Last Updated on November 14, 2023
Former Los Angeles Dodger and San Diego Padre Steve Garvey is running as a Republican to be the next U.S. Senator from California, but his long history of personal and financial scandals could spoil the party’s chances of even making the general election ballot.
Garvey has unveiled a crisp campaign website, telling a favorable story of his careers in both baseball and business but neglected to mention his extramarital affairs, the children he fathered out of wedlock and then failed to support, or the massive personal debt he compiled with his second wife that landed him in courtrooms and earned write-ups in several news publications.
As The Los Angeles Times reported in 2006, Garvey and his second wife Candace had a reputation for driving around in luxury cars, living in mansions, and galavanting around the world while living in “financial chaos” and failing to pay “dozens of people” who’d “worked for them for years”.
At the time, Garvey owed his attorneys more than $300,000, the report added.
On a June day in 2003, Paige Bilbrey was on the phone frantically trying to reach her boss, former Los Angeles Dodger great Steve Garvey, at Le Parc Hotel in Paris, where he was attending the French Open tennis tournament.
The matter couldn’t wait: Standing in the lobby of Garvey’s hilltop mansion outside Park City, Utah, was an employee of the local power company. Pay the overdue bill, the man said, or he’d turn off the lights.
The incident wasn’t the result of an embarrassing oversight. It was typical of the financial chaos that has reigned in Garvey’s life. For years, Garvey and his wife, Candace, have neglected bills large and small, leaving dozens of people who either worked for them or sold them merchandise wondering if they were ever going to get paid.
The Garveys drove luxury cars, shopped in upscale boutiques and traveled extensively even as they were pursued by creditors. Garvey’s gardener took him to small claims court to recover $1,773. A mirror installer did the same over $809. A caterer received a court order to seize valuable artwork from the Garveys until they paid her $14,000 bill.
Garvey owes attorneys more than $300,000, according to court records.
Disturbingly, Garvey even neglected to pay for his own children’s visits to the doctor, leading the family’s pediatrician to write the Garveys a letter informing them that all future services would be provided on a “cash-only” basis.
Fed up with not getting paid, the Garveys’ pediatrician wrote a letter in March 2003 stating that any future medical services provided to their children would be on a “cash-only” basis.
Furthermore, The Los Angeles Times reported:
Even the Garveys’ church had to wait nearly a year to receive the $2,700 it was owed for items the couple had agreed to buy at a charity auction, according to documents and interviews.
In addition to his financial woes, Garvey’s checkered personal life has landed him in hot water numerous times over the years. He’s known to have fathered at least two children out of wedlock and has been dragged into court to answer for his failure to support his progeny, an issue that ties directly into his aforementioned money problems, again according to The Los Angeles Times.
A big source of Garvey’s money problems stem from a paternity suit filed by his onetime fiancee, Rebecka Mendenhall. She sued him in 1991, alleging that he was the father of her child, born in 1989.
In 1993, a judge ruled that Garvey was the boy’s father and that Mendenhall was entitled to child support. Three years later, as Garvey sought a reduction in the amount he was ordered to pay, he filed the declaration stating he was nearly a million dollars in debt.
California has been presented with a rare opportunity to elect a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2024, as the seat formerly held by late Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein is up for a vote with no incumbent to defend it.
Because of California’s jungle primary process, all candidates, regardless of partisan affiliation, appear on the same primary ballot and the top two vote-getters will square off in the November general election.
In a field that already includes well over a dozen declared Democrat candidates, including Congressman Adam Schiff, the left has yet to coalesce around a single candidate and likely won’t, opening a lane for a Republican to win a spot on the general election ballot and potentially the U.S. Senate.
The launching of Garvey’s campaign has been met with much positive corporate media coverage which, amazingly, has totally omitted his already-public financial and paternal issues – issues that will certainly be used as a cudgel by Democrats should Garvey make it onto the November ballot.
A Sportskeeda page documenting portions of Garvey’s personal life provides additional details on his fathering of children out of wedlock, reporting that “Steve Garvey once came under fire when it was revealed that he had impregnated two of his ex-lovers in the same year.”
In addition to the aforementioned Rebecka Mendenhall, “Garvey had also impregnated another woman the same year, having a daughter named Ashley. He also married Candace Garvey in 1989, making the year quite eventful for him.”