Black Dems see bias in response to sexual harassment cases

As Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) faces mounting pressure to resign over a string of sexual harassment allegations, his closest allies in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) want the same scrutiny for other lawmakers facing similar charges.

“We’ve not been asked about [it] much, but Blake Farenthold … settled a sexual harassment suit,” Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), chairman of the CBC, noted this week.

“Al Franken, one of our Democratic colleagues [in] the Senate, … has admitted to past actions of unwanted touching and/or groping.”

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Richmond’s references were to two other lawmakers, aside from Conyers, that made headlines in recent weeks after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against them.

Farenthold, a Texas Republican, had settled a harassment claim to a former aide after being sued over her firing in 2014. The $84,000 payout came from an obscure, taxpayer-backed settlement fund created for such purposes, Politico reported Friday. 

And Franken, a Minnesota Democrat and former “Saturday Night Live” comedian, has been under fire for weeks after a series of women emerged with tales of groping and other unwanted advances, both before and after Franken joined Congress. Two new accusations surfaced just this week.

A fourth lawmaker, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), has announced his retirement at the end of next year after a nude photo of the 17-term lawmaker appeared online. 

Richmond’s underlying message was left unstated, but privately CBC members have been asking it for days: Why is Conyers facing so much heat to resign while the others have largely been given a pass?

In a statement issued earlier in the week, Richmond stressed the importance of treating accused lawmakers “with parity” — a tacit reference to the Democrats’ response to the harassment allegations swirling around Franken. 

While a handful of House Democrats have urged Franken to resign, no Democratic senators have joined those calls. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who called for Conyers’s resignation on Thursday, suggested last weekend that she’s willing to accept Franken’s apologies — if his accusers do as well.

The distinction has not been overlooked by Conyers’s attorney, Arnold Reed, who met reporters Friday to reassert Conyers’s innocence and to suggest his client is being treated more harshly than other accused lawmakers. To make his point, he highlighted the recent news surrounding Farenthold’s settlement.  

“I haven’t heard as much as a peep from Washington as to whether this person needs to step down — not even as much as a peep,” Reed told reporters gathered outside of Conyers’s home in Detroit. “All that we’re saying here is we’re going to ensure that this is a fair process.”

Arnold stopped short of saying there’s a racial factor at play, but suggested Conyers is nonetheless being treated differently.

“I didn’t mention the word racial. … What I’m telling you is this: There is a lot of pressure that has come to bear from some Democrats on the congressman. In fact, they’ve talked about expulsion,” he said. 

“But the congressman is not going to be pressured by any of that.”

Franken has not faced that same pressure in the upper chamber, where Senate Democrats have called the issue “serious” and deferred the allegations to the Senate Ethics Committee for investigation.

“I think that the Senate Ethics Committee should do its job as quickly and thoroughly as possible,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. 

Franken “needs to do some soul searching,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) request for an Ethics investigation “the right thing to do.”

There are numerous differences between the allegations surrounding Conyers and those facing Franken. For one thing, the Conyers accusers are all former staffers whose charges stem from episodes that occurred while they were on the payroll and performing duties related to their jobs. The allegations surrounding Franken have originated largely from unaffiliated women during trips Franken took before he entered politics. 

When asked why Conyers has faced pressure in the House to resign, but Franken hasn’t in the Senate, McCaskill said she was “handcuffed by my experience as a sex crimes prosecutor.” She detailed four types of conduct: inappropriate behavior; conduct where a person can be sued for workplace discrimination or harassment; criminal conduct; and then potential criminal conduct based on the facts. 

“Facts matter in this continuum,” she said. “Clearly, Rep. Conyers, this conduct was for people that worked for him, that were under his control, that he had direct power over. That puts it in the middle category of actionable under the law.”

“Inappropriate. That may be enough to remove you from the United States Senate,” she said, “but I do think since it’s in that bucket, it is wise to allow the ethics commission to do its work to see if in fact this is a pattern of conduct that is inappropriate for a U.S. senator.”

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) called the issue “very serious,” but noted that the allegations didn’t take place inside Franken’s office. 

“It does not involve activities here on Capitol Hill that we know about, so it’s different than Congressman Conyers’s issues, but I don’t even want to go down that path,” he said. “I’m hoping the Ethics Committee will give us guidance on how to handle this, and that’s where I think is the appropriate place.” 

But while Democratic senators haven’t called for Franken to resign, a few House members have — notably Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), the House Democratic Caucus Chairman. 

On Thursday, two more women accused Franken of sexual misconduct. The same day, the Senate Ethics Committee, which typically doesn’t comment on investigations, confirmed it had opened a “preliminary inquiry into Senator Franken’s alleged misconduct.” 

Franken has vowed that “this will not happen again going forward.”  

“Again, it’s going to take a long time for me to regain people’s trust, but I hope that starting work today that I can start to do that,” Franken told reporters outside his office Monday.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) recently offered an approach designed to cut through the politics of race and chamber that have lingered about the different approaches to Conyers and Franken.

“If these allegations are true,” Quigley told CNN recently, “they should both go.”