YouTube live-stream by TJ Walker (The Habit Influencer) discussing Congressman Aaron Schock’s resignation amid accumulating scandals. Walker narrates how an initial Washington Post profile of Schock’s Downton Abbey–style office sparked reporting into questionable spending, in-kind contributions from a designer, glamorous travel and hotel bills charged to taxpayers/campaign funds, and an alleged overclaim of ~90,000 miles in vehicle reimbursements (reported loss possibly $50,000+). Walker frames the episode as a lesson in reputation management and PR: small, persistent stories can unravel a career.
Questions this video answers
Congressman Aaron Schock (Illinois).
About 90,000 miles (claimed as more than his car had).
About $50,000 or more.
Chapters
In breaking news this afternoon, Congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois is resigning from office. Sometimes it's not the huge gigantic scandal. It's not ending up with a stripper in the water basin that ends a career in a blaze. It's the slow drip, the slow accumulation of bad press and further scrutiny. Six, eight weeks ago, Congressman Aaron Schock was somebody most people had never heard of. And yet he became a household word, a household name. It started with a profile in the Washington Post that showed his office redecorated so that it looked like something extravagant from Downton Abbey. That generated more and more coverage in his spending habits. At first that seemed like, well, that's okay, but that's a little eccentric. And then someone pointed out, well, you're taking tens of thousands of dollars of in kind contributions from a designer. You're not supposed to be taking lots of in kind services from people. That's almost like a bribe. It's unethical. That led to more and more scrutiny, more interviews where he said cutesy things like haters gonna hate. I mean, here's a 33 year old Congressman constantly stressing how young and hip he is, how how millennial he is, using phrases that people hear from Taylor Swift. It just struck many people as too cute. Then that aroused the curiosity of more reporters. They started looking at his Instagram account and it showed everywhere he went. Bears games, rock concerts, Perry, doesn't matter who, a well known pop star and her concert, and more and more things south by Southwest. All these things that seemed fun and glamorous in the hotel bills and that led to more investigation in how he spent money, his taste for expensive dinners, hotels and travel, all of it built to either the taxpayer or his campaign fund. And that's a no, no too. Now, apparently, according to reports from Politico, what did him in was an investigation into his travel reimbursement on his own car. Apparently, he asked for more mileage reimbursement on his car than his car had in miles, by some 90,000 miles. That's the circumference of the Earth more than three times. And it could have amounted to $50,000 or more of money right into his pocket, where there's now documentary evidence that it could not have possibly been a legitimate expense. So it certainly appears as though he's now running from the law, where investigators have said, hmm, you can make a whole lot easier on yourself if you get out, because if you stay in office and fight this, we're really going to go for long jail time. You leave gracefully, we'll cut you some side. That's my hypothesis. I cannot prove that. But I've never seen a member of Congress simply resign because of a few negative stories. It's the cumulative effect. And it all started with one bad story, folks. So constant reminder as to why PR is important, why reputation management is important. Because once you start pulling a thread, the whole thing can come undone. And that's what's happened to Congressman Aaron Schoch's career.
