After admitting to sex with an employee, Rep. Matt Wingard (R) drops campaign for re-election

Today, Rep. Matt Wingard (R-Wilsonville) decided against seeking re-election. It was a sudden collapse of a politician that Republicans clearly thought had a bright future. The O's Jeff Mapes reports:

Wingard, who did not return repeated calls for comment, made his decision to step away from his political career less than a week after revelations that a former aide had complained about his behavior to investigators from the state Department of Justice and the Clackamas County sheriff.

While the investigators declined to bring any charges against Wingard, the reports described behavior that bothered even many of his fellow Republicans.

The woman, who first met Wingard when she was 20, said she felt pressured to enter into a sexual relationship with him and to exchange sexually oriented texts while he employed her in 2010.

Of course, those of us on the other side have been calling attention to his bizarre behavior for a long time. Frankly, he should never have been elected in the first place. As Steve Law noted in the Tigard Times, this isn't the first allegation:

Before his first House race in 2008, Wingard was embarrassed by revelations that he pled guilty to misdemeanor child abuse and fourth-degree assault in 2001, after striking his 7-year-old son in the head with a screwdriver handle. In an affidavit, his former girlfriend and the mother of the child alleged a pattern of authoritarian parenting by Wingard, including forcefeeding their child to the point of vomiting when he wouldn’t eat, and locking him in a dark stairwell to help him overcome his fear of the dark. Wingard denied those allegations, and managed to win office anyway.

http://www.blueoregon.com/2012/06/after-admitting-sex-employee-matt-wingard-drops-out-hd-26-race/