It seems New York mayoral candidates don't have a monopoly on pervy pre-election flame-outs, as one Bavarian politician is proving this week. Ahead of state elections this Sunday, a candidate for Bavaria's state parliament has found himself splashed across tabloids on Thursday for alledly seeking sex slaves online and posting a picture of himself grinning next to a torture device, ostensibly in his own private Bavarian sex dungeon.

Hans Müller, a 55-year-old member of the socially liberal, pro-business Free Democratic Party  (FDP), is running for state parliament in the highly conservative Kitzingen district under the motto "Bavaria's driving force." On the public (!) online sex portal Sklavenzentrale.com (Sklavenzentrale is German for "slave central"), Müller went by the name of "Master HM" and described himself as "dominant" and "sadistic."

A photo on his profile page, which has since been taken down, showed Müller in a businesslike button-up white shirt and black pants smiling and leaning on a St. Andrew's Cross, an X-shaped torture device used commonly in S&M dungeons. More than 4,000 people had already clicked on his profile page by the time mass-circulation Bild reported the story on Thursday morning.

On his profile, Müller a.k.a. Master HM said he was looking for female slaves, as well as straight and bisexual couples for "exchange of ideas, real S&M, party visits and training." The liberal -- one might say extremely liberal -- politician also apparently entered his fetishes. He listed 85 of them in all, including whipping, cane beatings, group sex and nipple play.

Politician Reacts with Dismay

When Bild confronted the politician about the profile, Müller reacted with dismay and said he would immediately delete his profile. "That was not intended for the public," he told the tabloid on Thursday. "For me, that was always an internal community only open to like-minded people." The site has close to 200,000 members.

Müller's colleagues in the Bavarian FDP didn't seem overwhelmingly concerned about the revelation, with one politician telling Bild the matter is private, though adding that making the profile public was "definitely a mistake."

It remains to be seen whether voters will be willing to cast their ballots in Müller's favor on the spiked heels of such a tawdry outing. It's not, apparently, a case of public infidelity: Müller's wife joins him in his extracurricular exploits, appearing on Sklavenzentrale.com as "Lady Servasandy" in plunging, skin-tight black vinyl. And Müller did, after all, sell himself as a liberal.