In Alabama, a Slow-Burning Scandal Engulfs the Governor

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — When Robert Bentley was sworn in as governor in 2011, it seemed almost impossible to conceive of a politician with less potential for drama.

Mr. Bentley was mild mannered and long married, a grandfather and physician who had earned wide respect as a dermatologist in his hometown Tuscaloosa. As a somewhat obscure Republican state representative, he was rarely caught up in his party’s bruising internecine squabbling. He was a deacon at his Baptist church.

But over the last year, Alabama residents have grown accustomed to the slow-burning scandal that has engulfed Mr. Bentley — a messy and occasionally salacious tale studded with allegations of sexual impropriety, misused public funds and cover-ups. This week, the heat intensified when the Alabama Ethics Commission found probable cause that Mr. Bentley had violated ethics and campaign laws, and referred the case to a local district attorney for possible criminal prosecution.

It is only one of a litany of problems Mr. Bentley, 74, faces. A special prosecutor, appointed by Alabama’s attorney general, is also investigating the governor. The state House of Representatives has released a tentative schedule for impeachment proceedings, set to begin early next week , and Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, a fellow Republican, said Thursday that Mr. Bentley should consider resigning.

Headline writers have taken to referring to Mr. Bentley as the “Love Gov,” over an accusation that he was engaged in an affair with his former senior political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason — an accusation both Mr. Bentley and Ms. Mason deny.

Whatever Mr. Bentley’s fate, it is unlikely to shake the dominant Republican Party here. The state is simply too conservative to see mass defections to the Democrats.

Indeed, several of the governor’s most vocal critics are Republicans. Some of them say the loss of confidence in Mr. Bentley has hindered their ability to tackle pressing issues like Medicaid reform and the dysfunctional state prison system. State Representative Corey Harbison, a Republican, said Thursday that he was worried about the possible violation of laws, but also the distraction the scandal has caused, and its damage to the state’s reputation.

“It is a terrible black eye for the state,” said Mr. Harbison, who has called for Mr. Bentley’s ouster.

Alabama is a place where conservative values matter. In 2003, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Roy Moore, was removed from office after refusing to move a monument of the Ten Commandments from the judicial building. But to many voters, that only burnished his conservative credentials, and about nine years later, he was re-elected, only to be suspended in 2016 for continuing to support a state ban on same-sex marriage despite its legalization by the United States Supreme Court.

For months now, residents have had to endure a leaked audio recording of the avuncular Mr. Bentley in conversation with a woman — said to be Ms. Mason — in which he describes embracing her and placing his hands on her breasts. The governor could also be heard saying, “If we’re going to do what we did the other day, we’re going to have to start locking the door.”

The Ethics Commission opened its investigation after State Auditor Jim Zeigler, a Republican, complained that Mr. Bentley had “used personnel and resources of the state of Alabama to carry on an improper relationship.” After an investigation involving more than 45 witnesses and the examination of 33,000 documents, the commission ruled that Mr. Bentley had likely used government resources for his personal interest, paid Ms. Mason’s legal bills with campaign funds, made an improper loan to his campaign and received an improper campaign contribution.

If Mr. Bentley is charged and convicted by the Montgomery County district attorney, he will face a two-to-20-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $20,000 for each of the four potential violations.

Mr. Bentley’s lawyers said this week that he had broken no laws and that nothing he had done justified impeachment.

Many people, including some of his critics, see Mr. Bentley’s story as that of a good man, never inured to power, who seems to have gone astray.

Mr. Bentley ran for governor as an outsider in 2010, gaining a surprising primary victory against a slate of higher-profile Republicans. In his first four years in office, he was not a very assertive leader — “a bystander,” said Glen Browder, an emeritus political scientist at Jacksonville State University and a former Democratic congressman, but he presided over a steadily declining unemployment rate and cruised to a second-term victory.

Yet in the cliquey and clubby world of Alabama politics, Mr. Bentley remained an outsider.

“The fact that he did not cultivate a circle of friends and interest groups who would be loyal to him is what got him in this present dilemma, because he’s a loner so to speak,” said William H. Stewart, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Alabama.

The speculation about affair came to light in March 2016, after the governor fired Spencer Collier, the head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Mr. Bentley said he had fired Mr. Collier after a review uncovered “possible misuse of state money” at the agency. The Alabama attorney general’s office opened an investigation, only to close it in October, noting that “no witness had established a credible basis for the initiation of a criminal inquiry in the first place.”

Soon after his firing, Mr. Collier held a news conference in which he accused Mr. Bentley of having an affair with Ms. Mason, whom he described as Alabama’s “de facto governor.”

Since then, Alabama newspapers have been brought other embarrassing revelations to light: A report that Mr. Bentley bought a number of cheap, disposable cellphones at a Tuscaloosa Best Buy; a report that Mr. Bentley, while on the Alabama Gulf Coast, had officials use a state helicopter to deliver a wallet he had left behind in Tuscaloosa; and a report that he and Ms. Mason rode in a state airplane to Las Vegas, where they attended a conference of the Republican Governors Association — as well as a Celine Dion concert.

In a wrongful termination lawsuit filed against Mr. Bentley, Ms. Mason and others in November, a former security chief for the governor, Wendell Ray Lewis, claimed that the pair indeed had an affair. Among other things, Mr. Lewis claimed that the governor’s wife, Dianne Bentley, learned about the affair when she read Mr. Bentley’s “steamy cellphone text messages” on an iPad that was, apparently unbeknown to the governor, linked to his cellphone. A lawyer for Mr. Bentley said the suit was “full of factual allegations the governor denies.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Bentley sparked concerns among some lawmakers when he appointed former state Attorney General Luther Strange to the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, who left to become President Donald J. Trump’s attorney general.

Mr. Strange had been overseeing an investigation of Mr. Bentley, and his successor has appointed a special prosecutor to take over the investigation.

But Mr. Harbison, the Republican state representative, said that the appointment could give the perception that Mr. Bentley was trying to derail the inquiry. “There may not have been any conspiracy, but perception many times is reality.” he said.

Today. Mr. Bentley’s private life appears to be as complicated as his public one. His wife filed for divorce in August 2015. Ms. Mason resigned last year. Her husband remains the director of the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Volunteer Service, and the couple traveled with Mr. Bentley to Washington, for Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January.

A spokeswoman for the governor said Thursday that Mr. Bentley would not be commenting on the matter. Ms. Mason could not be reached for comment. Her lawyers said in a court filing last year that she had “done nothing wrong, either civilly or criminally.”

On Friday, a special counsel for the state House Judiciary Committee is slated to release a written report of its investigation of Mr. Bentley. Impeachment hearings in the House are set to begin on Monday, and the vote of the full House will likely occur next month.

If the vote is to impeach, Mr. Bentley will be temporarily removed from office while the Senate deliberates his ultimate fate.

“I hate it for him, I do,” Mr. Harbison said. “He’s lost his family, he lost things that he’s worked for his whole life.” He added, “I think this all goes down to bad decision-making and bad advice.”