Video clip puts end to Senate campaign
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Your support makes all the difference.A Republican candidate in Montana has dropped out of next month's US Senate race, accusing his main opponent of wrecking his reputation with some old video footage in which he is depicted as a flamboyant hairdresser. The video shows him with gold medallions over an open-necked shirt, rubbing lotion into another man's face.
"There's no question about it. What they're trying to do is say that every barber and every cosmetologist, every manicurist or anybody in the beauty and hair fashion industry is homosexual," a tearful Mike Taylor told a news conference at which he announced his withdrawal.
Mr Taylor, who is married, was indeed confronted with calamitous polling numbers: he was already trailing by 19 percentage points behind the Democratic incumbent Max Baucus before the adverts ran, and the deficit widened to 33 points by the time he pulled out.
The footage came from an old Colorado television programme called Beauty Corner – the very antithesis of the macho "outdoors" image that Montana candidates for political office like to project. But the question of Mr Taylor's sexual orientation may not have been the coup de grâce.
In the offending advert, the Democrats pointed out that, during his years as a hairdresser in Colorado, Mr Taylor had been accused of running a complicated scam involving student loans and the promise of manicurists' jobs that never materialised. A lawsuit arising from the case never came to court, because Mr Taylor paid an undisclosed amount to the plaintiffs to settle.
The Montana Democratic Party has denied any desire to cast aspersions on Mr Taylor's sexual orientation, insisting – somewhat disingenuously – that the clip from Beauty Corner was the only footage of him that they could find.
The Republicans said they had no plans to replace Mr Taylor on the ballot, making Mr Baucus's re-election a virtual certainty.
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