"The intrigue that makes an incident memorable, rather, comes in the details—in the mysteries of how these relationships start, how they are discovered, and whether anything like love can be detected in the wreckage. Of course, the clues to whether these scandals are survivable—personally or professionally—also linger in these very same details.
People close to Bentley, however, told me they viewed Mason's role in starkly different terms. They believe that Mason wormed her way into the governor's good graces through flattery and flirtation. To their minds, Bentley—an awkward man with a heart-rending comb-over who'd married young and come late to his lofty position—was unaccustomed to female attention. And foolishly susceptible to it. When his advisers would caution him about pushing for things the legislature wouldn't support, like a teacher pay raise, Mason would counter in a syrupy voice, “But you're the governor. People love you.”
Whatever Mason's motives—to buck up a governor who she felt needed to assert himself or to win the affections of a lovelorn old man—the ego-stroking worked so well that some people were shocked. “When she became his top political adviser, it was like the Hindenburg came down and fell on the Titanic as the Titanic hit the iceberg,” one person who was once close to Bentley told me. “I was watching a woman who didn't know how a bill becomes a law running the state of Alabama.”
And then a curious thing happened. Since his aides now knew about his relationship with Mason, Bentley no longer felt the need to go to great lengths to conceal it. Montgomery insiders told me that in meetings, he'd rest his hand on Mason's thigh, and she'd wipe food from his face. At campaign headquarters, they'd disappear into Mason's office, and at the capitol, into his, and she would emerge hours later with her hair tousled. Bentley even bought himself a pickup truck—a brand-new light blue GMC Sierra—that he began using to slip his security detail. When state troopers eventually would locate him, he'd often be at a secluded pond outside town where, it was assumed, he'd been rendezvousing with Mason. Although he continued to deny that he had a “physical relationship” with her, he told his concerned aides, “I've finally found happiness. Why don't you want me to be happy?” With all other options exhausted, his staffers began to accommodate themselves to this new reality. They seemed to care more than Bentley did about deflecting the rumors. They scrambled to contain the bombshell of the lovesick governor.
In the run-up to his re-election, Dianne Bentley rarely appeared by her husband's side—not that it was her choice. The governor would seem stronger, Mason had told him, if he campaigned without his wife. But on election night—when protocol required her presence—Dianne stood behind Robert and smiled for the camera. When he thanked his family—“They didn't ask to do what they've had to go through”—Dianne smiled even wider."
