The Message From Condit’s Constituents: ‘Tell the Truth’

MODESTO —  In U.S. Rep. Gary Condit’s downtown office, where so many studly photos of him grace the walls that it appears someone has built a shrine to good grooming, the TV blared the news of his sex scandal Tuesday while his staff did a commendable job of pretending not to notice.

Chandra Levy’s distraught parents, who believe the 53-year-old congressman has lied about his relationship with their missing 24-year-old daughter, made a plea for him to submit to a polygraph. And police in Washington, D.C., were about to search Condit’s home at his generous suggestion.

At this point, nearly 10 weeks after Levy disappeared, Condit’s townhouse has got to be as cold as the theater box where Booth shot Lincoln. Nobody said this was the swiftest police force in the land.

As MSNBC blasted these developments into Condit’s office and around the world, the congressman’s pitiable local staff went about their business, heads down. On the window was a “missing” poster with Levy’s familiar image on it, and it looked even stranger there than did all the posed salon shots of the ferret-eyed Condit.

A receptionist fielded a call from an angry woman who wanted to e-mail her disgust to the congressman. The caller hung up in a huff.

It was Condit who built this box and climbed in. It was Condit who insisted early on that he’d had no relationship with Levy, and then ducked and darted when evidence to the contrary trickled out.

Levy’s aunt, appalled by the congressman’s silence, felt compelled to go public with news of the affair, and several publications reported that Condit finally ‘fessed up in his third interview with police. In an unrelated case, a flight attendant said Condit’s staff asked her to dummy up about an alleged affair with the congressman.

Here in Condit Country, no one had any idea their hero was this busy. One-time supporters feel cheated and lied to, and they wonder if the family man and neighbor they trusted is some kind of cowboy Casanova. They wonder, too, if the good congressman has any idea where the impressionable intern, a bright USC grad, might be.

“Just tell the truth,” pleaded David Kaye, a management consultant in the little cow town of Ceres, where Condit lives.

“He’s supposed to be setting an example,” Yvonne Ortega, a law clerk, said with disgust outside the Piccadilly Deli in downtown Modesto.

Denise Zamora, a clerk at the Stanislaus County Probation Department, has 23-year-old twin boys. She can’t imagine what she’d do if they disappeared and a congressman who knew them--and might have been among the last to see them--dodged questions regarding their whereabouts.

“I’d be beside myself,” said Zamora. The talk at her office is about what else Condit might be hiding. “My whole attitude toward him has changed.”

She must have missed the reassuring comments of Condit attorney Abbe Lowell, a hired gun who informed the world on national television that the devil is not Gary Condit but the American media. We buzzards and hacks ought to be on the trail of Chandra Levy, Lowell said, and not Condit. He also proclaimed that the congressman “should be commended” for his cooperation in the effort to solve this case.

It’s not clear to me exactly what Lowell is referring to, so maybe we should review.

Should Condit be commended for using the power and glamour of his position to have a reported relationship with a wide-eyed woman less than half his age?

Should he be commended for not telling what he knew immediately, when it might have done some good?

Should he be commended for what could conceivably result in obstruction-of-justice charges in the cases of both Levy and the flight attendant?

Should he be commended for what he is putting his wife and children through?

Should he be commended for ignoring the advice he gave Clinton--to end the “drip, drip, drip” and just come clean--back when Clinton was reinventing the language to explain Monica?

The affair with Levy, if it happened, is nothing in the scheme of things. But what kind of man is capable of resisting pleas for full disclosure from two parents who die a little more each day, sick with worry over their missing daughter?

What kind of man?

At the Sole Saver in downtown Ceres, the man who repairs Condit’s shoes says he’s praying for him. I suggest to Frank Cardenas that he might say a prayer for Levy while he’s at it, and then I ask what, in particular, he prays for on Condit’s behalf. Without hesitation he says:

“That he tell the truth.”

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.