Senator Warren G. Harding was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in June of 1920, largely as a compromise after the three top contenders posed a political deadlock. Harding was seen as the best, albeit second-rate, option.
When Republican leaders asked Senator Harding if there was anything in his past that might compromise his candidacy, the (married) Harding finally admitted to having a still-ongoing seven-year affair with the wife of one of his best friends, a woman named Carrie Phillips.
The party treasurer, Albert Lasker, immediately visited Phillips. He told her the party would pay her $25,000 up front and $2000 per month as long as Harding was in office, provided she and her husband agreed to leave the country on an around-the-world, all-expenses-paid trip. The only condition was that they would not return to the United States before Harding’s inauguration. She agreed.
In November of 1920, Harding was elected in a landslide.