I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.
Almost nothing is. Local politicians fail upwards to the EU (at least in Germany) or some private job, if they fail at all. Most of the time, you can do what you want, and the voters don’t care.
And, on the flip side of the coin: once you are sufficiently disliked, almost anything can be taken as the trigger point for a scandal.