Gingrich’s Second Wife Says Newt Wanted Open Marriage

It’s kind of awkward, when one is trying to woo Republican family values enthusiasts, to have one’s ex-wife drop the kind of PR bomb that Newt Gingrich’s second missus, Marianne Gingrich, just did at the height of the campaign season.

Team Newt was scrambling Thursday to contain the fallout from the former Mrs. Gingrich’s interview with ABC’s Brian Ross, slated to air that evening after yet another GOP debate, in which she claimed her ex-husband, ever the political animal, had once proposed that they make a radical change in their marital model. A clip from the “Nightline” interview follows the excerpt below. –KA

“Election 2012” in The Wall Street Journal:

ABC just put out a video clip and excerpts of the interview, which is scheduled to air on Nightline tonight after the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina. Ms. Gingrich, who was married to the former House speaker for 18 years, said she is disclosing details of her marriage now to tell voters what she knows about Mr. Gingrich’s character. The two divorced in 1999, after, she says, Mr. Gingrich had suggested an open marriage that would allow him to continue an affair with Callista Bisek, the congressional aide who later became his third wife.

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