Gary Hart’s scandal brought down a candidate and changed how political journalism covers private lives

A stakeout of a candidate’s townhome. A rude question about his sex life at a press conference. A damning photo of an attractive young woman on his lap. It all went down in a single month in the spring of 1987 in a scandal that ended the presidential run of Sen. Gary Hart, who at that early stage of his presidential campaign was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination by a wide margin.

Commentary was split. Starchy New York Times columnists and editors, in particular, called the journalists who broke the story deplorable, accusing them of degrading campaign coverage to a tabloid standard.

The episode effectively ended Hart’s political career. His downfall also ended a prevailing gentleman’s agreement to leave even egregious philandering like President John F. Kennedy’s a private matter, and made clear the press was now willing to scrutinize the private lives of politicians. Whether the key journalists involved established new rules for reporting on the sexual transgressions of candidates is less clear.

Paul Taylor, the Washington Post reporter who first asked Hart if he had ever committed adultery, argued in a book he wrote about the 1988 campaign that broad guidelines were already informally in place and simply came to the surface. Hart, a two-term senator from Colorado, had self-righteously denied having an affair and brazenly dared exposure, influencing Taylor and his editors to put the topic of his sex life in play. Taylor concluded that afterward, “there are (still) no easy or absolute rules governing journalistic behavior in these areas.”