Switaski challenges Lucido’s depiction of sexual-harassment probe
A Macomb County prosecutor candidate’s challenge to Pete Lucido’s downplaying of sexual-harassment claims against him highlighted a candidate forum Thursday.
Lucido, a state Senator, held up a sheet of paper that he said was a letter from the Senate business office that concluded he did not commit sexual harassment last year during the event Thursday in Sterling Heights.
“This was all politics from the beginning,” Lucido said. “This wasn’t justice up in Lansing.”
Candidate Jodi Switalski minutes later pushed back on Lucido’s depiction of the investigation’s results at the end of her answer to a question on another topic from moderator Charlie Langton.
“They sanctioned Mr. Lucido for sexual harassment,” Switalski said. “They ordered him to take a class. They stripped him of a chairmanship. And there are several other women who also came out and said he sexually harassed them. That is not, in fact, ‘politics from the beginning.’”
Lucido did not respond at the forum but said afterward he maintains that his remarks to the women were twisted into sexual harassment allegations.
Switalski, a former assistant prosecutor in Macomb and one-time district judge in Waterford Township, said afterward, “I’m not going to stand by and let that go by. It makes us all just as guilty” if his comments were left unchallenged.
Switalski is a Democrat and Lucido is a Republican so they are not meeting in the Aug. 4 primary but are two of the most high profile candidates in the total field of seven; they will meet in the general election if both advance from the primary.
Lucido was stripped by the Senate of his chairmanship of the Senate Advice
and Consent Committee and was ordered to undergo “training,” although Lucido said Friday he has not taken a class.
The discipline occurred after three women – a news reporter, a fellow senator and a trade group representative – came forward with allegations.
Investigators concluded none of the complaints about Lucido could be “unequivocally substantiated,” according to a memo on the investigation by the Senate Business Office. But it says it found accusers to be “credible” and it was “more likely than not” that each incident occurred as reported by them.
Investigators also said Lucido’s conduct “demonstrates an unfortunate pattern of behavior” that requires “little or no interpretation to be understood as inappropriate workplace behavior.”
Thursday’s one-hour forum was held at the Sterling Heights Community Center, sponsored by Macomb County Bar Association and Foundation and shown on Sterling Heights Television. It included six of the seven candidates, also featuring Democrats Tom Rombach, Mary Chrzanowski and Saima Khalil and Republican Richard John Goodman. Democrat Eva Tkaczyk was not present. One from each party will advance to the November election to vie for the four-year term.
The candidates agreed on many policy issues, and each touted his or her own qualifications for the job.
Public corruption was a topic thread as the candidates are seeking to follow the tenure of former prosecutor Eric Smith who resigned in March after he was criminally charged with 10 felony counts for alleged misspending of $600,000 from an obscure forfeiture fund under his control.
In addition to Smith, three others were charged in connection with his alleged actions. And in a separate investigation centered in Macomb County, federal officials have arrested more than 20 individuals for public corruption over the past 20 months.
Chrzanowski, a former Macomb County Circuit judge, and several other candidates said they would set up a public-corruption unit to investigate
such illicit activities. Chrzanowski said she wouldn’t rely state or federal officials.
“As your prosecutor, I can’t stand and will not stand for public corruption,” Chrzanowski said. “And I would be the first person to bring charges. I wouldn’t wait for the state to come in. And I wouldn’t wait for the federal government to come in. I would walk right over and bring those charges.”
Lucido said ethics investigations would be included in the unit.
“No one that’s been in the prosecutor’s office has prosecuted public corruption,” he said.
Khalil, a criminal defense attorney who also promised a special unit for corruption, criticized the county’s “establishment” politics.
“I’m opposed to establishment politicians in Macomb that have run this county into the ground,” she said. “This is my hometown. I am present, and I am here to help my county move toward healing and new leadership.”
Khalil was asked if voters will be inclined to choose a Republican because Smith was a Democrat.
“If the public wants a Republican prosecutor, then that is the choice the public will mistakenly make, and the entire community is going to suffer if that happens,” she said.
Rombach, a criminal defense attorney and former State Bar of Michigan president, addressed the matter when asked for his No. 1 priority.
“I think we have to establish leadership and integrity, particularly in the public’s perception,” he said. “As we have pointed out during this debate, that is sorely lacking.”
The other candidates also were given a chance to announce their No. 1 goal upon entering office, if elected:
• Goodman: “Redo the plea-bargaining system, with input from everybody – prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys.
• Switalski: “Do what you say what you’re going to do — an integrity unit with transparency and dashboards while educating our current very skilled prosecuting attorneys.”
• Khalil said she would set up a “transparency board” comprised of the public and defense attorney to apply pressure “to be more public and transparent.”
• Chrzanowski said the office needs to improve its rapport with judges, its own prosecutors, defense attorneys and the public. “We’ve never had that in our prior (prosecutor) administrations.”
• Lucido: “You’ve got great prosecutors that are in the office. We need to strengthen, No. 1, the morale by having a public corruption and ethics board.
Goodman was an assistant prosecutor in Macomb for 30 years and has been a criminal defense attorney the past six years. He expressed his disdain for the office’s current plea-deal policy.
“The plea bargaining procedure and system in Macomb County is a joke. It has to be changed,” Goodman said. “Plea bargaining is done behind closed doors. A lot of people are left wondering whether or not the defendant got a deal because his attorney donated money to the prosecutor’s campaign.”
Smith’s policy of requiring approval of plea deals from top administrators in his office was often criticized by some defense attorneys in part because it stripped assistant prosecutors of discretion. Goodman and Rombach agreed they would give more discretion to their assistants.
All of the candidates agreed there is a lack of diversity among the approximately 60 assistant prosecutors, with only an estimated four being black.
“In general the legal community in Macomb County is not very diverse, and I don’t think the leadership in Macomb or influencers have done much about it,” Khalil said.
Rombach said minorities aren’t given a chance to advance in the office so they often don’t stay.
“Under my leadership, that would certainly change,” Rombach said. “We’ve made significant strides at the State Bar and we have tried to take steps at the Macomb County Bar.”
Chrzanowski said the office’s “hiring practices at the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office have never been fair.”
“They’ve been based upon how much money was donated” to Smith’s campaign by a parent, she said. “The hiring practices need to be changed.”
Lucido said studies show minorities have been discriminated against in the criminal justice system, and a more diverse roster of assistant prosecutors and juries would help improve fairness.
Switalski said the office needs to hire more attorneys from the county instead of going outside the county as part of becoming more diverse.
All of candidates agreed the office needs to step up prosecution of environmental crime. There here has been virtually no enforcement from the Macomb prosecutor over the past decade. An environmental prosecutor left several years ago.
“We live right at Lake St. Clair,” Chrzanowski said. “We have nobody willing to prosecute polluters. I don’t understand that.”
Lucido said failing to crack down on polluters “cost us all more money, time, energy.”
“You’re damn right I will have environmental prosecutions for all those doing illegal acts in the county,” he said.
Goodman blamed more corruption: “I have reason to believe people they were looking at were donating to the prosecutor’s campaign.”
Rombach said Smith’s predecessor, Carl Marlinga, formed an environmental unit.
“We lost the political will to go forward with that,” Rombach said. “As the prosecutor, I’m definitely going to reinstitute that.”
The candidates agreed with local, state and national efforts to reform the bond system as well as the defense-representation system to make them more fair for indigent clients.
County Executive Mark Hackel this year began establishing a Public Defender Office.
The candidates agreed with ongoing efforts in the county to increase treatment and rehabilitation of drug-use defendants mostly via specialty courts, and that use of facial-recognition technology by police to develop suspects is not advanced enough for implementation.