Let a cultural reboot be Sen. Latvala’s legacy
Florida Sen. Jack Latvala created a hostile workplace for women in the Florida Capitol. He violated his oath to conduct himself with integrity and uphold the public’s trust. It’s also possible he violated the public corruption law by trading his vote for sexual favors.
After reading the report of a retired judge who investigated the sexual harassment complaint against Latvala, it came as a great relief Wednesday to hear the senator had chosen to resign rather than force his state, his family and his victims to endure a salacious trial before the Florida Senate.
Latvala continues to claim the original charges are fabrications, but the special master didn’t buy it, except for one count.
The totality of the report by Judge Ronald Swanson makes the senator’s protestations unpersuasive.
In his resignation letter, Latvala, 66, said he saw himself as a champion of women, “but perhaps I haven’t kept up with political correctness in my comments as well as I should have.”
We beg to differ. This isn’t a case of political correctness run amok. This is a case of an old-school guy who comes from a generation of men that has taken advantage of their positions of power over women and failed to change their behaviors as times changed.
The Latvala report reads like a 1960s bodice-ripper without the romance. There’s talk of women wearing skirts, or afraid to wear skirts, or being asked to wear pearls and nothing else. In the afternoon, liquor is served in the Senate’s leadership office, which leads to nothing good. And there’s hugs that last too long, hands that rove where they don’t belong, and eyes that roam over a woman’s body, accompanied by a sexually sounding “mmmm.”
The most damning revelation came not from the original complainant, Rachel Perrin Rogers, a smart and talented legislative aide who said Latvala subjected her to “inappropriate and unwanted” verbal and physical contact over the course of four years. After talking to 19 people and examining the evidence, retired Judge Ronald Swanson believed Rogers had indeed been harassed by the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
No, the most horrific story came from an unidentified woman, formerly a lobbyist, who’d known Latvala since 1995 and had a relationship with him that was sometimes intimate. She thought that would change when the senator became engaged to his current wife. But it didn’t.
According to the report, the woman “testified that between 2015 and 2017, Sen. Latvala touched and groped her in an unwelcome manner every time she went to his office and that she believed tolerating such behavior was part of her job as a lobbyist.” She said Latvala “placed his hands up her dress, touched the outside of her underwear at her vaginal area, her buttocks and her breast.” He also “would be very huggy” on elevators, the same thing Rogers complained about.
Most damning of all, she said Latvala said he would support her issues if she would let him touch her. Text messages purportedly sent by Latvala back her up, the report says.
“I know who that is,” Latvala told the Tampa Bay Times. “She was not a Senate employee at that time, but I thought was one of my best friends up there. It’s somebody that I thought was a close friend of mine.”
Latvala still doesn’t get it. Women don’t want to be groped by their friends. Besides, relationships in Tallahassee are built on business — mostly, how to divvy up the state’s $87 billion budget.
Sure, some women may welcome a powerful senator’s advances, or consider his attention playful or fun. That’s how Latvala told us he meant it.
But other women take inappropriate comments in a different way. And there’s no room for error anymore. People in power need to be careful about what they say, especially to people in positions of lesser power.
Without question, the 60-day legislative session is stressful. People spend a lot of time together and there’s a lot of bonding over hard-fought fights. There’s also social interaction with alcohol and food, and people aren’t perfect — relationships are going to brew. But lawmakers must avoid the trap of believing the people who flatter them, and laugh at their jokes, and contribute to their political committees are their friends. Or that they have permission to flirt, make off-color jokes or grope them.
Three other notes on the special master’s report:
One is that Sen. Wilton Simpson, the Senate’s majority leader, testified that Rogers told him in October that Latvala had groped or touched her. His testimony provided important corroboration.
On seeing his statement, we asked on Twitter: what did Simpson do with that information? After all, he was in position to slap Latvala back and give his legislative aide the space she needed to safely pursue a harassment claim. Instead, she revealed her story in Politico, without the kind of corroboration offered in the special master’s report.
On Wednesday, someone who works with Simpson called to say the special master got that wrong, that Rogers did not reveal anything to Simpson before he saw the story in Politico. It’s concerning to learn the special master got the report of such an important witness wrong.
The second has to do with sexual harassment training. The special master advises “increased and routine” training to raise awareness about what it is, what it feels like and what should be done if someone reports it. Such training should be scheduled, pronto.
The third is the call to review the culture of the Senate, something long overdue. The review should include the Florida House, too. For it wasn’t so long ago that a representative proposed to his aide from the House floor.
Lawmakers go to Tallahassee to do the people’s business, not monkey business. If legislators are distracted by complaints or compromised by rumors, they’re less able to be effective at representing us.
So let this affair not end with Latvala’s resignation. Let it lead to a cultural reboot at the Capitol.
Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Elana Simms, Andy Reid and Editor-in-Chief Howard Saltz.