LANSING, Mich. — One of two socially conservative Michigan lawmakers embroiled in scandal over their extramarital affair and a cover-up attempt resigned early Friday morning rather than be expelled by his colleagues.
Republican Rep. Todd Courser announced his resignation, effective immediately, and was escorted out of the chamber. His decision came amid a marathon overnight session in the House over whether he and Rep. Cindy Gamrat should stay in their jobs.
"I just felt like it was the appropriate moment to do it," Courser told reporters. "I put everybody through a whole bunch — across the state, my own family, the constituents, the people in this room. ... Whether it was the third vote or the fourth vote or the fifth vote, they were going to eventually get me."
On Thursday, a special six-member House disciplinary committee recommended the expulsion of both legislators. But the full GOP-controlled chamber had been deadlocked for hours.
Sixty-seven members supported expelling him, six short of the two-thirds supermajority needed under the state constitution. More than two dozen minority Democrats abstained from voting and criticized the process.
Courser, 43, of Lapeer, has admitted sending an "outlandish" phony email to GOP activists and others in May claiming he was caught with a male prostitute. The email was intended to make his affair with the 42-year-old Gamrat appear less believable if it were exposed by an anonymous blackmailer who Courser said was demanding his resignation.
The self-smear email called Courser a "bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant" and "gun toting Bible thumping ... freak" and Gamrat a "tramp."
Gamrat has said she discussed the plot with Courser but did not know the email's sexually explicit content before it was sent.
Both apologized. Courser had previously said he would not resign.
Lawmakers were expected to also vote on Gamrat's status early Friday.
In calling for both lawmakers' expulsion earlier in the day, Rep. Ed McBroom, a Republican from Vulcan in the Upper Peninsula who chaired a disciplinary panel, said: "These two members have obliterated the public trust. They've obliterated the trust of their colleagues. And each day that they continue here they reduce the public trust in this institution."
Democrats, however, attacked the "sham" investigation as rushed and self-serving, and they questioned why two "whistleblower" aides to Courser and Gamrat were allowed to be fired by GOP leadership, since the speaker's office knew of problems in the lawmakers' combined office. They said the matter should be looked into by law enforcement and the former aides subpoenaed to testify to lawmakers.
