If Esty said one word about Franken, she needs to go.
Seems to me that she actively covered up felonious assault. If that isn’t a crime, it should be. She needs to resign.
I’m one of her constituents.
Susan B is running for governor, so it’s unsurprising (in a cynical way) that she’s commenting on this. But for Esty to wait three months before doing anything? Sorry, not good enough. I don’t want Manny whoever to be elected, and this coming election is looking kind of grim for Democrats in Connecticut, in general, but this is unacceptable.
Not directly about Franken, but…ironic, in retrospect:
Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty LAW ’85, D-Conn., issued a press release on Nov. 29 voicing support for the House’s passage of a resolution mandating sexual harassment training for lawmakers and staff. “I am committed to creating a safe workplace that supports all of my staff and doesn’t tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind,” Esty said. “For too long, the culture in Washington has accepted entirely unacceptable behavior. That needs to change — period.”
According to Esty (can we settle on a spelling, TPM?) and the documents she supplied the WaPo, the bulk of the delay was as a result of consulting the House administrative office that deals with firing staffers – which is apparently wired to protect abusers. Her failure is in not having been in the loop on this much earlier, but that length of time to fire a manipulative abuser while still dotting every i seems plausible.
Also, thus far everyone telling her to quit seems to be someone who has something obvious to gain by her quitting. (Although that might also be the result of how the story was reported.)
If that is the case, then I wish she could have said something all along the while–obviously, it would have to be bland, but right now, it seems like she wasn’t doing anything. seems
Yeah, I think she definitely screwed up, but this is likely not something congresspeople get trained on. So when your chief of staff turns out to be a %#%$#$% (which does mean you made a bad choice, but that happens) you go to the administrative office that is supposed to advise you on personnel stuff. And if they give you bad advice (which apparently they did) you have a problem.
As I’ve said, it might be more useful longterm if the focus were on the house office of employment counsel. Because if this is what they do, there’s a ridiculously large longterm problem.
So which is more serious - - a guy who maybe patted the bums of some women who didn’t want them patted or a gal so rule-bound that she didn’t imediately suspend a guy caught on tape threatening the life of a co-worker of the female persuasion?
What’s up with that?
Ok, but Baker was accused of threatening to “fucking kill” one of Esty’s staffers. You’d think she’d have enough common sense to put him on administrative leave immediately, then let the process inch along before firing him. No argument from me regarding the house office of employment counsel, but I don’t think their incompetence gives Esty a pass.
Does U Michigan have a new President yet?
You are thinking about Michigan State.
No. And now all democrats regret about forcing Franken off, which was wrong. Let the guys at Fox News scream for Esty’s head. Any democrat in need of blood can demand Pruitt or Bolton’s head.
Wikipedia shows her winning narrowly In a swing district despite a ton of money being raised against her. She can’t afford to lose more than about 2 percent of the total vote.
Thanks, I guess I read ctvoter’s post incorrectly. I was reading it as the whole state of CT has gone full blown Republican and it would be grim for all Dems running this year. My bad.
CT Republicans are close to taking the state legislature based on the unpopularity of the retiring Dem governor and some long term state economic problems (underfunded pension liabilities). I mean,for instance, the first thing Malloy did after he got elected was to slam the teachers union (and they had worked hard for his election). To put it mildly, if he were running, he’d be crushed.
So with Esty, it’ll come down to turnout. If she hangs on (yes, she fucked up), Trump may depress GOP voter turnout, and Esty is lucky Malloy isn’t running. And CT in general (imho) is lucky that Trump has given a bad name to wealthy business people with no political experience who think they can use their supposed wealth as an indicator of political acumen.
I DK CT so you could be reading him correctly. I’d just looked at this for other reasons but IIRC Dan Malloyntheir Democratic governor is unpopular.
Once again democrats eat their young - much like what happened to Al Franken.
My reading on this, perhaps wrong and colored by experience with manipulative abusers, is that he immediately pulled the “I have a terrible problem, I was drunk/high/having a breakdown, I’m terribly sorry, I’ll never do it again” line that led her to let him go to counseling instead of immediately barring him from the office. If he’s been doing this for a long time (and he likely has) then he would be very good at acting penitent and vulnerable to people with power over him. Also, chief of staff. Which means that he is the person that in all other cases she would be delegating this kind of problem to.
Yeah, she screwed up. I just don’t think it’s resignation-level screwing up, especially given the bar for resignation-level screwing up in congress. But I’m not deeply invested either way.