WASHINGTON – Gary Adrian Condit, the likeable, straight-shooting California congressman, the low-key, clean-cut, down-to-earth, son-of-a-preacher family
man, fooled everyone – his staff, his colleagues, his parents, his family, his constituents and the press.
His life, then versus now, is material for a tragic comedy.
“He’ll deal with you straight,” his spokesman Michael Lynch told the Modesto Bee in a 1998 profile.
Of course, Lynch, who insisted over and over that his boss was just friends with Chandra Levy, knows better now. So do the D.C. police – and Levy, wherever she is.
“He has no hidden agenda,” Lynch gushed.
Well, none except for that little matter of hiding affairs (and possibly a mistress).
“He hasn’t fallen to the seductions of political power,” Lynch said.
No, he’s just consumed by them.
In the same article, his father, Rev. Adrian Condit, said, “I believe with all my heart that God has had his hand on Gary, because every time he was ready for a step up, a door opened up.”
To another bedroom, unfortunately.
“I work really hard at staying centered and staying balanced,” Rep. Condit told the Bee. “He’s a very centered guy,” agreed lawmaker pal John Kasich.
Then why’s he so off?
“My mom and dad work as a team,” daughter Candee Condit told the Bee, adding that her father always comes through when the family needs him.
Sad.
“Another hot button issue for me is bullies … and people who push other people around,” Condit was quoted as saying in the 1998 profile.
Would those “other people” include interns?
Condit once got the FBI to investigate violent tax protesters in Modesto.
Hopefully for his sake, he made some friends at the bureau then.
In 1996, the Fresno Bee interviewed California congressional couples who live apart, but still make it work. Carolyn and Gary Condit were included among the successful bi-coastal marriages.
The story led with: “Capitol Hill can be rocky soil in which to plant a marriage.” And ended with: “Challenges of distance, time and temptation have not shaken” the Condits’ and other couples’ marriages from their moorings.
Condit’s brother, Burl, is a cop – a Modesto police sergeant, in fact.
Maybe he should help with the investigation here. Lord knows, he couldn’t do any worse than the D.C. police.
One final irony:
In the summer of 1997, two men were shot and killed in a bar right down the street from Condit’s condo in the young, hip Adams Morgan section of D.C. The violence was rare for the Bohemian neighborhood – Washington’s answer to New York’s East Village – and
prompted local press to canvass residents. One was Condit’s daughter.
“I live about two blocks from here, and I can’t remember anything like that happening before,” said Candee Condit, then 21.
Nor since … or at least we hope.
