What a disaster. Abby Broyles’ chances of unseating Republican incumbent Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) in Oklahoma’s fifth congressional district were already slim. Now, there can’t even be a defeat with honor story. Broyles, a former Democratic Senate candidate in 2020, lawyer, and ex-reporter was invited to a pre-teen sleepover this month which descended into a drunken spectacle. She berated the girls, hurled a racially charged attack at one for being Hispanic, and then threw up all over a laundry basket. Broyles was a good friend of the host family, a mother of one of the girls, and they drank wine, had sushi, but then she took a pill.
In an interview with KFOR Oklahoma’s News 4, Broyles said that she’s a long-time sufferer of insomnia and anxiety. Her friend knows this which led to her receiving a pill to manage the symptoms. Broyles was not familiar with his medication. It was a terrible mistake. She had an adverse reaction, saying she simply blacked out and hallucinated before apologizing to the families of those involved (via NYT):
The House candidate, Abby Broyles, a former television investigative reporter who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2020, said that she had no memory of what happened because she had mixed alcohol and a sleep medicine. About eight girls between the ages of 12 and 13 attended the Feb. 11 sleepover, where they watched the movie “Titanic,” according to NonDoc Media, a journalism nonprofit in Oklahoma.
When first contacted by NonDoc Media for comment, Ms. Broyles seemed to deny that she was at the party. After a TikTok video showed otherwise, she gave an interview to KFOR-TV, an Oklahoma City station where she once worked. She did not immediately return a message from The Times on Monday.
In the interview, Ms. Broyles said that she had “blacked out” after drinking wine and taking a sleep medication. She said the medicine was given to her by her friend, whose daughter was having a sleepover when Ms. Broyles came to visit.
“I had an adverse reaction,” Ms. Broyles said. “Instead of helping me sleep, I hallucinated. And I don’t remember anything until I woke up or came to, and I was throwing up in a hamper.”
[…]
In the interview broadcast on Friday, Ms. Broyles told the station that she had struggled for years with stress, anxiety and insomnia but had never experienced anything like what happened at the party.
“I remember starting to hallucinate, and the rest is just blurry,” she said. “I just remember opening my eyes, and I had gotten sick in this hamper and I didn’t know where I was. It was the most awful experience that I’ve had.”
Ms. Broyles said that the actions and words attributed to her were completely out of character.
“First of all, I want to apologize to the families again. And for people who say I just blacked out and I’m making this up, you don’t know me,” she said. “I never, ever would say something hurtful like those things, and that’s why I know I was not in my right mind.”
Yet, this was not a smooth ‘come to Jesus’ moment for Broyles. She first alleged that the moms of the young girls cooked up this story to attack her. She even threatened to sue NonDoc, but when pressed—she simply hung up the phone on them. The outlet asked if she could prove she was out of town on the night of the party. That’s when the conversation ended but not before she claimed the story was not true. Well, it is—and it’s a disastrous one. For Democrats, it’s not a huge loss as she wasn’t favored to win.
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