WASHINGTON — A former campaign aide to Sen. John Ensign confirmed her involvement Wednesday in an extramarital affair with the conservative Republican, lamented his decision to “air this very personal matter” and said she eventually would tell her side of the story.
An attorney for Cindy Hampton and her husband, Doug, issued a statement on their behalf as Ensign phoned in his resignation as a member of the Senate GOP leadership. The senator’s aides refused to return phone calls seeking additional details about a dalliance that pushed the 51-year-old Nevada lawmaker’s political career to the brink of disaster.
An Associated Press review of federal records showed Cynthia Hampton, 46, received a promotion and a pay raise about the time of the affair at one political entity controlled by Ensign and a pay raise at a second. Her husband was an employee in Ensign’s Senate office. Additionally, payments were made to the couple’s son.
Ensign told a hastily arranged news briefing on Tuesday he had an extramarital affair with a woman on his campaign payroll, and it lasted several months, ending in August 2008.
The disclosure resurrected questions about a two-week period in 2002, when Ensign abruptly dropped from public view. A person familiar with that episode, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Tuesday the senator told a close associate the absence followed an earlier affair.
In Las Vegas on Wednesday, lawyer Daniel Albregts issued a statement that said “Doug and Cindy Hampton can confirm that they are the individuals referenced by Senator Ensign during his press conference.”
Ensign, in his second term, has said he intends to remain in the Senate. He offered to resign as head of the Republican Policy Committee in a midday phone call with Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. Ensign is a member of the Christian ministry Promise Keepers and has championed causes pushed by the GOP’s conservative religious base while seeking to raise his political profile for a possible presidential campaign.
The senator’s fall from grace was a further blow for Republicans struggling to recover from recent election reversals as well as the political defection of moderate Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
