Teen’s Story About Hooking Up With Married Politician Sounds Awfully Like Mike Yenni

From: Queerty

Yenni (left) and Daigle (right)

So we already told you about Mike Yenni, the conservative politician from Louisiana who was just outed for allegedly having an affair with an anonymous 17-year-old Catholic school boy/mall food court employee. Local Louisiana news station WWL-TV broke the story last week. Well, we think–emphasis on the word think–we’ve found the guy. His name is Alex Daigle and he’s 19 now, openly gay, and attending Brown University.

In an op-ed titled I was seduced by a politician published earlier this year by the blog The Tab, Daigle writes about an alleged affair he had with a married politician from Louisiana who sounds an awful lot like Mike Yenni.

Daigle, whose Facebook profile says he went to high school at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, starts out by saying that he comes from “a good, Catholic family from Louisiana, where I learned how to be both a Christian and a Southern gentleman.”

Yenni speaking to students on Career Day at Jesuit High School in 2013.

“The summer after my high school graduation,” he writes, “I was working a minimum wage mall job when I was approached by a man who said, almost fatherly, as I was eating a cookie, ‘Caught you with your mouth full?'”

Talk about a come on!

Daigle calls the man “Kevin.” We suspect–emphasis on the word suspect–that it was likely Mike Yenni.

“Afterwards, an acquaintance told me Kevin had seen me at my graduation luncheon and wanted to get to know me,” Daigle continues. “He told me Kevin was ‘discreet,’ a casual gay term for men who are not out of the closet to family members or friends. Not only that, Kevin was married.”

Daigle goes on to say that he and “Kevin” began texting and then sexting one another.

“We talked about our lives and discussed the possibility of eventually meeting to sleep together,” he says. “Once, on the phone, after telling him he should come to the mall to chat before my shift, he said that he ‘couldn’t be seen in public with other guys.’ I was confused. He clarified: he was a politician with a wife and a young child.”

According to his Twitter profile, Yenni says he is “happily married with one daughter.”

“I had seen his name on election posters in the past,” Daigle continues, “and he already held a fairly high local position. He was easily recognizable as a high profile person to thousands of people around the city.”

Indeed, Yenni was the former mayor of Kenner, the city neighboring New Orleans, and campaigning for President of Jefferson Parish at the time.

Daigle then recounts an incident the happened inside the mall bathroom that sounds almost identical to the alleged underwear exchange involving Yenni reported by WWL-TV:

Dillard’s at the Lakeside Mall in Metairie.

“He texted me that he was at the mall’s Dillard’s, and that he saw some underwear he wanted me to wear for him,” he says. “I agreed to meet him in the employee bathroom, working through my general discomfort.”

He continues: “He passed by my counter and glanced at the back hallways of the food court. We met in the bathroom. He handed me the Dillard’s bag, which held three pairs of designer underwear, worth $75 in total. We kissed briefly.”

Daigle says he found the whole thing very “exciting.”

“I was seventeen at the time and flattered to think a married guy wanted to break vows just to be with me,” he writes.

The alleged relationship continued for about a month, and primarily involved sexting and, as Daigle puts it, “failed plans to meet and references to the underwear he’d bought me.” He says he grew frustrated with “Kevin’s” flakiness and “generally bland attitude about the gravity of the situation,” so he cut eventually off communication, blocking the old man’s number.

Yenni on the campaign trail in August 2015.

“Since then, he has remained active on the political scene, and I know thousands of people have voted for him under essentially false pretenses,” he writes. “Meanwhile, I know he’s been with many other boys and will continue to find more. Part of me wants to reveal his identity, but I simply don’t know what that would accomplish. I am still disgusted by his actions.”

Daigle says the whole thing has made him “wary of older men.”

“Young men are fetishized and taken advantage of, people feel the need to be secretive about their lifestyles, and, evidently, abuse can arise,” he writes. “I’ve learned my lesson, and, even if the situation is alluring, I’ll continue to steer clear of any older guys, and trust my instincts when they sense trouble.”

He now says he feels the need to “warn other young, gay men — particularly those in relatively conservative environments — to steer clear of older men, especially in clandestine, intimate situations.”

“These men abuse the immaturity and lack of experience of younger men and take advantage of the fact the younger person may be more prone to continue an inappropriate relationship despite serious discomfort.”

Still no comment from Yenni.