MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, a Baptist whose faith was central to his public persona, sullied his strongest political commodity after apologizing for sexual remarks he made to a top female aide: A perception as honest.
The 73-year-old Republican had a reputation for being morally upright in a state that has seen its share of corruption scandals, including pending charges against the current speaker of the House.
“Now he’s in the thick of it himself. It pretty much decimates the reputation that he was elected on, as the doctor that could cure Alabama’s ill’s, financial and moral,” said Bill Stewart, the former chairman of the department of political science at the University of Alabama in Bentley’s hometown of Tuscaloosa.
Bentley’s former law enforcement secretary, Spencer Collier, said Wednesday during a news conference that he confronted the governor in 2014 about a recording that captured Bentley’s side of a conversation in which he told a woman that he loved touching her breasts. It is unclear in the recording if the woman is the aide, Rebekah Caldwell Mason.
“You don’t tell a woman all you think about are your breasts and behind. That’s sexual to me,” Collier said in an interview. Collier said Bentley as recently as a month ago told him that he was “deeply in love” with Mason but couldn’t ask her to leave her husband.