Congress united on Franken allegations
Lawmakers move unusually fast on harassment charges against senator
WASHINGTON – Congress may be gridlocked when it comes to policy battles, but the the condemnation from lawmakers after allegations Sen. Al Franken harassed a TV host and sportscaster was incredibly swift on both sides of the aisle. So was the Minnesota Democrat’s apology. An ethics investigation already appears to be in motion.
Leeann Tweeden’s post that Franken kissed her against her will — and photograph of him groping her while she was sleeping on a cargo plane in a flak jacket during a Middle East trip to entertain U.S. troops in 2006 — sent shock waves through Washington on Thursday. But lawmakers’ unity, and quick reaction, was notable for Capitol Hill.
“We are at a watershed moment,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the top House Democrat, said in a statement.
A national conversation about sexual harassment is ricocheting from Hollywood to the halls of Congress. Franken is the first sitting lawmaker to be publicly accused of harassment.
And notably, no lawmakers on Thursday chose to defend the accused along party lines.
The Republican party faces a test on sexual harassment as Senate candidate Roy Moore, an Alabama Republican who won his party’s primary, stands accused of assaulting and harassing teenage girls when he was in his 30s. A number of Republican senators have said they believe the women, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has called on Moore to withdraw from the race.
Now Democrats, with the allegations against Franken, are similarly calling out their own. Several issued statements condemning Franken’s behavior, including vulnerable Democrats like Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. “Comedy is no excuse for inappropriate conduct, and I believe there should be an ethics investigation,” McCaskill said.
McConnell and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., both called on the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Franken’s conduct. Within hours of the first news reports, Franken issued a statement apologizing to Tweeden — and called for an ethics investigation of himself. Tweeden later said she accepted his apology.
The quick action may be a lesson in how to respond to such allegations in the months and years to come as more women feel emboldened to out their assaulters or harassers. “I really do think the tide has turned. ... There’s strength in numbers,” Tweeden said at a news conference.
Dianne Bystrom, director of the Car- rie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, said Franken is unlikely to be the last member of Congress to be accused of harassment, especially in an environment in which women across the nation are taking to social media to share stories of sexually charged comments and assault in the workplace.
“There’s a heightened sensitivity that we haven’t seen in years,” Bystrom said. The nation is at the beginning of a period of exposing bad behavior that has been tolerated in workplaces across the nation, including in the U.S. Capitol, where staffers tend to be young and lawmakers often spend long stretches away from family members who reside back in their home states or districts.
As recently as Tuesday, two female House lawmakers, Barbara Comstock, R-Va., and Jackie Speier, D-Calif., warned there are male lawmakers guilty of harassment who have yet to be publicly named. Still, few seemed eager on Thursday to expand on their written statements or to discuss in-depth the impact of underlying culture that has tolerated harassment on Capitol Hill.
“It’s changing for the better,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska.
There’s still, clearly, a long way to go. The national conversation about sexual harassment is likely to be far more sweeping than it was in the aftermath of the 1992 confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas that put a spotlight on accusations of sexual harassment by his former employee Anita Hill, said Bystrom, who worked with Hill at the time.
In the 1990s, she said, “women were sharing stories and more complaints were filed. Then things settled down.”
The national conversation has more recently picked up steam. It spiked again during the 2016 presidential campaign with the publication of an Access Hollywood audio tape of thenpresidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.
The wave of allegations against Weinstein, Bystrom said, gave the discussion new life. “One of the things that changed the narrative was conservative voices jumping in and saying ‘look at all these liberals in the entertainment industry. It’s not just President Trump.’ They’ve opened the door to have a dialogue on this.”
At a minimum, Congress is poised to change its policies on harassment awareness. Last week, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution requiring senators and their staff to take training to prevent sexual harassment. Also, a letter signed by more than 1,500 former congressional staff members has urged lawmakers to require mandatory training on sexual harassment.
In a statement, Franken apologized and said the national discussion taking place on harassment means Americans “have been forced to take a good, hard look at our own actions and think (perhaps, shamefully, for the first time) about how those actions have affected women.”