Elizabeth Ray (born Betty Lou Ray on May 14, 1943, in Marshall, North Carolina ) was the central figure in a much publicized sex scandal in 1976 that ended the career of U.S. Rep. Wayne Hays (D-Ohio).
The Washington Post reported that Ray had been on the payroll of a committee run by Hays for two years as a clerk-secretary. During that time, she admitted, her actual job duties were providing Congressman Hays sexual favors: "I can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone." Ray, who had won the title of Miss Virginia 1975 in a beauty contest, says she worked briefly as a stewardess, waitress and car rental clerk before beginning work on the Hill in the summer of 1972. After making unsuccessful attempts at being an actress and stand-up comedienne, Elizabeth Ray faded back into obscurity.
After the scandal broke, a book appeared in her name, entitled “The Washington Fringe Benefit”; she posed for Playboy several times, and tried acting and stand-up comedy.
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“The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone. There was but the sun and the eye from the first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)