Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan resigned on Friday after describing a “nightmarish month and a half” that has taken a toll on him and his family. The Republican steps down four months before an election to replace him.
“This past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family,” McCotter said in a statement. “As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave.”
McCotter’s resignation comes a day after The Detroit News published an article about a script he wrote for a TV comedy in the wake of a failed candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.
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| McCotter entertained supporters at the Iowa Straw Polls in August last year. (Getty Images) |
The paper said the show "Bumper Sticker: Made On Motown" starred McCotter "hosting a crude variety show cast with characters bearing the nicknames of his congressional staffers, his brother and a drunk, perverted 'Black Santa.'
"They take pot shots about McCotter's ill-fated bid for the White House while spewing banter about drinking, sex, race, flatulence, puking and women's anatomy," added the News.
The paper said it had been handed the script by a former McCotter staffer
"who offered it as evidence of what the five-term congressman was pitching while in elected office and the tawdry humor unbecoming of a public official who had become disinterested in serving the 11th Congressional District."
The resignation came just weeks after McCotter dropped his re-election bid after learning his staff hadn’t filed enough valid petition signatures to get him on the Aug. 7 primary ballot.
Twice as many signatures as required were turned in, but 80 percent were found to be fake or duplicates, and Republican Michigan State Attorney General Bill Schuette has launched an investigation.
McCotter, a 46-year-old guitar-playing attorney, ran a little-noticed campaign for the GOP presidential nominationbefore dropping out in September last year.
After he was barred from the primaries, he at first considered a write-in campaign for Congress but decided that was unfeasible.
“The recent event’s totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family,” McCotter said in the statement.
"Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth of home amongst the ruins of their U.S. House office, for the sake of my loved ones I must ‘strike another match, go start anew’ by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen."
He said he now has to find work. “I do not leave for an existing job and face diminishing prospects (and am both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby).
“My priorities are twofold: find gainful employment to help provide for my family; and continue to assist, in any way they see fit, the Michigan attorney general's earnest and thorough investigation, which I requested, into the 2012 petition filing.”
McCotter said that his offices will continue to operate under the direction of the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and that staff will still serve his constituents’ needs.
McCotter, who is married with three teenage children, was first elected to the House in 2003.
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