Oklahoma Democratic House candidate Abby Broyles has ended her campaign after drawing national attention for blacking out at a sleepover for middle-school-aged girls, verbally berating them, and vomiting into a clothes hamper.
Broyles, a 32-year-old attorney and a former television news anchor, admitted to the behavior last month after parents discussed the Valentine’s Day weekend episode. Broyles said in a statement Thursday she was receiving treatment for anxiety and alcohol dependency after she attempted to take her life by taking sleeping pills and drinking alcohol in the wake of the embarrassment she faced following the sleepover incident.
“On the morning of March 2nd, I made the attempt to take my life, but thankfully, God had greater plans for me,” Broyles said. “I am currently undergoing mental health treatment for severe anxiety and dependency on alcohol to cope.”
DRUNK DEMOCRATIC HOUSE HOPEFUL VERBALLY BERATED GIRLS AT PARTY, PARENT SAYS
Today I’m ending my campaign for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District – and I’ll come back stronger than ever. https://t.co/E3fh0WpihJ
— Abby Broyles (@abbybroyles) March 24, 2022
Thirteen days after the local news outlet NonDoc broke the story about Broyles on Feb. 17, she said, “I drank heavily in my hotel room, more than 1,300 miles away in an effort to hide and took sleeping pills, anguishing in pain reading about myself on social media and in tabloid articles,” according to a Medium blog post.
The slumber party was held at the home of a Deer Creek Public Schools parent on Feb. 11, where eight girls between the ages of 12 and 13 were present. A mother whose daughter attended the event at the home of another girl, Sarah Matthews, is a college friend of Broyles. A Twitter thread by Matthews first raised questions about Broyles’s behavior at the party.
The candidate initially sought to dismiss the allegations after multiple news outlets picked up the story, though she later returned to her former place of employment, local NBC affiliate KFOR, to explain her side of the story.
“I want to say sorry from the bottom of my heart, I apologize for any hurt or damage or trauma that my behavior, when I didn’t know what I was doing, caused. I’m deeply sorry,” Broyles told the outlet, saying she had an adverse reaction after drinking wine in combination with medication she had “never taken before.”
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On March 2, Broyles also tweeted an alarming message saying, “You guys win. I’ll just kill myself,” to which close relatives and loved ones later confirmed she was safe and temporarily residing somewhere outside of the state.
The Democratic hopeful sought to unseat Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice in the Sooner State’s 5th Congressional District, which covers part of Oklahoma City, the state’s capital and largest population center. She previously worked as a local journalist for 10 years and ran for Senate in 2020 to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe but lost to him by around 30 percentage points.
