Trump's 'Hurricane Harvey', Continued–Sexual misconduct allegations rock statehouses

In state after state, officials are scrambling to deal with a deluge of disturbing revelations.

politico.com

Statehouses from Boston to Sacramento have been rocked by an onslaught of sexual misconduct allegations, creating unprecedented pressure on state legislative leaders to take immediate action.

Amid a flood of recent testimonials from female legislators, staff and lobbyists, a portrait is fast emerging of male-dominated state capitol cultures rife with sexual harassment and bereft of protections for victims, where complaints from women frequently languish — or are outright ignored.

In Illinois alone, hundreds of women signed onto an open letter charging a pervasive predatory culture in the state capitol, prompting a public hearing that exposed a grossly neglected, nearly non-existent reporting system.

Already, one high-ranking Illinois lawmaker has been stripped of his leadership post — and mandatory training from an outside professional is likely to become legally required. An emergency meeting of an ethics commission is set for next week.

“Every industry has its own version of the casting couch. Illinois politics is no exception,” read the letter signed by women who work in the Illinois Capitol. “Ask any woman who has lobbied the halls of the Capitol, staffed Council Chambers, or slogged through brutal hours on the campaign trail. Misogyny is alive and well in this industry.”

In California, the story is much the same. More than 150 women — state legislators, staffers and lobbyists — launched a website and campaign called “We Said Enough” with a public letter last week detailing “dehumanizing behavior by men with power” that included groping, sexual innuendo, and inappropriate touching and comments.

In Massachusetts, after a Boston Globe report last week detailed anonymous accounts from a dozen female lawmakers, aides, lobbyists, and activists alleging improprieties from men in or close to positions of power on Beacon Hill, Democratic state House Speaker Robert DeLeo launched a review of the chamber’s sexual harassment policies.

POLITICO Florida reported Friday that six women claimed the state Senate’s powerful budget chairman, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Latvala, had inappropriately touched them without their consent or uttered demeaning remarks about their bodies.

In several of these states, the publicity surrounding the wave of testimonials has already spurred — or perhaps shamed — leaders into taking concrete action. Outside investigations are underway in California and Massachusetts — with the threat of expulsion from the legislature on the table for bad actors.

In a sign of the urgency and clamor for action, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan — who has held his position for 32 years — took the rare step of appearing before a House committee on Tuesday to push through a bill that would require anti-harassment training of state legislators and also require lobbyists to file details of their policies with the Secretary of State’s office. But that hearing exposed more inadequacies in the statehouse — including the fact that the inspector general position tasked with probing harassment claims has gone vacant for at least two years.

“We deserve better,” said Illinois state Rep. Litesa Wallace, a Democrat, who told POLITICO she has been a victim of harassment in the statehouse and didn’t even know where to bring the complaint. “We deserve to go to work and focus on what we’re supposed to do, and not focus on what uncomfortable situation we’re going to be put in.”

The deluge of revelations in Illinois — and the ensuing political finger-pointing — is threatening to dominate debate in the upcoming veto session. A state Senate leader, Democrat Ira Silverstein, was demoted from his majority caucus post on Wednesday after lobbyist Denise Rotheimer openly accused him of harassment at a public hearing one day earlier — a charge which he denied. One candidate for attorney general, Democratic state Rep. Scott Drury, is calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate claims of harassment and assault.

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, who announced Silverstein’s resignation from his post as majority caucus chair, also announced that Senate lawmakers will undergo sexual harassment awareness training next week — and that a vacant legislative inspector general position would be filled.

“It’s our duty to fill that post. I take responsibility for my role in that lapse, and I apologize for it,” Cullerton, a Democrat, said Wednesday. “These corrective actions are a first step in changing an unacceptable culture that has existed for too long.”

On the West Coast, similarly disturbing allegations of assault and abuse continue to surface, leading California Democratic state Senate Leader Kevin de Leon to hire two outside firms to launch an independent inquiry into the culture of sexual harassment.

On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that the California legislature has paid out more than $580,000 in the last five years alone to settle cases involving harassment and racism charges. Among the settlements was a $100,00 settlement paid to a former legislative staffer who charged that she was fired from her job after she reported an assemblyman once exposed himself to her.

In a separate instance, lobbyist Pamela Lopez shocked the Capitol by revealing how she was assaulted by a legislator whom she said forced himself into a bar bathroom with her, then urged that she touch him and masturbated in front of her. She has refused to disclose the legislator’s identity — but both the Senate and the Assembly are investigating the incident. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat, has vowed to back expulsion if the guilty member if found to be one of the state Assembly.

In another case, the Los Angeles Times reported that California Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra was the subject of disciplinary procedures eight years ago after being accused of “inappropriate and unwelcome physical contact.” Elise Flynn Gyore, then a capitol staffer, reported Bocanegra — who was at the time the chief of staff to an assemblyman — put his hands down her blouse, and threateningly followed her at an after-work event attended by political staffers.

Her complaints, filed with the legislative Human Resources department, did not deter Bocanegra’s rise to power. Three years after he was disciplined, Bocanegra, a Democrat, was elected to the Assembly with the backing of an army of fellow legislators and Capitol insiders, and more than $1 million in backing.

Since Gyore went public with the story, the California Women’s Legislative Caucus has requested a review of the incident — and the Los Angeles Daily News in an editorial has called for the assemblyman to resign.

California’s de Leon announced the hiring of an outside law firm to investigate complaints of sexual harassment at the Capital, and a separate consulting firm to review Senate policies. But some prominent women activists, including Christine Pelosi — the daughter of the House Minority Leader, and leader of the California Democratic Party’s Women’s Caucus — said that the move by the Senate leader to hand-pick the firms which will investigate the problems within his own chamber may intimidate many women from coming forward, and that a neutral, outside firm may better serve the cause of transparency.

New York’s legislature might be a step ahead of other states — but that’s largely because the problem came to a head five years ago. In 2012, a former assemblyman and powerful local Democratic Party boss was censured over sexual harassment claims. The former leader of the chamber, Sheldon Silver, was criticized for approving confidential settlements with two of the assemblyman’s aides; more victims subsequently came forward.

Since then, the New York Assembly has updated its definition and reporting structures for employee complaints. But the state Senate has not updated its policies, said Sonia Ossorio of the New York chapter of the National Organization of Women. Last week, NOW launched a hotline in the state urging women who have been harassed to come forward.

In a recent speech, Melissa DeRosa, the top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, recalled experiences in which she had been sexually harassed and hardly painted a rosy picture of the current state of affairs. She urged women to speak up.

“Before it was Hollywood, it was Albany, and before it was Albany it was Madison Avenue and Washington, D.C., before that. It’s doctors, lawyers, athletes, investment bankers, political staffers and reporters,” DeRosa said.

The latest evidence that New York still has a ways to go surfaced Monday, when Sam Hoyt, who headed the state’s economic development activities in Buffalo, resigned from his position amid a sexual harassment probe.

Hoyt, who as an Assembly member a decade earlier had been barred from contact with the chamber’s interns over a tryst with a 19-year-old woman, had an extramarital affair with another state employee and paid $50,000 to settle complaints after their relationship soured. (The woman says Hoyt continued to pursue her; he denies this.)

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who hails from Buffalo, who had praised Hoyt’s development work on Monday, struck a different note on Wednesday, saying she was “not happy” to hear of the allegations adding: “Our legacy must be that that we will no longer put up with sexual harassment in the workplace or any form that it takes.”