Maryland AG Caught at Wild Teen Party

Did we mention Gansler has railed against teen drinking?
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 25, 2013 7:53 AM CDT
Maryland AG Caught at Wild Teen Party
Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011.   (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Well, this is awkward: Maryland's attorney general, who has gone so far as to film a public service announcement against underage drinking and who is also currently running for governor, was at a wild-looking teenage party in June. The Baltimore Sun broke the news this week, running a photo (see it here) of Doug Gansler at the party (in the same shot, there are three scantily-clad teens dancing on a table). Gansler said he was simply there to talk to his son (who he says wasn't drinking), and he initially insisted he had no "moral responsibility" to intervene. But at a news conference yesterday, he admitted, "Perhaps I should have assumed there was drinking going on, and I got that wrong. There could be Kool-Aid in the red cups, but there's probably beer in the red cups."

Gansler and other parents helped organize and pay for the week-long beach trip that preceded the party, as a high school graduation gift, and the teens were apparently only instructed not to drink hard alcohol, with no similar rule about beer. He says he helped pay the rent on the Delaware house, where almost a dozen grads were staying, the Washington Post reports. Two other adults (ostensibly the "chaperones" he referred to in the news conference) are shown in the photo, one of them apparently holding a wine glass. This isn't the first controversy to threaten his gubernatorial campaign: Last week, it came out that he allegedly ordered state troopers to speed and run red lights while driving him even to routine appointments, and in August, he made racially charged comments about an opponent. (Meanwhile, some Connecticut parents reacted very differently to their teens' party.)

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