Mayor of Minot, North Dakota Resigns After Mistakenly Sending Video of Himself Masturbating to The City Attorney
MINOT, N.D. (AP) — The mayor of one of North Dakota’s largest cities resigned after an investigation into him mistakenly sending a lewd video to the city attorney.
Minot Mayor Tom Ross resigned Tuesday, the same day an investigative report was made public that found Ross sent a video of himself masturbating to City Attorney Stefanie Stalheim in January. He sent the video minutes after the two had a telephone call discussing a police officer’s suicide.
Ross asked Stalheim to delete the video, not to watch it and to keep the incident between them, the report said. Ross told an interviewer he had recorded the video at home during a lunch break and meant to send it to his romantic partner, not to Stalheim. He had said it was “a sexy video for his girlfriend.”
The report said Stalheim struggled with whether to make a formal report. Ross was her direct supervisor, and Stalheim’s annual review was pending at the time, the report said. Her complaint asked for an apology from Ross and that he consider resigning as mayor.
What a ridiculously horrific sequence of events for Mayor Ross. Unless I'm misreading the situation entirely, it seems so innocent. Assuming Mayor Ross' girlfriend was in the market to receive a video of her boyfriend stroking his mayoral dong. There's nothing wrong with sending "a sexy video" to a willing party. It may be ill-advised to do as a mayor. It's probably a good rule of thumb for any man to not send jerk-off videos while holding public office. But sending a dick vid to your girlfriend doesn't make you a bad guy. Neither does accidentally texting the wrong person. But you can't combine the two. Not as the mayor. Not as any human being really. There are very few people in your recent contacts to whom you can erroneously send a video of yourself jacking-off, and not have it result in a DEFCON-1 level-altering disaster.
It's that second paragraph that got me though. There's never a good time to send your city attorney a masturbation video. I don't care how big it looks, how impressive your load was, how low-cut her dresses are, or how often she compliments your ties. It doesn't matter. But to do it minutes after the two of you had a telephone call discussing a police officers suicide... Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my. That's as bad as it gets. Read the room mayor. Imagine receiving that text. You hang up the phone. Minutes later you get the notification. You think, "Oh the mayor must have forgotten to mention someth–" BAM!! Masturbating mayor. Right in your eye(s). You can't unsee that.
You hate to see a man get fired for an honest mistake. But it needs to be company policy, no matter where you work, that if you mistakenly send a video of yourself masturbating to an unsuspecting co-worker, you must resign immediately. It's the only option. I don't know why you would fight for your job, or even consider coming back to work after that. At that point, it's time to move cities and enter a new line of work entirely. Something in a completely unrelated industry, where there's a less-than-zero percent chance you will ever cross paths with someone from your old line of work again for the rest of your life. It's the right thing to do.
The really could have just come out and said that, instead of the ex-mayor doing the whole, "I'm taking time to heal and work on myself" that. Instead of bothering with a whole investigation.
The investigator found Ross’s conduct “directly caused Stalheim’s inability to work in an environment free from unreasonable sexual harassment and created an offensive work environment.”
I can't believe Mayor Ross even let them get to that point. Seems like a pretty cut and dry case of, "Yeah guys I'm gonna find a new job". There's no internal controls that could have prevented this from happening. You can't do anything to assure it will never happen again. Aside from issuing a wide sweeping "all public officials can only communicate on work issued cell phones that are incapable of sending videos" policy. In the end it's a case of one idiot making the most horrendous mistake of his life. All they can do is try to elect less of an idiot next time. When you think about it, it's really the citizens of Minot's fault for appointing a horny single mayor. A married politician would never be caught in such a scandal.
Justin Lane. Shutterstock Images.I still have several questions about the video. How long was it? Was his face in the shot? Did he finish? Did the mayor's girlfriend ever get to enjoy the video? Unfortunately the details are sparse. One more thing too.. I'm sorry to even bring this up. But I noticed in the video, one of the men talking mentioned how Minot, North Dakota has recently had to deal with things no town should have to deal with. And my god. Minot, North Dakota has had a BAD week of news. All-time bad. Part of me thinks Mayor Ross was doing his people a solid by diverting attention away from what else is happening in town. I don't even want to say the other two disgusting stories I came across when I searched "Minot, North Dakota". But no man, woman, child, or dementia patient is safe in Minot right now. Stay safe out there Minotians. Hope your new mayor doesn't have a weak stomach.
