I really wish Democrats were more careful to crafting their position on sexual harassment claims.
There will be DOZENS of claims of sexual harassment over the next few months. Some will be worse than others. Some will be questionable. Some will seem plainly made up to score political points.
And some will be like this:
A woman running for Congress as a Democrat in Kansas — a red state — says she will drop out following the revelation of a sexual harassment allegation lodged by a former employee whom she had fired.
Andrea Ramsey, a retired business executive, was one of the Democratic candidates running to challenge Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder in Kansas' 3rd Congressional District.
What did Ms. Ramsey have to say?
Twelve years ago, I eliminated an employee's position. That man decided to bring a lawsuit against the company (not against me). He named me in the allegations, claiming I fired him because he refused to have sex with me. That is a lie. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated the allegations and decided not to pursue the complaint; the man later decided to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit. Because I wasn't a named party, I didn't have any opportunity to participate in its resolution.
Should Ms Ramsey been forced to drop out? She felt that she had no choice. That’s a shame.
We all have made mistakes. Some are worse than others.
We should be running and electing candidates for what they want to do, more so than what happened 10 or 20 years ago.
And we have to be willing to stand with candidates when they are unfairly accused. Or at least give them a chance to explain.
Otherwise, we may have a very hard time recruiting candidates to run for office.