Ex-state Del. Joe Morrissey, an independent who has led in the few polls we’ve seen for mayor of Richmond, Virginia, was already one of the most despicable candidates anywhere in America. Morrissey infamously served a brief prison sentence for having sex with an underage girl who later became his wife. Morrissey eventually said that the text messages that incriminated him were planted by a hacker, but investigators for the state bar recently submitted a court filing saying that he lied. We wrote only a few weeks ago, “You can't get much lower than that,” but it turns out, Joe Morrissey did.
Last week, a local judge allowed Kanika Shani Morris, a former client at Morrissey’s law firm, to withdraw her guilty plea. Morris says that in February, Morrissey exposed himself to her, and went on to make sexual advances through text messages. She also says that after she refused him, another lawyer at the firm took her case saying she hadn’t paid enough to get Morrissey to represent her, and the new attorney urged her to plea guilty for failing to return a rental car. Morris provided The Richmond Times-Dispatch with copies of Morrissey’s explicit texts.
Morrissey denied almost everything on Friday, though he admitted to sending “flirtatious” texts to her. On Saturday, an attorney at Morrissey’s office also denied that the candidate ever made sexual advances on Morris. Morrissey also made it clear that he would continue his campaign.
As we’ve noted before, Richmond’s electoral laws aid a candidate like Morrissey who has a small, but solid, base of support. Richmond requires mayoral candidate to win just a plurality of the vote in November in five of the nine city council districts to win without a runoff, which could very well happen next week in this crowded contest. If there is a runoff, the winner still isn't the candidate with the most votes, it's the candidate who wins a majority of the council districts. Morrissey’s two main rivals next week look like Venture Richmond Executive Director Jack Berry and former Secretary of the Commonwealth Levar Stoney, who has the support of Gov. Terry McAuliffe; both candidates are Democrats.
