Mississippi politician tells female reporter she can’t interview him unless she’s with a man

A Republican candidate for Mississippi governor told a female reporter that he couldn’t be interviewed by her unless she was accompanied by a male colleague — later claiming that he was following “the Billy Graham Rule.”

“We just wanted to keep things professional,” said GOP hopeful Robert Foster in a radio interview on Tuesday.

The female reporter, Larrison Campbell of Mississippi Today, had been asking to go on a “ride along” with Foster when his campaign director reportedly refused on his behalf.

“In two phone calls this week, Colton Robison, Foster’s campaign director, said a male colleague would need to accompany [Campbell] on an upcoming 15-hour campaign trip because they believed the optics of the candidate with a woman, even a working reporter, could be used in a smear campaign to insinuate an extramarital affair,” Campbell wrote in a column Tuesday.Read More..