There’s a lot I don’t like about Murray’s record as mayor, starting especially with how he exploits our most vulnerable residents for political points while doing far less than you’d think to help them.

No doubt would-be mayoral candidates, scared off this year by Murray’s formidable war chest, are looking anew at their contact lists. These sort of allegations, when credible, can abruptly end political careers. Money for sex, which was then used to feed drug habits.

The men – two of whom met Murray beginning in 1980 when he lived in Portland, and the third, a man who filed a civil suit alleging Murray did the same to him beginning in 1986, after Murray had moved to Seattle – gave similar stories. The Seattle Times dropped a bombshell on the local political scene last week, publishing a lengthy account of interviews with three separate men who claim that Mayor Ed Murray paid them for sex while they were underage gay drug abusers in the 1980s.