As two new victims come forward, it looks like San Diego Mayor Bob Filner (Democrat) was engaged in a one-man “War on Women”.
Earlier this week, I reported on a press conference in which Victim #1 offered details on the “Filner Headlock” and other examples of sexual harassment by the mayor.
Now, two others are talking to the press. The second victim is Laura Fink, who runs a political consulting firm. Fink told the local PBS station that she was working as then congressman’s deputy campaign manager when he encountered her during a 2005 fundraising event. Fink indicated she was asked to “turn around”. When she complied, Filner patted her “posterior” while making a crude joke.
Though several people witnessed the incident, Fink—co-founder of Fink & Hernandez Consulting—said she did not go public about the encounter at the time because she “was trying to build a career in the political field … and Bob Filner has a reputation for swift retribution and for holding grudges.”
The third woman is a San Diego school official, from whom Filner tried to force a kiss during a business meeting.
Morgan Rose, a psychologist with the San Diego Unified School District, told KPBS: “He tried to move my face toward his to kiss me on the mouth, and now listening to the stories of the other victims, it probably wouldn’t have been on my mouth, it would have been in my mouth.”
According to the interview, Rose met with Filner in January 2009 when he was a congressman in an attempt to bring national attention to a program she founded known as America’s Angel Campaign. After the initial meeting, Filner called to ask for a private meeting.
They met in a restaurant near his congressional office, Rose said, and during that meeting Filner started staring at her and told her “your eyes have bewitched me.” He then sat next to her and told her he wanted to kiss her.
She told KPBS that Filner tried to kiss her four separate times. She said she tried to get him to stop.
Filner may be lecherous, but he didn’t get where he’s at by being stupid. He just announced a new chief-of-staff, his former legal adviser Lee Burdick…who is clearly a woman. I suspect he will be angelic in meetings with her, and this fact will be promoted. However, since City Attorney Jan Goldsmith has prohibited Filner from meeting with women alone at city facilities in the course of his mayoral duties, Burdick may face a different type of work challenge.
The new appointment notwithstanding, the liberal base is beginning to erode. San Diego City Beat, a very progressive publication, is calling for his resignation:
But our job is not to convict Filner based on clear evidence of wrongdoing. Our job is to make recommendations based on what’s best for San Diego and its citizens. We still support Filner’s vision for San Diego, but we’ve lost confidence in his capacity to see it through. It was fine—desirable, even—when it was only his political opponents with whom he had no credibility. It was even OK with us when it was more middle-of-the-roaders like City Council President Todd Gloria and his ilk. But his credibility among his own political base is eroding. And, more importantly, he’s admitting that he has a severe problem in how he treats half the population, an entire gender of human beings. That is the worst part of this. San Diegans shouldn’t have to wait and see and hope that Filner can figure out how to calibrate his human-decency compass.
And the National Women Veterans Association of America has just cancelled its invitation to have Filner give the keynote address. “The mayor speaking at our event interferes with the moral compass of my organization,” [association President Tara] Jones said.
It’s good to finally see the “progressives” begin to find the proper direction to take.
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Comments
Never miss an opportunity to remind people that Filner (and Weiner) are Democrats
Good point. I am so use to him, that I just assume everyone knows. I have corrected the story, and will remember the party ID in the future. 🙂
I just got up from reading today’s stories in the San Diego Union-Tribune. I’ve lived in San Diego for four years now, so I watched the mayoral election with interest but not much background. Now I read that this man has been engaging in inexcusable behavior toward the ladies since at least about 2005, and probably before that.
The active political grouping in San Diego is a small, small town. The last election was all about the contest between very well-known, entrenched candidates, because the Republican party wanted it that way. They had Nathan Fletcher, but they went with the machine guy, Carl DeMaio.
Nathan Fletcher has since been persuaded to thrown in with the Democrats, because that party is the only game in town.
And that’s the problem.
California is a single-party state, and the Democratic Party in California is entrenched. corrupt, and sclerotic.
The California Democratic party runs candidates that the local party knows to be crazy. Filner’s problem isn’t, at bottom, sexual harrassment, although that will be the mechanism the Democratic party uses to remove him, but an inability to emotionally control himself that has been on display for years.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi also continues in office, and she has from time to time exhibited clear episodes of the kind of gaffe that signifies organic mental disease and cognitive decline.
Why do Democratic voters in this state tolerate this nonsense?
One of the reasons I fled the state was that it was just getting worse and worse.
I am from Central California. When I was born, in the 50s, the area I lived in was solidly Republican. By the time I was a teenager, it had switched to being Democrat.
We had a long talk at the Young Republicans in the 80s one day about why that happened. The conclusion was the wealthy in our area were the ‘guilty rich.’
They were demoralized by a culture and media that said they were evil and they came to believe it themselves. Wow, effective PR campaign.
For YRs then, even then, back in mid-eighties, we had YRs talking about the fact that they could not tell anyone who they were politically at the University of Santa Cruz.
The sad reality is that in many urban sections of the country, like CA, Barack Obama is the norm. There are a million out there like him.
Filner … Spitzer … Weiner. Definitely don’t want to know which one is the bigger Dick.
Give a spotlight with a camera there so you can be on TV, and lots of women “come forward.” I still think Monica remains a class act. She was honest. She said she wanted to touch what she touched because it was attached to a powerful man.
I’ve worked in offices. There was a time when “wearing kneepads” meant you never had to do a typing assignment from hell.
But that’s just me. I keep thinking you need both parties interested in having sex at the office.
Sex isn’t limited to democrats.
I’m bookmarking this article and adding it to my ever expanding retort for use on acquaintances who think they can get away with the ‘Republicans-War-on-Women’ meme.
Our War On Women consists of not forcing the Jesuits to pay Sandra Fluke $3,000 a year to screw. The left’s War On Women consists of sexually harassing them on the job.