The fate of Arizona’s 8th Congressional District could hinge on a naked selfie.
Last November a state Senate staffer texted Steve Montenegro a topless photo. Now that lewd digital photography has surfaced, threatening his campaign to win the seat vacated by Republican Rep. Trent Franks (who resigned after asking two female staffers to be surrogate mothers).
In his first interview since the story broke, Montenegro tells the Washington Examiner he never solicited the photo. Less than one week before the special election, the front-runner accuses his opponents of sabotaging his political career with “revenge porn.”
“I want you to know I did not have any inappropriate relationships with this woman,” Montenegro said with deliberate emphasis over the phone Wednesday night. “At no time have I been inappropriately involved with any staffer — nor have I ever. I have not solicited inappropriate material via text message or any other message.”
A report by the Arizona Republic asserts the opposite: Montenegro allegedly flirted; Montenegro allegedly welcomed the nude selfie; and Montenegro allegedly suggested taking the controversy off of text and onto Snap — shorthand for Snapchat, an app that sends and receives untraceable messages.
The messages in question were sent and received while Montenegro, then a state senator, attended the National Summit on Education Reform in Nashville, Tenn.
Staffer: “Did you explore tonight?”
Montenegro: “I am now.”
Staffer: “Ah where you at?”
Not waiting for a response, according to the Arizona Republic, the staffer then texted a photo of herself posing in a bathroom without a shirt and with her hair pulled over her shoulder.
Staffer: “You have to delete these.”
Montenegro: “Snap.”
During an almost 20-minute interview, Montenegro confirmed that was his number and those were his texts. The 36-year-old husband and father also confirms he uses Snapchat (mostly to share photos of his kids with family and friends). Shortly after the photo popped up on his phone, Montenegro said, he alerted his wife. The only thing he did wrong, he tells me, is getting too close to a colleague.
“If there is anything, I would say I’m guilty of it’s becoming too comfy or familiar as seen in some of those texts,” Montenegro said. “As soon as that episode happened,” the candidate broke off all communication with the aide: “We didn’t speak.”
That silence continued until shortly before Montenegro announced his congressional candidacy. “There is a second exchange of texts,” he says, “that was when her and I talked.” Montenegro reached out to the woman to ensure that his campaign wouldn’t endanger her career. They had a conversation, he explains referring to messages reported by the Arizona Republic, to clear the air.
“She texted me back to say that I didn’t need to worry because I hadn’t disrespected her in anyway,” Montenegro insisted before adding that “sadly this woman has become a victim of revenge porn of having her personal messages stolen and shopped around by my political opponents.”
Montenegro and his allies accuse second-place Debbie Lesko of feeding the press that salacious story as cover for illegal campaign contributions. As the Arizona Republic reported, Lesko transferred $50,000 from her old state Senate campaign to a federal political action committee that supports her new congressional campaign.
“The Lesko campaign has already showed how unethical they are with their Super PAC money laundering scheme that likely broke FEC law,” an Arizona political operative said. “So, it’s really not surprising that they would shop a woman’s stolen text messages to reporters for political gain. It’s also shocking that a reporter would be so willing to spit on journalistic ethics and use these stolen texts to try and take down the Montenegro campaign.”
The woman’s lawyer disagrees. While Tom Ryan agrees his client became the victim of “revenge porn” when her ex-boyfriend discovered the correspondence, he accused Montenegro in an interview with the Phoenix New Times of seeking “sexual gratification by getting what he wanted, which is her picture.”
“That’s completely false and it’s disgusting,” Montenegro responded. “This young lady has been put in this position by my political opponents.”
Voters will decide for themselves who to believe about a photograph only journalists have seen. One week ahead of the primary though, it might not matter if they change their minds. Many voters have already cast their votes through the mail. But Montenegro isn’t going anywhere anyway.
Asked whether he would drop out of the race, he responds quickly and without wavering, “No sir, absolutely not.”
