Some Republicans head for the men’s room at the local airport. Others claim to be “hiking the Appalachian Trail.” Michael Duvall, Republican Assemblyman from the 72nd district (northern OC), decided to take a different approach to his affairs: bragging to everyone within earshot. Including, as shown at right by a sensationalistic KCAL/9 report, the live mikes of the Cal Channel. As the OC Weekly’s R. Scott Moxley explains:

In July–two days after Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Republican leader Sam Blakeslee put Duvall on the Rules Committee that oversees member ethics–the second-term, conservative, Republican assemblyman sat in a public hearing and vividly described lewd details about his trysts with a female lobbyist whose clients had business before another committee on which Duvall sits.

Duvall, speaking to a relatively mum Republican colleague seated to his left, apparently had no idea his dais microphone became live beginning about a minute before the start of a cable-televised committee hearing. He was captured in the middle of recounting portions of an affair.

“She wears little eye-patch underwear,” said Duvall, who is married with two children. “So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And so, we had made love Wednesday–a lot! And so she’ll, she’s all, ‘I am going up and down the stairs, and you’re dripping out of me!’ So messy!”

(I’d apologize for including that last paragraph, but since I had to read it, you do too.)

Aside from Duvall’s stunning lack of tact, the story reveals possible ethical violations caused by Duvall, who is vice-chair of the Utilities and Commerce committee, apparently sleeping with a lobbyist for Sempra Energy, one of the state’s largest utilities.

Of course Duvall comes from a long, long, LONG line of Republican social conservatives who enjoy using morality to argue for denying people their rights while refusing to practice that morality themselves. Duvall was an outspoken supporter of Proposition 8, which apparently meant that heterosexual adultery was less damaging to marriage than a committed same-sex couple being able to get legal recognition of and practical benefits from their marriage by the state.

Then again, it’s OK if you’re a Republican. As long as he’s voting against taxes and the gay agenda, I am sure that his OC supporters and right-wing paymasters will be happy to overlook ethical lapses and an inability to keep his sexual practices to himself.

Ultimately this is likely to damage the Legislature itself. The filmed scenes of Duvall running around the Capitol hiding from reporters and cameras make the institution look bad, through no fault of the other 119 legislators who at least have the good sense to not talk about their sexual escapades in public. At a time when wingnuts are pushing hard to further undermine democracy by turning our legislature into a part-time body, the last thing the Legislature needs is this kind of scandal.

Then again, it’s fitting that such a scandal comes from a Republican, a member of a party that long ago lost what respect for government it possessed.

UPDATE: Bass and Blakeslee have kicked Duvall off the Utilities and Commerce Committee, along with the Rules Committee, and are conducting an ethics investigation.

Meanwhile, you can donate to John MacMurray, Duvall’s Democratic opponent in 2010 (h/t to Seneca Doane).

UPDATE 2: Duvall has resigned his seat. The question now is who in the OC GOP leaked this all to KCBS and the OC Weekly, and why?