Topeka ? A sex scandal surrounding Attorney General Paul Morrison is making another Democrat, Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson, a target for the state Republican Party.

Parkinson and Morrison have been friends for more than 20 years. That has GOP leaders asking whether Parkinson knew about an extramarital affair Morrison had with a former subordinate.

Prominent Democrats, including Parkinson, say they didn’t know until after the affair ended – and shortly before Morrison acknowledged it publicly. But GOP leaders hope Kansans will ask whether Democrats hid a serious character flaw to help Morrison unseat Republican incumbent Phill Kline in the 2006 attorney general’s race.

Those GOP leaders assume Parkinson is capable of political skullduggery because he, like Morrison, switched parties. But Parkinson also is an inviting target because, like Morrison before his fall, he could become a serious gubernatorial or U.S. Senate candidate.

Morrison’s behavior eliminates him as a rising Democratic star. A scandal that tars more Democrats would be a bigger gift to the Republican Party.

“It is a difficult thing to restrain yourself from speculation in these matters because of the political benefit that can occur,” said Sen. Phil Journey, a Haysville Republican.

Morrison plans to leave office Jan. 31, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, also a Democrat, will pick someone to fill the last three years of his term. He announced his resignation Dec. 14, only five days after The Topeka Capital-Journal broke the story. The detailed allegations of Linda Carter, his ex-lover, gave Morrison little choice, even though he denied much of what she said.

According to Carter, the affair began in September 2005 and lasted two years, while Morrison was running for attorney general and after he took office. When it started, he was Johnson County district attorney and she was the office’s director of administration. She kept that job even after Republicans picked Kline to replace Morrison as district attorney.

She said some trysts occurred inside the Johnson County Courthouse and that Morrison promised to divorce his wife and got a tattoo with her initials. She also accused him of professional misconduct, including trying to get her to pass on sensitive information about Kline.

“People deserve to know what Mark Parkinson knew,” said Christian Morgan, the state GOP’s executive director. “These guys were very close personal friends. What did he know? I think it’s a valid question.”

Morrison became a Democrat and launched his campaign for attorney general in October 2005. In February 2006, Parkinson, still a registered Republican, became the campaign’s co-chairman. Parkinson became a Democrat three months later.

State Democratic Chairman Larry Gates said Parkinson had no role in recruiting Morrison, but Morgan suggested that Parkinson could have persuaded a close friend not to run or could have warned Democrats about his flaws after joining the party.

Also, there’s an old allegation of sexual harassment against Morrison, and Parkinson certainly knew about it.

Another ex-employee said Morrison made a drunken sexual advance toward her in a bar in 1990; later, she claimed, she lost her job for resisting. Morrison denied misconduct. A federal investigation concluded she had no witnesses to corroborate her version of events, and two federal lawsuits were dismissed in 1992 and 1993.

Kline raised the case as an issue in mid-October, but the tactic struck even some Republicans as desperate-looking, and it backfired on him. Now, some Republicans are saying the 1990 incident was evidence of a potential pattern.

Parkinson was one of Morrison’s attorneys in the two federal lawsuits during the 1990s.

“We feel in this situation that basically the governor and the lieutenant governor put their seal of approval on Paul Morrison,” Morgan said.

Parkinson responded during an interview that he’d never seen anything in Morrison suggesting he was capable of having an affair. He said the old sexual harassment case was different because there was no allegation of kissing or touching.

If prominent Democrats had known about Morrison’s affair with Carter, Parkinson said, they wouldn’t have recruited Morrison to run against Kline.

Sebelius said anyone who thinks so doesn’t understand Kansas politics. She added that for her, “It would have been some personal jeopardy.”