Flynt says he has dirt on Congress under covers
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
"Hustler" publisher Larry Flynt -- just days after posting a $1 million bounty for verifiable information on the sexual exploits of U.S. Congress members and political leaders -- says he's already been deluged by more than 200 leads pouring in from around the country, "80 percent of them on Republicans."
"I'm not interested in exposing anyone's sex life," Flynt said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "It's the hypocrisy I'm after."
The California-based porn king, who heads up a profitable empire that includes the infamous skin mag Hustler and edgier publications such as Barely Legal -- as well as a thriving Hustler Club and casinos chain -- started a stir this week in political circles.
He posted a full-page ad in the Washington Post on Sunday that offered a cool $1 million for any "documented evidence of intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder," information that must be verified and published in Hustler.
In the run-up to the 2008 elections, Flynt's campaign to urge Americans to drop a dime on dallying politicians could get interesting because he's got a track record.
In 1998, he made a similar offer when former President Bill Clinton faced impeachment by outraged Republicans after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The result: GOP House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston resigned after Flynt prepared to go public with an informant's details of his illicit affair. Flynt also released an affidavit by the wife of then-GOP Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia -- an anti-abortion conservative -- in which she said her husband paid for her abortion and then took on a mistress.
"Everybody -- because I'm a civil libertarian -- thinks I'm going after Republicans. That's not true," he said.
Flynt said he expects "2 to 4 percent" of the leads to develop into solid publishable information and wouldn't name names; but he's looking into, among others, "a couple of (congressmen) who are gay and they're voting against every piece of legislation that would adversely affect gays."
Flynt's interest in politics is no passing fancy. He ran as a Republican for president against Ronald Reagan and more recently carried the banner as "the smut peddler who cares" as the Democratic candidate who came in seventh among the more than 100 hopefuls in the 2003 gubernatorial recall election in California -- a contest won by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.
These days, he says he has got no intentions to get into any race.
But Flynt weighed in this week on what he hailed as a "good idea," the trend of major porn stars endorsing U.S. presidential candidates. (For those keeping score: Jenna Jameson, star of "The New Devil in Miss Jones," has expressed her admiration for Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Savanna Samson of "Flasher" fame was quoted in the New York Post on Monday as going gaga for Rudy Giuliani.)
Flynt, subject of the popular biopic "The People vs. Larry Flynt," says he's fully prepared to be the focus of conservatives who will unload their criticism on him with his latest offer for political dirt.
Livingston, he recalled, publicly called him a "bottom-feeder."
Flynt's response: "Yeah, that's right -- and look what I've found when I got down there.' "
