(CNN) Nashville Mayor Megan Barry resigned Tuesday, just more than a month after news first broke of an extramarital affair between her and her former bodyguard. The scandal has engulfed the city and, with Barry's resignation, ended the career -- for the foreseeable future of a Democratic rising star.

In search of what it all means, I reached out to Erik Schelzig , the editor of The Tennessee Journal -- a political tipsheet on Volunteer State politics. Our conversation, edited only for flow, is below.

Cillizza: Megan Barry just resigned after weeks of scandal following her affair with a former head of security. Was it always going to end this way?

Schelzig: Some political operatives were impressed by the open way Barry dealt with the revelations about her affair: She appeared on live TV to acknowledge the affair, asked for forgiveness and took a multitude of questions from reporters.

But she stumbled on questions about whether taxpayer money might have been misused to conduct of her affair and she refused to say when the affair had ended. Other consultants were horrified that she appeared alone on stage without any visible show of support and that the questions weren't limited.

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