Gingrich Blasts Media for Focusing on Open Marriage Story

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — At Thursday night’s Republican debate, Newt Gingrich angrily denounced the news media for spreading accusations and putting his ex-wife front and center in the final days of the South Carolina GOP primary race.

“Let me be clear, the story is false,” he said when asked at the opening of the debate about her interview.

Marianne Gingrich told ABC’s “Nightline” that her ex-husband had wanted an “open marriage” so he could have both a wife and a mistress. She said Gingrich conducted an affair with Callista Bistek, now his wife, “in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington” while she was elsewhere.

“He was asking to have an open marriage and I refused. That is not a marriage,” she said in excerpts released by the network well ahead of the debate.

Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul steered clear of the controversy.

“Let’s get onto the real issues, that’s all I’ve got to say,” said Romney, although he pointed out that he and his wife, Ann, have been married for 42 years.

Gingrich and Santorum challenged Romney over his opposition to abortion, a well-documented shift but a potent one in evangelical-heavy South Carolina.

Recent polls, coupled with Perry’s endorsement, suggested Gingrich was the candidate with the momentum and Romney the one struggling to validate his standing as front-runner.

Santorum, asked about the issue Friday on C-SPAN, said it would up to voters to decide “whether these are issues of character” that matter in the race. But he said that when such actions occur when someone is serving in public office, “that has an additional
level of relevance.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)