With more than 21 months left in his term, Gary, Indiana, mayor Scott L. King resigned. His stated reason: His daughter is a high-school senior and he needs to return to the private sector—he used to have a private law practice—to earn more than the $107,000 mayoral salary to pay for her college education. "This child is so focused on getting into the best university in the country," King said at a press conference, according to the Northwest Indiana News. The paper sympathetically added, "King also has two other children in college, one about to graduate and another a freshman."

Perhaps a chief executive of a $100 million corporation—which King likened himself to, according to the Chicago Tribune—could have, before running for a third term in 2003, hired a sophisticated financial consultant to advise him on the typical aging pattern of American adolescent females. Or King could have extrapolated from his experience with his first two children to realize that, God willing, high-school sophomores become high-school seniors and, if all goes well, college freshmen.

To put it more plainly: Why the hell did King run for re-election—it was a contested primary, with four challengers including a former state attorney general—when any idiot could have anticipated future education costs? And why the hell did the Northwest Times—and that other Times in New York—not raise that question?

The New York Times, unlike the local paper, at least acknowledges in the seventh paragraph of a 10-paragraph story that King's administration's record wasn't pristine, though it quickly dismisses that as a reason for his resignation amid an otherwise glowing piece:

Members of his administration had faced a federal corruption inquiry beginning in 2003, but Mr. King was never implicated. Charges against the highest official to be charged, Deputy Mayor Geraldine Tousant, were dropped this year.

Ms. Tousant stepped down earlier this week, and Mr. King appointed Dozier Allen Jr. of Calumet Township, a former trustee, as deputy mayor.

The Tribune takes a very different tack, mentioning the corruption inquiry in the first sentence: "Shunning talk of a federal corruption probe having anything to do with his resignation, Gary Mayor Scott King said Thursday that he is leaving office because $107,000 a year just doesn't pay the bills."

The Associated Press also didn't shy away from the oddness of the resignation, noting that speculation was rampant about the real reason for King leaving:

"Every other suggestion of why I'm doing what I'm doing and when I'm doing it is just absolutely a falsehood," King said.

King was asked about city residents upset that the man they elected was leaving before his term was over.

"I tell the voters, 'Look, I'm doing the best I can do under the circumstances,'" he said.

King said he wrestled with even running for a third term and began thinking about quitting before his third term even started.

[The world of politics everywhere is discovering the powerful force that is the regularity and predicatility of aging:
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster working for three female House candidates this year, told the New York Times (in a separate article) about women in politics: "They're not as new as they used to be." Neither, for that matter, is anything. If only King had hired Lake as a high-powered aging consultant before mounting that 2003 campaign.]