Before he hosted his unreal "reality" show, Jerry Springer dealt in the even tawdrier world of politics. He was elected to the Cincinnati city council in 1971, then forced to resign in 1974 when the police broke up a massage parlor ring and unearthed a check he had written to a young lady engaged in a very old profession. I'm not sure if Springer was more humiliated by the revelation that he'd been to a prostitute or by the fact that he was dumb enough to pay by check. Either way, he did an apology tour that impressed voters enough that he won back his seat in 1975. Later, there was an opening for Mayor and the City Council appointed him to serve in that post for a year.
In 1982, he ran for governor of Ohio and came in third. That was the end of his political aspirations. He went into broadcasting and soon became a top-rated news anchor and commentaor, which led to the job he holds today. Our video link today is a commercial he did for his gubernatorial run. His opponents were either hammering him with the old prostitution scandal or about to, and Springer made this ad to try and deal with that problem and perhaps turn it into a positive. It didn't work but it was nice try.
