McGavick confesses to ‘93 DUI arrest

Republican Senate candidate Mike McGavick listed a 1993 drunk driving arrest among “mistakes I deeply regret” in an Internet letter to supporters Thursday.

In an unusual confession on his campaign Web site journal that starts “What’s wrong with politics today?” McGavick said his arrest and being a “part-time dad” to his eldest son after the breakup of his first marriage are “two great failures” in his personal life.

The drunk driving arrest occurred in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.

“I was cited for DUI when I cut a yellow light too close,” he wrote.

In an interview, McGavick said he was stopped and failed a Breathalyzer test.

He was cited, appeared in court, and was given a year’s probation during which he had to pay a fine and attend an alcohol awareness program. At the end of the year, the charge was dismissed without a conviction on his record, he said.

McGavick said he was not revealing the arrest in an effort to head off a pending exposé.

“I just took a look at the way campaigns are run today, and I just put it out there,” he said in the interview.

The hardest thing about the arrest was telling his teenage son Jack about it, he added: “No father wants to admit that they’re stupid.”

After his divorce to his first wife, Kim Rainey, McGavick wrote he regretted Jack grew up with him as a part-time dad while she carried most of the burden.

McGavick also wrote about two mistakes in his professional life that he regretted. One was telling employees at Safeco after layoffs in 2001 that “the worst was behind us,” which led them to believe there would be no more layoffs. While he believed that was the case, it didn’t turn out to be true.

He also said he regretted a campaign tactic in the 1988 race for the U.S. Senate, when he was managing Slade Gorton’s run against Democrat Mike Lowry. The Gorton campaign ran a commercial that said Lowry, then a congressman, supported legalizing marijuana based on an article in the University of Washington student newspaper. The commercial ran for a week, as scheduled, even though Lowry denied it .

“We should have pulled it once evidence mounted that the article was not an accurate reflection of his views,” McGavick said.

In his blog, he decried candidates who spend their time attacking each other’s character rather than discussing issues, then pretend they are without fault.