Quayle opponent expects website will be an issue in primary

News that Arizona House candidate Ben Quayle (R) wrote for a racy website that featured revealing photos of Phoenix-area women will cost him the votes of “women who have self-respect,” according to one of his primary rivals. 

“If he did what they’re saying he did, it’s probably a good reason for women who have self-respect to not vote for [him],” former state Sen. Pamela Gorman (R) told The Ballot Box.

Quayle and Gorman are two of the 10 Republicans vying to succeed retiring Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.).

“I think it’s a judgment and maturity issue,” Gorman said of Quayle’s involvement with the website dirtyscottsdale.com. “Usually you don’t try to run for your first political office as a U.S. congressman within just a couple years of this — put some daylight between your childhood and your adulthood before you want to earn the votes of Arizonans.”

Gorman, 41, said she’s worried about her younger opponent’s generation.

“He’s from a generation that has grown up kind of objectifying women, thinking it’s OK to be shooting your mouth off online in a public forum, and that anybody that you snap a picture of — a private citizen — is fair game for you to ridicule publicly on the Internet,” she said. “It’s unfortunate, but that’s the world that he grew up in.”