Remember Mark Foley?  He embodied the fecklessness of the Republican efforts in 2006’s midterm elections when his strange entreaties to underaged pages got uncovered.  He lost his West Palm Beach seat to Tim Mahoney, who ran on family values — understandably effective against Foley — and joined the Democratic tidal wave of victory over the “culture of corruption”.

Now, however, it turns out that Tim “Faith and Family” Mahoney has a sex scandal of his own, although somewhat more pedestrian than Foley’s:

West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to current and former members of his staff who have been briefed on the settlement, which involved Mahoney and his campaign committee.

Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said.

A Mahoney spokesperson would not answer questions about the alleged affair or the settlement, but said Allen resigned of her own accord and “has not received any special payment from campaign funds.”

Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign, the Mahoney staffers said.

Wow!  Now we also have a cover-up.  Democrats want to keep this information from Mahoney’s constituents after posing him as the “faith and family” candidate two years ago.  That’s not much of a surprise, but it is a rather entertaining demonstration of karma.

ABC has audio of Mahoney terminating Allen, and Allen not buying the reason for it:

The settlement came when Allen threatened to sue Mahoney for a million dollars.  The letter promised to reveal Mahoney’s “dark and depraved personality”, not exactly a winning slogan for re-election.  The evential settlement got split between Allen and her attorney, and she had to pledge not to work for Mahoney’s opponent in the upcoming election.

Mahoney still seems to be engaging in deception.  ABC News quotes a campaign spokesperson as saying that Allen “resigned of her own accord, in good standing.”  The audio above, which Allen obviously recorded herself, says something entirely different. Someone’s lying, and it doesn’t appear to be Allen or ABC.

That makes Mahoney’s problems all the worse. Voters might be able to forgive an affair; after all, they did with Bill Clinton. If Mahoney insults their intelligence by denying obvious reality, he may soon find himself with a lot more time to pursue “faith and family,” and might want to see if Mark Foley has any lines open on a private-sector job.

Update: Gateway Pundit has more.