Democrat Abby Broyles has ended her campaign for Oklahoma’s 5th U.S. Congressional District following allegations of a drunken tirade at a slumber party for tween girls.
“Today I’m ending my campaign for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District – and I’ll come back stronger than ever,” Broyles announced on Twitter Thursday while sharing a link to a Medium post.
In her Medium post explaining her decision, Broyles described feeling suicidal after the allegations first broke about her behavior at the tween slumber party. She wrote:
That morning, March 2nd, after thirteen days of being the center of a hometown scandal that garnered national media attention, I drank heavily in my hotel room, more than 1,300 miles away in an effort to hide and took sleeping pills, anguishing in pain reading about myself on social media and in tabloid articles.
Broyles said that she had been unfairly judged by people, blaming the controversy on a concerned mother who called Broyles out on Twitter over the alleged behavior.
I used poor judgment mixing wine with medication that helps you relax, that I’d never taken before. A mom who wasn’t there, and who never directly contacted me to express any issues, decided to use a ghost Twitter account and send a series of public tweets to me several days after the sleepover accusing me of saying awful things to her child and the other young ladies present while intoxicated.
The alleged hurtful comments this woman claims I made under duress do not represent who I am, and to this day, I still have no recollection of what actually occurred that evening and have not spoken to my now former friend as she conveniently threw me under a bus to superficially avoid further interrogation from her ex-husband during their custody battle.
After detailing her struggles with mental health stemming from insomnia and body-image issues, Broyles said that she has checked herself into rehab and will now focus on bettering herself. She said:
Today, I am ending my campaign for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District to focus on myself and my happiness. This decision hasn’t been easy to make; I got into politics because I wanted to help people. To give every Oklahoman a fair shot and a decent life. To my family, friends, and supporters who’ve stood by me and believed in me when I was on top of my game and when I fell from grace, thank you.
In February, Nondoc.com reported allegations that Broyles hurled profane insults at tween girls after becoming intoxicated at a slumber party. She also allegedly vomited into a laundry basket and on a girl’s shoes. News of her alleged behavior first broke on Twitter when mother Sarah Matthews, whose daughter was present at the party, demanded that Broyles apologize.
Matthews’ 12-year-old daughter detailed Broyles’ alleged behavior at the party, saying she inexplicably began “being rude to people.” She said:
We were all sitting around, and she was just going around in a circle saying rude things and would end with ‘F-er’ and saying ‘Fuck you’ to all of us there — really rude things. My friend has acne, and she had been talking about her acne early in the evening, and then [Broyles] called her an ‘acne Fucker,’ and she ran upstairs crying.
“She was telling me I wasn’t going to be as successful as her,” the girl added.
Broyles also allegedly called another girl a “Hispanic fucker.”
Initially, Broyles denied being at the party, suggesting the story might have been a “cooked up” political attack by the mothers, but a screenshot of a TikTok video that night appeared to show Broyles in attendance at the party. Text messages from the homeowner to Matthews the following day also appeared to corroborate some of the events of that night.
In a sit-down interview with KFOR, Broyles admitted that she attended the party, claiming that NonDoc.com had misquoted her. NonDoc.com said it stands by its reporting and presented audio evidence of her denial.
“That phone call was terrifying and caught me off guard. I remember hearing the accusations and just repeating ‘no, no, no’ and then hanging up,” Broyles told KFOR. “I was happy to be in the TikTok video with the girls, which was obvious proof of my attendance.”
As to her alleged behavior that night, Broyles said that her friend invited her over, asked that she bring wine, and gave her some “medication” she had never taken before that may or may not have caused her to hallucinate. According to Broyles:
She asked me to come over. She asked me to bring some wine. We had wine and sushi and a couple of hours later, we were upstairs in their theater room watching a movie.
For years I have struggled with stress and anxiety and insomnia. I took the bar exam on 2 hours of sleep. I mean, this is how far this goes back for me. And she knows that. And she gave me a medication I had never taken before. And I had an adverse reaction. 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.
Broyles could not remember much beyond her limited recount and apologized to the families. She denied having a substance abuse problem.
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