Washington Post: Everyone in Richmond knows about Joe and Myrna Morrissey, as do many across Virginia and as far away as Europe, having feasted on a gush of salacious stories three years ago about the then-55-year-old state lawmaker who went to jail for cavorting with his 17-year-old receptionist.
That he is white and she is black only added another level of intrigue to the saga.
Myrna Warren is now Morrissey’s 20-year-old wife — the couple married in June — and she has become a centerpiece of his unlikely quest to become Richmond’s next mayor, a seat once held by no less than Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee.
At a time when American politics is dominated by two presidential candidates with mountains of personal baggage, Morrissey, now 59, is starring on his own stage with enough proverbial Samsonite to fill a fleet of cargo planes…
The city’s ever-genteel establishment blanches at the prospect that Richmond’s next leader could be a man whose “Fightin’ Joe” nickname became “Sextin’ Joe” after prosecutors accused him of texting nude photos of the underage Warren to a friend and boasting about having sex with her.
In professional circles, among blacks and whites, Morrissey is nothing less than an embarrassment, his cringe-worthy moments including the photo he once distributed of himself and Warren and their newborn son dressed in antebellum costumes seemingly out of “Gone With the Wind.”
In addition to his 6-month-old daughter and 18-month-old son with Myrna, Morrissey is the father of three more children with three different women, none of whom he married. His oldest child is 29.
