Why Charity Lawson avoided disaster by not visiting Sean McLaughlin’s hometown

Sean McLaughlin quickly became a Bachelor Nation whipping boy while competing on Season 20 of The Bachelorette. His cocky demeanor throughout the show rubbed people the wrong way. He even earned himself the “Prince Charming” nickname when Brayden likened his personality and appearance to that of a Shrek villain.

After an all-or-nothing attempt at extending his week on the show by visiting Charity Lawson personally in her hotel room, he was ultimately sent home because Charity admitted she couldn’t “get there” with him. To add insult to injury, his heartbreaking sendoff would reach meme status because he didn’t exactly understand that he was being dumped the first time…so she had to do it again.

Little did she know, she dodged the massive bullet that would be meeting Sean’s father.

Why did Charity Lawson avoid disaster?

In her Entertainment Weekly recap, Kristen Baldwin dropped some news links that meeting Sean’s family—namely his father— would have been an awful experience.

Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, could you imagine listening to anybody speak about this subject for hours?

And it’s hard to imagine that politics wouldn’t dominate every square inch of conversation with Sean’s dad. As of this writing, Steve McLaughlin has 58 original tweets from the past week. Of those 58 tweets, only two don’t mention controversial political topics and individuals. The two tweets that didn’t mention this are about water and National Hot Dog Day.

Who is Steve McLaughlin?

Steve McLaughlin, the father to Sean McLaghlin, is a Republican serving as the executive of Rensselaer County in upstate New York. A simple Google search will show you that he has been no stranger to controversy throughout his political career, including allegations of bullying, sexual harassment, and physical assault.

While representing the New York State Assembly in 2017, Steve was disciplined for soliciting nudes from a female staff member–something he has vehemently denied doing–resulting in disciplinary measures that prevented him from hiring interns.

In that same year, he was accused of “roughing up” one of his staffers, and an audio recording includes soundbites of him saying awful, vile things about her. While he did admit to the vulgar statements made towards her (I mean… it is on the audio), he denied any physical altercations.

In 2019, Steve was again in the headlines after a recording caught him verbally abusing a Troy mayoral candidate to step down and drop out of the election. In the profane-filled tirade, McLaughlin declared himself the “boss” and threatened that there would be “consequences” for failing to do so.

We’ve seen some terrible hometown dates before but would this meeting rank at the top of the list? 

Let us know in the comments!