him but so far it seems like it’s reflected badly on him in the eyes of Republican voters.
It remains to be seen how the big lie backing Trump platform GOP gubernatorial candidate will fair in his election, but it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to spin this controversy into anything but a negative for him.
As political science professor puts it, “Donald Trump can get away with it. Stan Pulliam—I don’t’ think he can.”
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Dan O'Reilly is a writer who covers news, politics, and social justice. Follow him on Twitter.