From erection to election; when porn becomes politics

David Vitter became the first popularly elected Republican in the state when he won the Lousiana election in 2004 on a “family values” ticket. In 2007 his name was linked with a Washington prostitution ring run by the infamous Deborah J.Palfrey –also known as “The DC Madam”. Vitter was to admit that he had used Palfrey’s “high-end escort service”, prompting Hustler publisher Larry Flynt (who payed Palfrey for her phone records and then published them) to claim credit for unearthing the scandal.

Vitter is now seeking re-election to the US Senate in next year’s Senate elections. However, a challenger to Vitter has emerged. Stormy Daniels, star of such classics as Space Nuts and former recipient of the coveted Golden G-String Award, is considering running against Vitter in order to keep the prostitution scandal as an issue in the campaign. Fans of the actress/director extrodinaire are hoping to recruit Ms Daniels into running in the campaign, with the recruitment campaign centred around draftstormy.com. Yet Stormy isn’t the first, nor the last, pornstar or glamour model to embark on a political career.

The phenomenon of pornstars running for political office has quite a history in the US. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Marilyn Chambers (star of Behind the Green Door) was the candidate for vice-President for the Personal Choice Party, receiving 946 votes. Mimi Mayagi, under her birth name of Melody Damayo, ran for the Republican Party in the Nevada governatorial elections in 2006, with the fantastic campaign slogan of “I’m bare and honest at all times”. The bizzare connection between the Republican Party and pornstars (and “celebrity candidates” such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura) continues with Sonny Landham’s attempt in the 2003 Kentucky governatiorial elections. Mary Carey ran for the equivalent position in California in the same year, with a platform including proposals to tax breast implants and introduce a “Porn for Pistols” campaign to reduce gun deaths.

This, however, is not an exclusively American phenomenon. Italy seems to have a similar “pornstar in government” culture. Perhaps the most high profile (even though she isn’t REALLY a pornstar, more of a glamour model) is Alessandra Mussolini, MEP and leader of the conservative Social Action party. Grandaughter of Benito Mussolini, she had a career as an actress, “romantic singer” and appeared on two Playboy covers before her political career took off. She left her acting career in 1990 after a film producer asked her to change her last name (because of negative connotations to her grandfather Benito). She began as an elected representative for MSI, a neo-fascist party founded in support of the Italian fascist regime in 1946, in 1992. She regularly courts scandal; in 2005 she went on hunger strike after her party was blocked from elections due to irreugular signatures from voters, in 2006 she responded to allegations made against her by an Italian transgender candidate for parliament by saying “it’s better to be a fascist than a faggot”, and in 2007 she caused a Romanian political pary to withdraw their MEPs from a grouping in the European Parlliament after she said that all Romanians were criminals.

Also in Italy; pornographic actress Anna Ilona Staller, also known as “La Cicciolina” was elected to the Italian parliament in 1987, promising the right to have sex in prison, and ‘absolute sexual freedom’. Cheri Manescu ran for the office of Mayor of Rome in 2008, and in the same city and same year, Milly d’Abbracio (star of Kiss the Cobra and Imperial Nymphomaniac) featured her behind prominently on her election posters for the city council. D’Abbracio’s main proposal was to create a massive red-light district near the Vatican imaginatively named “Love City”.

Outside of Italy, European pornstars aspiring to political office have tended to be men. Goeran Eurenius was a Swedish councillor for Haerryda, southwest of Stockholm, when his past career of acting in 14 adult films came to light. Defending his past, Eurenius said "I want to work both with politics and pornography." Former German pornstar Peter Bond ran for the Freed Democrats Party in the parliamentary elections in 2002.

In an industry where people are dehumanised to become little more than meat, pornstars sometimes stand up and rise out of the Teufelkreis that is their livelihood.