The Fall of Len Foxwell

It was an inevitable collapse

Bryan Sears of The Daily Record reported on the record what had been rumored for some time.

Len Foxwell, consigliere to Comptroller and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Franchot, was having an affair with former City Council Candidate Natasha Guynes. And it interfered with his work at the Comptroller’s office.

I write this not to spike a football on the political carcass of Foxwell. There are no winners here.

Natasha Guynes is not a winner, for she was used by a political operative for his own selfish pleasures.

Peter Franchot is not a winner. Though he did the right thing by relieving Foxwell of his duties, he still lost his most trusted political lieutenant. A trust that seems to have ultimately been misplaced.

Len Foxwell’s family are not winners. Foxwell’s wife and children have seen a major violation of their trust.

Len Foxwell is certainly not a winner and is ultimately the biggest loser. He lost his job. He lost the ability to run a statewide gubernatorial campaign. He lost the chance to be a gubernatorial chief of staff. And he failed in his most basic duties as a man, to be a faithful husband and good father.

Adultery is common in politics. At the end of the day, adultery is the most basic level of somebody’s trustworthiness and qualification for an office of public trust. If you can’t be trusted to do right by your spouse, why should anybody else trust you?

I guess Len Foxwell has more in common with Donald Trump than he realizes…

This somehow seemed inevitable with Foxwell, that something was going to derail him on his quest for power and he would be hoisted on his own petard. If it wasn’t his comments supporting a genocide of Trump supporters, it was going to be something else. You just got the feeling that Foxwell was doomed for a fall. Foxwell always carried himself with a smug sense of superiority, entitlement, and carried himself with the attitude that he was just smarter than everybody else and want you to know it.

As I wrote in April:

Foxwell [shows] a persistent and always present smug elitism about them. A smug elitism that he is better than others, that liberals are better than conservatives, that he is better than any Trump voter, and that Democrats are better than Republicans every single time. Foxwell assumes the worst in people that he disagrees with. He assumes that anybody who disagrees with his warped, left-wing view of politics and the world is some sort of troglodyte, some sort of less than, some sort of undesirable, or some sort of….deplorable. Even when Foxwell joins his boss in their attacks against “The Annapolis Machine” (hilarious since both Foxwell and Franchot are themselves long-time members of the “Annapolis Machine”) it shows a smug sense of superiority.

I guess Foxwell wasn’t as superior or as smart as he thought he was.

Foxwell’s dwindling number of political supporters are trying to explain this away, but the fundamental message remains the same: Len Foxwell let power and ambition lead him to violate the covenant of his marriage. Something he admitted openly in a statement he issued to Sears. Their continued support of Foxwell’s actions says more about them than anything else could.

But I sincerely pray that Foxwell gets his life together. That he can recover his marriage and rebuild his family life. He has set whatever trust his family has in him on fire over this. He has a lot of work to do.

But no politician should ever trust Foxwell ever again.