Gail Collins, please define “sex scandal”

The Times columnist uses the phrase all wrong today in her attempt to portray a Democratic senator as being caught up in a “sex scandal” [emphasis added]:

It's time for political sex scandals to reclaim their rightful place in our national discourse. The way things have been going lately, you'd think extramarital sex only happened to professional athletes. Consider the case of Senator Max Baucus of Montana. We learned last week that the recently divorced Baucus had nominated his girlfriend, Melodee Hanes, to be a U.S. attorney without warning the White House that they were an item.

Note also that the headline for the column reads “The Joys of Political Sex.”

Collins tries very hard to push the Baucus story as a “sex” one, and even constituting a “political sex scandal,” even though sex had nothing to do with the story. (See CJR.) And there certainly isn't a “sex scandal,” or even “extramarital sex,” involved in the story.

So simple question for Collin: what exactly are you talking about?