Politicians need to compromise to do anything. He probably didn't want to have to shake hands in daily basis with scumbags. Politics is a shady business,you need to have a really tough skin to survive in the game.
He had tough skin, I just imagine someone approached him with something he refused to do.
Local politicians are dirty too. There was a state race this last year. This man was sure to win, but a couple of days before the election his opponent organized a hate campaign against him saying the man did it.
A few years back during my father's election, a man took my dad to court to get him disqualified because my father owns multiple properties and he stayed over a year one while the other in his district was being remodeled. The man lost and my dad was re-elected again.
I don't have the skin for that nor would I want to put my kids through that because during that whole thing, I hated seeing people talk bad about my dad and I wouldn't want them to feel that.