Congressional candidate Paul Davis might have thought his unfortunate history with strip clubs and private sex sessions old news, but as Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh can attest, the rules of the game have changed since Davis ran for governor in 2014.
Davis is now the Democratic nominee in the race for Kansas’s 2nd Congressional District. His Republican opponent is Army veteran and political newcomer Steve Watkins.
The ad, run by the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), recounts how police raided a Coffeyville strip club twenty years ago. According to the ad, Davis “was caught with a topless stripper standing over him in a VIP room at strip club during a police drug raid.”
This much Davis does not deny. “When I was 26 years old, I was taken to a club by my boss – the club owner was one of our legal clients,” Davis told Politico of the incident in 2014. “While we were in the building, the police showed up. I was never accused of having done anything wrong, but rather I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Although the club owner was charged with selling amphetamines, Davis was not charged with a crime. According to police records, however, “he was found alone with a stripper who was only wearing a G-string at the time.” Davis did not say whether the private session was a job requirement.
The CLF ad links Davis’s sex club history to his 2011 vote as a state representative against a bill that prevented the establishment of “a sexually oriented business within 1,000 feet of any preexisting accredited public or private elementary or secondary school, house of worship, state-licensed day care facility, public library, public park, residence or other sexually oriented business.”
Davis called the bill an “unnecessary intrusion by state government,” a rare gesture by a Democrat against government intrusion of any kind.
“All they have to offer Kansas voters is tax cuts for millionaires, trade wars for farmers and a candidate who never voted in a statewide Kansas election before …,” said Haley Pollack, a Davis campaign spokeswoman. “These lies from shadowy special interest groups are exactly why we need a change in Washington.”
All hyperbole aside, the CLF ad does not lie. Michael Byerly, a CLF spokesman, told Fox News, “Davis was even found by Kansas law enforcement in the VIP room of his client’s strip club during a drug raid.” And that even Davis cannot deny.