Sexual harassment claims swirl in Pa. GOP

Question is: Were complaints ignored?

A driving question in the closing days of the race to become the new chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party: Did the interim leader, Bernadette “Bernie” Comfort, ignore complaints from women who say they were sexually harassed by GOP officials?

The question is roiling just below the surface of Ms. Comfort’s race with former state party general counsel Lawrence Tabas. It will be decided in an election Saturday.

Ms. Comfort, elected as vice chairwoman in February 2017, declined to be interviewed but, in a statement, denied as “patently false” allegations that she looked the other way when two women complained to her about harassment.

She stepped up to lead the party June 25 after Valentino “Val” DiGiorgio III resigned that day, shortly after The Inquirer published a story about a former Philadelphia City Council candidate who accused him of sexual harassment.

One of the two new complaints also involved Mr. DiGiorgio. It was disclosed Thursday in a social media post from the former leader of the Allegheny County Young Republicans chapter, who says the exchairman harassed her. The second woman’s claim concerned unnamed party officials and was first reported by WESA- FM in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

The turmoil comes as the state party begins pushing for a repeat victory in 2020 for President Donald Trump, who won Pennsylvania in 2016 by just .73%.

It erupted June 30 when Lynne Ryan, a Republican State Committee member from Lawrence County, sent an email to Ms. Comfort and the rest of the committee, which has about 360 members.

Ms. Ryan called on Ms. Comfort to explain how she handled the case of a former state party staff member who allegedly became the “object of unwanted sexual advances by a superior PA GOP staff member.” Ms. Ryan suggested to Ms. Comfort that the unnamed staffer resigned in 2018 “when you were reportedly unwilling to take appreciable action.” The woman took her concerns first to Mr. DiGiorgio and then to Ms. Comfort, Ms. Ryan said.

A Pennsylvania Republican consultant familiar with the situation, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the female staffer approached Ms.

Comfort about the past alleged harassment during the December 2018 Pennsylvania Society, an annual gathering of the state’s political community in New York. The woman had already left her party post for a new job months before that conversation, the consultant said.

In her email, Ms. Ryan told Ms. Comfort the need to re- elect Mr. Trump “gives us no choice but to confront you with these matters while there is still time to protect the Presidency and our party.”

Ms. Comfort, in a reply to state committee members, declared Ms. Ryan’s claims “Fake News,” said she was disappointed by “false allegations” and denied knowing about the “staffer personnel issue being referenced.” She added that the matter had been “handled by the former chairman privately, without telling me about it.”

In her statement this week to The Inquirer, Ms. Comfort said, “It is patently false that anyone brought to my attention accusations of inappropriate behavior and asked for my help. That said, I cannot address, act on, or comment on unsubstantiated rumors or confidential personnel maters.”

That applies, according to her statement, also to Anissa Coury, the former chairwoman of the Young Republicans of Allegheny County, who alleges Mr. DiGiorgio sexually harassed her in 2017.

Ms. Coury told The Inquirer she sought help from Ms. Comfort about what she saw as inappropriate behavior from Mr. DiGiorgio, only to be rebuffed. Ms. Coury said Ms. Comfort “couldn’t have cared less” about her concerns.

In Ms. Coury’s account, Mr. DiGiorgio started courting her as what he called “a rising star” in the party and then sent her a selfie in which he was clothed but “posing by a bathtub,” while asking her to send him pictures of herself.

“It was just odd,” Ms. Coury said. “I did not reciprocate.”

Mr. DiGiorgio also suggested she could take a party job traveling the state with him and then insisted on meeting at his hotel while he was visiting Pittsburgh in 2017, near the end of his first year as chairman. Ms. Coury said she resisted his repeated attempts to meet at the hotel and agreed instead to meet him at a hookah bar. She brought along a male friend interested in getting involved in politics.

“I would never leave myself in a position where I looked like I was trying to get ahead by sleeping with a married man,” Ms. Coury said. “You just don’t do that.”

Mr. DiGiorgio did not respond to the Inquirer’s requests for comments on the claim.

Ms. Coury said her professional relationship quickly soured with Mr. DiGiorgio after she “thwarted his attempts to use his political standing to prey on me.” That’s when she said she took her concerns to Ms. Comfort.

She also accuses Mr. DiGiorgio of using allies in the state Young Republicans organization to push her out of her Young Republican post in 2018. Ms. Coury said her group left the state organization before that happened.

But when she approached Ms. Comfort with her concerns, “it didn’t seem to be of particular interest to her,” Ms. Coury said. “Any party that supports a person indifferent to predatory behavior towards women is a party with no place for me.”

Ms. Coury said she didn’t tell anyone but Ms. Comfort about her interaction with Mr. DiGiorgio but now wishes she had.