 In 1985 Frank was still publicly closeted. That year he hired Steve Gobie, a male prostitute, for sex, and they became "more friends than sexual partners." Frank housed Gobie and hired him with personal funds as an aide, housekeeper and driver and paid for his attorney and court-ordered psychiatrist. In 1987, Frank evicted Gobie after being advised by his landlord that Gobie kept escorting despite the support and was doing so in the residence. Later that year, Gobie's friends persuaded him that he had a gay male version of Mayflower Madam, a TV movie about an escort service. In 1989, Gobie tried to initiate a bidding war for the story between WUSA-TV (Channel 9), the Washington Times, and The Washington Post. He then gave the story to The Washington Times for nothing, in hopes of getting a book contract. Amid calls for an investigation, Frank asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate his relationship "in order to ensure that the public record is clear." The Committee found no evidence that Frank had known of or been involved in the alleged illegal activity and dismissed all Gobie's more scandalous claims; they recommended a reprimand for Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to Gobie's criminal probation record. The House voted 408 – 18 to reprimand Frank. The attempts to censure and expel Frank were led by Republican Larry Craig (whom Frank later criticized for hypocrisy after Craig's own arrest in 2007 for "propositioning an undercover cop in a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport bathroom"). Despite the controversy, Frank won re-election in 1990 with 66 percent of the vote, and by larger margins until the 2010 Mid-term elections when his victory margin went down to eleven points.
