Gary Hart entered the presidential race in the late 1980s hoping to make a legacy for himself. He was a frontrunner against all other Democratic candidates, and, in a projected election against then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, was garnering over 50% of votes. Hart’s campaign for presidency took a very different turn with one of the first publicized political affairs.
Hart was suspected of having an affair with Donna Rice, a woman nearly half his age, around the same time he was campaigning for the presidency. They were photographed together on a yacht, notably called Monkey Business, and news of their cruise together becoming public along with an anonymous call to the Miami Herald, is what started Hart’s downfall. The caller, never identified but presumed to be a friend of Donna Rice’s, gave the date and location of a planned meet between Hart and Rice, which brought the affair into the spotlight.
Affairs have become somewhat of a normal occurrence in the world of celebrity and politics, but that wasn’t quite the case in Hart’s days. This became one of the first—and the most memorable—sex scandals to ever occur during a political campaign. While presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were known for having extramarital affairs, no affair had, up until this point, had such an impact on the outcome of a political figure’s endeavors.