uh, this doesn't make any sense to me. lowery paid a hefty fine and is no longer in office as a direct result of his conduct. sutherland is still the lands commissioner. by the sound of it the democratic party financed lowery's campaign before he was scandalized. where exactly is the hypocrisy?

pardon me if i'm missing something here, but is it really hypocrisy if the democrats' support of lowry ended upon the revelation of the sexual harassment scandal?

@1 and 2: You have the chronology backwards. Lowry's sexual harassment scandal preceded the Democrats supporting his run for Lands Commissioner.

Could you not write the exact same story in reverse?

ah, i see. the wording on the post is a bit confusing.

Yes, yes. Harassment. What about the rape of Maury Island?

So when these two ancient perverts talk about "restoring old growth" are they talk about trees or their genitals?

I don't think it's a matter of the political parties deciding whether a sex scandal disqualifies a candidate from office or not, but rather the voters deciding that it does. If in fact Lowery lost because of his sex scandal, meaning the voters found that it disqualified him from office, then I think it's completely fair to point out, to the voters, that Sutherland should also be disqualified, for the same reason.

So, Sutherland's going to pay a hundred grand? Or is he going to say "I was being too informal" again?

Note that there's also a difference between being forced out of office and trying to come back in a different job a decade later, like Lowry, and never leaving at all.

Wasn't a similar argument made against Bill Clinton's fitness to lead? In fact, wasn't that argument made again and again ad nauseum for decades on end?

Kish @8 has it exactly right. I was working on another Democratic campaign in 2000, sharing office space with a Lowry worker. I remember quite clearly that Lowry's run was something of a desperate ploy to get a Democrat in the race after the incumbent, Democrat Jennifer Belcher, decided late in the game not to run again (she was a fantastic 2-term Lands Commissioner but had some serious health issues come up in her family that caused her to step down).

But Lowry's campaign never really got off the ground almost entirely because of his history of sexual harassment. His run was immediately controversial in the news media, his fundraising was anemic and few people were interested in working or volunteering for his campaign. I don't remember if Sutherland or the Republicans made a big issue of Lowry's pattern of sexual harassment, but they didn't really need to. Lowry lost big in a year when Gary Locke was re-elected with 60% of the vote, Cantwell beat Slade Gorton and Al Gore won the state big.

Political insiders, the media and voters all rejected Lowry and probably deservedly so. It certainly seems fair for Sutherland to receive at least proportionally the same treatment as Lowry in 2000. I say proportionally because, I guess, there's no evidence that Sutherland has done this sort of thing more than once, but geez isn't doing this kind of thing even once pretty bad?

Oh My God--you mean that opposing parties sometimes "feed" begative info to the press?

That's shocking. And worse--they only do it agaisnt their opponents.

Shudder.

Also hypocritical: half the time the media makes a big deal about the misconduct without talking about who fed it to them, and half the time they don't. Here, since the misconduct is admitted, they should be praising the Democratic Party for pushing this story around.

How can they say it's news, then turn around and criticize the Party for helping to make it...news?

"Political Party Acted Politically"
is news? Is wrong?
Very smug 'n' smarmy media nannies, yuk.

Yeah. The difference is that Lowry already faced some punishment for his offenses - nearly $100,000 and the loss of his job as governor. What kind of payment has Sutherland made other than an apology and some sensitivity training?

Sutherland did not apologize. He said some words that sounded like an apology, but they were an apology for an entirely different offense than the one he committed. He apologized for being too informal. He wasn't informal; he committed the crime of sexual harassment in the workplace. HE HASN'T APOLOGIZED FOR THAT. He hasn't even acknowledged that it occurred. He's a lying, groping piece of shit and he deserves to be taken down. Like Mike Lowry was.

This is so classically Republican it's not even funny. It's never their fault, it's always something else. REPUBLICANS CAN'T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS. Whereas Democrats are insanely eager to eat their own.

@10, re: Clinton,

Yes, this argument was made, and the voters decided, and decided again, and continued to express through his approval rating, that they were willing to look past it for other reasons. Did anyone say that l'affaire Lewinsky was good, or right? No.

(It took Clinton crossing Obama to sully his standing with D voters. Clearly he should have slept with Obama.)

Double standard?

Um, has he actually been paying attention to the actual scandals? It's something like 10:1 GOP:Dem pervs out there, even though it's closer to 55:45 seated incumbents as a pool to draw from ...

Note to News Organisations: Just because you slacked off doesn't give you an excuse not to do your JOB.

I guess it's too much to expect the Democratic Party to take a stand and say they will no longer support candidates who have committed sexual harassment in the past? Or not until they go through some type of behavior modification course?

I don't know if one documented instance of harassment is enough for someone to be attacked with in a campaign, but I'm with Fnarf @14. Sutherland doesn't fucking get it, and that is the scariest part to me.

Sexual harassment is a crime against another person. It's a worse offense to voters than doing drugs, queer sex in bathrooms or sex with hookers in my book.

What about the hypocrisy of the main stream media? They were all over Lowry but seem to want to give Sutherland a pass. They should get their own house in order before calling hypocrisy on the dems.