Esty vows to make amends

Says ‘I tried, but it wasn’t good enough’

The one question awaiting embattled U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty when she returned to work Tuesday on Capitol Hill was the one question she had no answer for.

Why?

Why did she help her former chief of staff, who was accused of harassing and abusing a former Esty aide, to get a new job with the nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise — while keeping the scandal secret?

“I failed. I tried, but it wasn’t good enough,” Esty said Tuesday in her first comments to Hearst Connecticut Media since the scandal broke two weeks ago. “I should have suspended him immediately.”

A contrite Esty went on to say she had made terrible mistakes in allowing her former chief of staff to victimize her female staffers in Washington, D.C., and pledged to spend her remaining months in office making amends.

The scandal focused on news broken first by Hearst Connecticut Media that Esty allowed her chief of staff, Tony Baker, to remain with her for three months in 2016 after accusations were made

that he abused a former staffer named Anna Kain.

“I want to use all the pain and suffering and mistakes I made not just for the purposes of accountability, but for prevention, because I don’t want this to happen to anybody else,” Esty said.

Esty on Tuesday planned to hold a staff meeting to try to clear the air. Staff members in Washington are said to be appalled by reports Esty delayed Baker’s dismissal in 2016 and ultimately recommended him for a job with the Ohio office of Sandy Hook Promise.

Esty had negotiated a nondisclosure agreement with Baker that prevented her from disparaging him or sharing details about why he left her office.

“When I heard that there was a call about (Baker) from Sandy Hook Promise, I never should have taken that call and recommended him,” Esty said. “Especially for Sandy Hook Promise. That was wrong.”

Esty said Tuesday the reason she wrote Baker a glowing job recommendation was to get him out of Washington, D.C., so that he wouldn’t run into Kain or members of her staff.

“I was going to use the only leverage I had to refuse to do anything for him in Washington, D.C.,” Esty said.

Sandy Hook Promise fired Baker shortly before the scandal broke and has refused to say anything further.

The Esty scandal has done more than end what appeared to be an easy run for a fourth term to represent the 5th District, a region of northwestern and parts of central Connecticut that is traditionally the most competitive of the state’s five congressional districts.

Esty’s exit has thrown the race wide open in a midterm election year that already has people talking about the impact of GOP President Donald Trump and outgoing Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

Now there is the Esty effect to consider. While Esty supporters said the 58-year-old from Cheshire has done everything she has needed to do to admit her wrongs and pledge to do better, critics say she should resign because she has no credibility left.

On Tuesday, two parents from Newtown who lost first-grade boys in the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings confirmed they are exploring a run for Esty’s seat. Mark Barden and Nicole Hockley, co-founders of Newtown-based Sandy Hook Promise, said they will decide over the next two weeks whether one of them will run. They are having conversations with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Esty, meanwhile, returned to work Tuesday on Capitol Hill noticeably subdued, two weeks after calling an abrupt end to her career in Congress by saying she would not seek re-election.

She cleared up one unanswered question on Tuesday about members of her female staff, who Esty had said had been “victimized” by Baker.

“What I meant by that was they were victimized by his yelling — it was not sexual harassment or anything on the order like what happened to Anna,” Esty said.

It is too soon to say how effective Esty can be in Congress as a result of the scandal. She said she decided against resigning, because that would deprive the 750,000 people in the 5th District a voice on the House floor.

“The voters didn’t make a mistake,” Esty said. “So why should they be deprived of a vote in Congress on important issues that are coming up?”

Even as Esty pledged to work hard in her remaining months in office, she acknowledged the scandal had changed the landscape.

“Certainly things are going to be different,” Esty said. “I need to make amends for what I did.”

Dan Freedman / Hearst Newspapers U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty returns to work in Washington on Tuesday after a self-imposed two-week exile in the wake of abruptly ending her 2018 re-election bid.

Dan Freedman / Hearst Newspapers Washington Bureau Rep. Elizabeth Esty returned to work in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday after a self-imposed two-week exile in the wake of abruptly ending her 2018 re-election bid.