10 Most Scandalous DC Affairs
4. John Schmitz
John George Schmitz was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives and California State Senate from Orange County, California. He was also a member of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society. In 1972, he was the American Independent Party candidate for President of the United States, later known as the American Party.
In 1982, after it was revealed—and Schmitz admitted—that he had engaged in an extra-marital affair and fathered two children with one of his former college students, Carla Stuckle, Schmitz’s career as a politician effectively ended, as did his wife Mary’s as a conservative political commentator.
Schmitz never financially supported nor helped raise his two children born from his mistress. Stuckle raised both John George and Eugenie on her own, working long hours at two different jobs. In 1994, when John George and Eugenie were 11 and 13 respectively, Carla Stuckle died from complications of Type I diabetes. Schmitz refused custody of the children. Mary Schmitz’s close friend, high-profile astrologer and alleged psychic Jeane Dixon (whom both President Richard Nixon and Nancy Reagan consulted while they were each in the White House), took in the children. When Dixon died in 1997, the children became wards of the state and went to an orphanage.
