Mark Foley

Disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is now a full-fledged radio talk show host!

After his recent tryout garnered some of WSVU-Seaview 960 AM’s best ratings, Foley starts a weekly gig Nov. 3.

Seaview General Manager Chet Tart tells me Foley, who resigned from the U.S. Congress in 2006 after his blue text messages to young male pages appeared online, will be on the air from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. every Tuesday.

“It’s been a very positive experience for the station,” Tart said. “He’s been able to get guests like (know-it-all TV talking head) Gloria Allred and higher-ups at ACORN.”

With lawyer Allred, the former Republican pol discussed late-night TV host David Letterman’s own sex scandal.

“It was how the sex stuff affects the workplace,” Tart said. “It’s a good topic.”

While the North Palm Beach station doesn’t subscribe to ratings organizations, Tart said the station’s Web site has shown spikes of 40,000 extra visitors when Foley’s on. That’s the site’s second-highest number, behind Joe Raineri’s Cup o’ Joe show weekday mornings.

“We’ve tracked a lot of traffic outside South Florida for Mark,” Tart said. “Places like Washington, D.C., New York City, North Carolina and even Burbank, Calif.”

As for Foley getting paid (he didn’t receive money for the tryouts), “we’re working on it,” Tart said. “We’re negotiating for three or four sponsors.”

Without naming former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, talk radio superstar Rush Limbaugh tells Page2Live Foley has an uphill battle if he wants to become a broadcast powerhouse.

Limbaugh

And Foley’s sudden departure from his old job as a U.S. Congressman has nothing to do with it.

It’s all about the lettuce!

“The reasons so many people want to do a radio talk show are simple,” the conservative lightning-rod Limbaugh writes in an e-mail. “It has tremendous impact and influence. People also think a pot of gold is attainable.

“And they think it is easy because the greats make it appear easy.”

But, Limbaugh added, few are shown the money. And that’s already the case for Foley, who taped this week the premiere of Inside The Mind of Mark Foley for airing Sept. 22 on West Palm Beach’s WSVU-Seaview 960 AM. He’ll be working for free, at least at the beginning.

“We’re not paying him right now,” said station General Manager Chet Tart. “But Mark said he’d bring his own advertisers.”

He’d better.

“Sadly, few understand the BUSINESS of talk radio,” Limbaugh e-mailed me. “Content, which is obviously important, is only a piece of the puzzle. But without a foundation of understanding the business of radio, success can be elusive.”

Foley resigned his congressional seat in 2006 when his sex-soaked text-messages to young pages were made public.

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Foley (By Brandon Kruse/The Palm Beach Post)

In his boldest, most public move since he resigned from the U.S. Congress in shame, Mark Foley is launching a new career in talk radio.

Treading on the territories of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, Foley’s new gig on WSVU-Seaview 960 AM is political talk.

“Mark called me out of the blue a few months ago,” said station manager Chet Tart. “I hadn’t heard from him in two years. He said he was considering a career in radio and he asked me if I’d help him out.

“I was shocked at first. But then, the more we talked, the more I starting thinking we could syndicate him nationally.”

Seaview, after all, was one of the first stations to put Don Imus back on last year, after his firing from CBS for calling the women on Rutgers University basketball teams “nappy-headed hos.” The station can be heard across Foley’s old district, between Delray and Vero Beach.

Republican Foley’s first show is scheduled to air at 6 p.m. Sept. 22, with repeats a few days later. The one-hour show, Inside the Mind of Mark Foley, will then be aired once a month. Once the Palm Beacher feels more comfortable, he’ll go on weekly.

Listen to the promo for Foley’s show:

For more, and the poll, look below or click here (Read more…)

You can kick the boy out of politics, but politics won’t be kicked out of the boy!

After dipping his toe back into society last year, former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley started appearing at political forums nearly three years after he resigned from Congress in a cybersex scandal.

The latest sighting was at Thursday’s health care debate at the government center in West Palm Beach. Folks went to hear what U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings and candidate for Florida House Allen West, but some privately heard from Foley.

Foley works the crowd Thursday at the health care debate downtown West Palm Beach (Brandon Kruse/The Palm Beach Post)

Needless to say, like any Republican worth his anti-socialist stance, Foley’s against Obamacare.

What’s more, Foley appeared on the three networks affiliates here to comment on U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy death last week.

And his Facebook page is stuffed with political observations about former colleagues, mostly Democrats.

Of Boca Dem U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, who made the unfortunate choice of appearing at his health care forum through close-circuit television, Foley wrote: “A telethon is for Jerry Lewis and the kids . . . If you can’t stand the heat . . .

About scandal-prone U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, a Dem whose tax returns don’t show millions in income: “He wants us to pay for all these new taxes . . . yet fails to pay his own . . . IT’S AN OUTRAGE . . .”

And this about Democratic leader, Nevada’s U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who last week said he wished a Vegas newspaper go out of business: “Harry Reid wants business to fail in his state . . .”

“Mark is definitely trying to inch his way back into public life,” said Brian Crowley, a Foley friend and political observer. “He’s at a point where he’s close to being fully accepted back. Politics? That’d be more complicated.”

Foley didn’t return calls to answer whether he is setting himself up to get back into politics.

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Mark Foley (right) before his scandal, back when he hung with the likes of Gov. Charlie Crist (Special to Page2Live)

Mark Foley’s ticket back to society ended up being too expensive.

With each side accusing the other of trying to take advantage, the divorce between the former U.S. Congressman and the Palm Beach International Film Festival has been consummated. Foley will not take over the 14-year-old festival.

Why not?

Find out, and sound off in our poll by clicking (Read more…)

There were some faces that movies goers know well at the 14^th annual Palm Beach International Film Festival in Boca Raton, even if the chatter involved someone who wasn’t there.

You couldn’t miss reed-tall James Cromwell, who once starred alongside a pig in Babe. Or Christine Baranski, who sang Abba’s Does Your Mother Know in Mama Mia!

Or even teenage sensation AnnaSophia Robb, a fave with elementary schoolers since her roles in Bridge to Terabithia and the more recent Race to Witch Mountain.

Mark Foley

It’s someone who didn’t show, however, who fueled the tableside talk: Former U.S. Congressman Mark Foley.

Foley, who emerged from a self-imposed media exile after his blue text messages to male pages forced him to resign, has been rumored to be taking over as chair of the film festival later this year.

A month ago, current chair Yvonne Boice was adamant that she’d be stepping down before the summer and pushed Foley on the forefront.

She’s changed her tune. (Read more…)

Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine — celebrity, that is.

Disgraced former Palm Beach County Commish Mary McCarty and Mark Foley, the former U.S. congressman who quit in 2006 when his suggestive text-messages to young pages surfaced, were name-dropping like there was no tomorrow at a recent luncheon.

They were loud enough that a bat-eared source overheard the two fallen Republicans from a nearby table at the Lake Park soul food emporium Pritchard’s.

(Read more…)

He once eyed the Hollywood film industry’s top job. But when it comes to showbiz, the scandal-prone former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley will have to start at the grass-roots level.

Mark Foley

Several sources are telling Page2Live that Foley, 54, is being considered to take over the board of the Palm Beach International Film Festival.

“I met Mark at a party and we started talking about the festival,” said the current chair, Boca businesswoman Yvonne Boice. “We’re just in the talking stages right now, but Mark’s always expressed an interest in the festival. He’s got great connections in Hollywood.

“I made a five-year commitment. This is my fifth year, and it’s time for me to move on. Mark would be great as chairman.” (Read more…)

Mark Foley at a Palm Beach gala

I hear that Palm Beach billionaire Wilbur Ross’ $7 million purchase of the Indiantown-based First Bank and Trust Co. two weeks ago was put together by none other than disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley.

Ka-ching!

Foley’s been dabbling in real estate since he resigned from his seat in 2006 when his blue e-mail to congressional pages surfaced.

Although the amount of Foley’s fee in the bank deal wasn’t available, Foley’s been telling friends that it more than makes up for his lack of steady income since his resignation.

Reached by telephone Thursday, Foley said he couldn’t comment.

Layne Nisenbaum (left) and Mark Foley.

Disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley has been thrown out of better places, I’m sure, and not just because of the heinous plaid jacket he wore.

Foley and his lover, dermatologist Layne Nisenbaum, were unceremoniously bounced from the Cartier Christmas party on Palm Beach’s Worth Avenue earlier this month.

Two eyewitnesses told Page2Live that Foley, who resigned from his congressional seat two years ago after he was caught e-mailing sweet nothings to young pages, was actually just an innocent bystander in a squabble between society skin-smoother Nisenbaum and an unidentified partygoer.

(Read more…)