On June 9, 1953, Hunt's 24-year-old son Lester Jr., known as "Buddy", who was a student and president of the student body at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was arrested in Washington, D.C., for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square, just north of and adjacent to the White House property. It was his first offense, which police normally handled quietly as a matter for the offender's family to address, but the arrest became known to Senate Republicans. According to Drew Pearson's Washington Merry-Go-Round column published after Hunt's death, senators Styles Bridges and Herman Welker threatened that if Hunt did not immediately retire from the Senate and agree not to seek his seat in the 1954 election, they would see that his son was prosecuted and would widely publicize his son's arrest.