by Karin Tanabe
During his last year as a lawmaker, Sen. Stanton has become a vocal supporter of foster care and the U.S. foster care system, championing significant legislation to better the lives of thousands of American children. The president is expected to sign the Foster Care Empowerment Act, a bill originally introduced by Sen. Stanton, in the next month. Stanton and his wife, Charlotte McBain Stanton, adopted three of their six children from the U.S. foster care system.
Olivia Campo has written extensively on Stanton’s foster care legislation for the Capitolist. The paper is investigating her work for any ethics violations due to the nature of their relationship and expects the Senate will look into Sen. Stanton’s proposed bill.
Stanton, 61, has been married to Charlotte McBain Stanton, 59, since 1973. The two met as undergraduates at Arizona State University and along with six grown children, have two grandchildren. He serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is also a member of the Appropriations Committee and a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Campo, 28, has been married since 2005 to Sandro Pena, 29. The two began dating at Texas A&M and were married during their senior year. Pena is currently employed at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C.
Until Brown brought news of the affair to the Capitolist this week, the paper had no knowledge of Campo’s relationship with Sen. Stanton. When reached by phone, Sen. Stanton’s office chose not to comment on the story.
“And the photos?” I asked when I finished reading. I was wondering if Olivia’s naked body was about to be splashed on our front page.
“We’re cropping one,” he said. “And we’re using one full photo of them together, at the window.”
Right. The PG-rated one. The one that showed Olivia’s incriminating happy face but looked more like an Edward Hopper painting than a nudie mag.
“We’re keeping your language, of course, about all the other ones, as you just saw. The description, the detail. But we can’t run those photos. We’re . . . not that kind of publication.” He looked up at me with a smile. “I admit, that just for a second, I considered it. Running them, that is.”
When the story broke online a few minutes later, Olivia had been out of a job for over an hour. Talk of Stanton resigning began immediately.
And so did talk of my success.
Just a few minutes after the story went live, my phone started to ring. Too flustered to answer the majority of the calls, I picked up only the ones that were from my Style section colleagues.
“Five minutes ago I was asleep,” said Isabelle. “Then my mother called and said, ‘Get to the Internet immediately, Adrienne just wrote a huge story.’ Of course, I didn’t think it was you, Capitolist Adrienne. But it was! It is! You fucking photographed that wench Olivia Campo having sex with Senator Stanton. You suck for not telling us but it’s insane that you broke this. It blows my mind. How did you have any time? I mean, I barely have time to shower. It’s all so crazy. Who are you? You’re not the reporter I thought you were. You’re the kind of person who follows people around in hotels at two A.M. in subzero weather. You’re like the National Enquirer.”
After giving Isabelle the three-minute version, I answered a call from Julia.
“How did you do it? Tell me everything. What does Olivia look like butt naked? Does she have any weird moles or a huge tattoo that she hides under her ugly little suits? And why didn’t you tell me? I would have happily done a little naked spying with you,” Julia pressed.
I laughed, apologized for keeping it all so quiet, and told her I would explain in person tomorrow.
On my way to Upton’s, I fielded a joint call from Libby and Alison, who had been covering an event together. Both of them started yelling questions at me. “Did you really follow them around like a paparazzo? I can’t believe you saw them screwing. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us! We’re your Capitolist family. But whatever. You saw that old lunatic naked and with Olivia Campo. Naked Olivia Campo! Does she have fur? She’s actually part dog, right? Like a Twilight creature? Weren’t you terrified of getting caught? And more importantly, why didn’t you tell us anything?”
When I woke up the next morning on Upton’s couch, I had a long congratulatory email from Payton, ten voice mails from my parents, three from Elsa that were mostly just screams, and twenty-five more from different media outlets wanting to talk about the story. I checked my inbox and saw that it was overflowing with more media requests and a lot of hate mail. Before I could start replying, my phone rang again. It was Hardy.
“Good morning. Don’t worry too much about the Style section today. Obviously your priorities are elsewhere. We’ll be okay without you.”
After I thanked him, he said, “Was it a good idea to go to Upton?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “He’s not that bad.”
“And neither are you,” said Hardy, managing to not sound condescending. “But I knew that before you broke this story. Some of your other colleagues might be a little surprised that it’s your name in the byline, but I’m not.”
He didn’t wait for my reaction to his compliment. He just hung up and kept on being a very motivated twenty-two-year-old whom I no longer despised.
• • •
Stanton scheduled a press conference in Phoenix on Friday, two days after the story broke, not very far from the coffee shop where Victoria had helped me bring my story full circle. I hadn’t heard a word from her, and I imagined I wouldn’t. Like I promised, I didn’t use her name except to Upton in confidence.
“Do you want to travel to Phoenix for the press conference?” Upton asked me the day before Stanton was scheduled to talk to the world. He had, we had, made headlines all over the country. Even the international press was covering the story. Another American political sex scandal, this time with a few soap opera twists.
“Phoenix? What do you think?” Upton repeated. “You could report it for us. Watch him give his resignation. You’ve certainly earned it.”
I suppose I had. The majority of the other Capitolist reporters traveled for their jobs. But I was getting to a point where I could no longer formulate sentences. Instead of sitting with the Style girls, I had spent the last forty-eight hours camped in Upton’s office as he coached me for media appearances and we planned out potential follow-up articles.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it could lead to a bit of a media circus if the woman who brought his affair to light was sitting in the room with him.”
“We like a media circus around here, if you haven’t noticed,” said Upton.
“I think I would be happier covering from here. I could co-write with someone in Arizona, if that would be better.”
“Whatever you think,” said Upton. “Let me know by noon.”
I didn’t go to Arizona. Christine Lewis did. Instead I stayed in the newsroom for a few more hours, having heaps of praise piled on me by reporters and editors who used to look down at their phones when I walked by them. Just like I wanted, they now looked me square in the eye. A few even hugged me. This was, they all agreed, the biggest story we—and now it was a we—had ever run.
I had media hits all evening. People were requesting sit-down after sit-down with me. “And with Olivia,” Jenny from the media team told me when she came to ask me if I could do HLN right after CNN. “But she’s not answering her phone. No one from here has talked to her since Upton broke the news to her.”
I already knew she wasn’t answering her phone. I had tried to call her. I had tried to call Sandro. I wasn’t surprised that they were ignoring me and everyone else.
My first media appearance of the ten I had scheduled that night was with Fox News. I put in the earpiece, smoothed down my hair and my conservative red Brooks Brothers dress, and tried not to look exhausted as the blond host fired up and then peppered me with a series of questions.
“What are your thoughts on a possible replacement for Stanton?” she asked. “Many down there in Arizona are
saying the governor won’t pluck a sitting representative because it would mean a special election for that seat. Who do you think the front-runners are?”
“As far as I know, Stanton hasn’t resigned yet,” I said.
“But he will. You know as well as I do that he will resign tomorrow. Let me ask you the question again,” she pressed. “Who do you think will fill his seat?”
“Well, the law in Arizona states that Stanton will be replaced by a member of his own party, so we know that it will be a Republican. There are a lot of strong members of the GOP in the House. I do think that’s where we’ll see the governor looking for a replacement. A similar thing happened when then governor of New York, David Paterson, plucked Kirsten Gillibrand from the House to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat. Of course, the circumstances were quite different.”
“To say the least.”
In my ear a producer’s voice told me to wrap up for commercial.
“I just hope that the man or woman the governor chooses can bring ethics, accountability, and honor back to the seat,” I said. “I’m sure the people of Arizona and the Arizona Republican Party want the same thing.”
As expected, the senator did resign the next day. I watched with Upton from his big office, and he put his hand on my shoulder when Stanton said the magic words. He never referred to Olivia by name. He just called her the young woman he was involved with. He said he was completely unaware of her past ties to his family company and mentioned the court case from 1989. All had been just, he said. He said that he and “the young woman” had found common ground on their passion for foster care reform, a cause he would continue to champion even out of office. But his recent actions were not appropriate for any man, especially not a man representing the great state of Arizona.
So, with his wife, Charlotte, standing next to him and his kids sitting in the audience, he let his once illustrious career go. The tongues that wagged about a future Stanton presidency or vice presidency stopped moving. People who had been hyping him up as the next GOP leader with a chance at the White House distanced themselves from their past comments and Stanton’s name started to get wiped from the history books, his past accomplishments now replaced by a sex scandal.
On Saturday, the boiling July day after he resigned, I went to New York to do morning shows. ABC paid for my plane ticket, and I had chauffeurs on either end. On the crisp fall day I drove out of Manhattan last year, I had already been imagining my return as a conquering hero—a journalist of substance and importance who exchanged daily text messages with Nancy Pelosi. My fantasy had almost come true—but I expected it to feel differently. I didn’t feel like a conquering hero, or a girl who had done anything to merit a chauffeured ride. I just felt exhausted.
On the way back to Washington, I called Payton from the car. We had been emailing almost hourly since the news broke. She had said she was proud of me, was glad she could be involved in some small way, even if I was the one getting all the fame.
“I saw you on the Today show,” she said. I told her I could hear the TV still on behind her. “It’s my computer, actually,” Payton said. “You’re my new Internet star.”
“It’s very weird,” I said. “Within five minutes of the story going up, everyone who had been ignoring me or bad-mouthing me since I came in October was suddenly my best friend. I talk to Upton like every hour. He’s my editor now. When all this dies down, they want to take me off the Style section. Put me on the investigative team. They say I have a nose for it.”
“Wow. That sounds like a good thing. You must want that. You should want that.”
“I guess I do. I don’t know. I’m so tired right now, I don’t even trust myself to drive a car.”
“Mom and Dad have been calling me every few hours to talk about you,” she said. “They’re crazy proud. Like screaming ‘That’s my baby!’ proud. But they claim they’ve only seen you twice since the story broke. Is that true?”
It was true. I had been home twice to get clothes, but every night since late Monday when everything started, I had been sleeping on Upton’s couch. There was just too much to do. Too many television reporters to talk to and Upton’s constant stream of questions and research ideas for follow-up articles on Stanton’s inner circle and Olivia’s motive. There were also safety records to look into at the plant in Arizona and court files to be reexamined. Middleburg, which was the epicenter of everything when I was digging, suddenly felt so far away.
Before I hung up with Payton, she asked the question she knew I was thinking about. “Have you talked to Sandro?”
“I haven’t,” I replied. “I’ve tried. I called the only number I could find for him over and over again. There’s no voice mail, and he’s not picking up. The office manager at the List said Olivia isn’t answering her phone, either, and that their landline has been disconnected.”
“Well, you can’t blame them for that,” said Payton. “I would be taking a very long vacation right now if I were them.”
“Yeah, but I still want to talk to Sandro. Just see how he’s doing. I still care about him. And in a weird way, I care about Olivia, too. I tell myself every day that I’m not the bad guy. She had the affair, she betrayed her husband, not me. But I still feel guilty.”
“Anyone would,” said Payton. “But anyone else would have done the same thing, too.”
I wasn’t so sure.
• • •
Five days had gone by since the senator had stepped down. All the talk now centered around who was going to replace him, but I was still thinking about Olivia. It surprised me how much I wanted to talk to her. Her professional life, the one she had toiled for and cared so much about, was gone. She had been at the List much longer than I, put in even crazier hours, and I had knocked that all away with my one lucky strike. Maybe not lucky. I had worked hard for the story, and she was guilty as charged, but I still felt compelled to explain. She had been on top at the List and I had been at the bottom; now I was on top and she was at the very bottom. I had started to feel like we weren’t all that different.
Before I left that night, Upton waved me over to his office and gestured to a chair. “Your pictures,” he said. “The naked ones. You know, everyone wants to buy them.”
I hadn’t even thought about that, but of course they did. They were the stuff of TMZ’s pornographic fantasies.
“Legally,” he said, “they’re yours. You’re not a staff photographer, and you weren’t shooting them for us.”
“Don’t worry,” I quickly assured him. “I have no interest in selling them. I think enough has been shown already, don’t you?” One thing I could do to make everything a little less twisted, at least in my own mind, was to not go public with those photos. I could just wipe my computer and put the hard drive in a bank safe. They could sit there forever, nothing more than an electronic memory.
I stood up to leave and Upton looked at me turning to walk back to the newsroom. “Wait, Adrienne. One more thing.”
He waved me over and I sat down again.
“Have you heard who the governor is appointing?” he said frowning, like I should be the one telling him.
“I haven’t.”
“Well, it’s not confirmed yet, but it looks like he’s filling Stanton’s seat with Taylor Miles.”
Taylor Miles. The man I had seen talking to Stanton at Upton’s party! The monarch of the anti-immigration movement.
“It sounds like it’s going to be announced today,” said Upton. “We got a tip from the guy who is going to be his chief of staff. He’s a friend of ours. A friend of the paper’s, you could say.”
“Can I ask who it is?”
“I guess you can,” said Upton, putting his feet on his desk and holding two BlackBerrys in his left hand. He flipped them over each other like cards in a deck.
“Off the record. Very off the record, it’s James Reddenhurst. Current head of communications for the RNC. Do you know him?”
“You could say I do,” I said.
> James was going to flack for Taylor Miles. I wondered how long that had been in the works. My guess was about five days. I knew James didn’t have the same ideals as Miles, but this was Washington. A big job was a big job, and the rest didn’t really matter. I wondered if James would still be mad at me now that I’d been indirectly involved in his promotion.
Before Upton dismissed me, he slipped his feet back onto the floor and put his hands through his slicked-back hair. “Water?” he asked me, reaching for a bottle off his desk. I shook my head no. “I really feel like you’re one of the few reporters here who now has this place in their blood,” he said after taking a swig. “You’re going to do great things. You might need to work a little harder, but you’re going to really soar here.”
“I already start at five A.M.,” I pointed out.
“You do?” he said incredulously. “Why does the Style section start at five? That’s crazy. No one ever told me that. How long do you think that’s been happening?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “About four years.”
Upton snorted with laughter and I knew he planned to do nothing about it. “Well stop worrying about Style. You’re going to do bigger things.”
“What kinds of things?” I asked. Was I going to out every senator playing dirty on weekends? Was that my new job?
“Well, like I said, you’ve got to do investigative work,” said Upton, looking off into the distance, as if my head was thirty degrees to the left.
“Investigative journalism,” I repeated.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “You’re clearly good at it. You’re ruthless. The way you pursued that story and didn’t tell a soul. It wasn’t the choice you should have made. You should have come straight to me. But you didn’t blow it, either. You’ve got an iron spine, and that’s just the kind of thing you need when writing pieces that can throw a U-turn in someone’s career. Or in your case, just flat-out ruin it.”
I was ruthless? It sounded like he was describing the Craigs-list killer. Since when did I have an iron spine? I liked kitschy musicals and the Lifetime network. My favorite sport was ice dancing.