It isn’t cultural change sorely needed at the state Capitol, as the state Senate’s top Republican talked about late Monday night while tap dancing around his defending butt gropers and sexual creepers in the Legislature: Colorado is desperate for regime change.
Monday night’s butt-grabbing capper at the Capitol was everything state lawmakers prepared it be as Democrats fought Republicans to hold an expulsion hearing against GOP state Sen. Randy Baumgardner.
The night was a bleak exercise in futility for those who thought the #MeToo movement applied to #ThemToo in the Colorado Legislature.
It clearly does not.
For months, Republican state Senate President Kevin Grantham hasn’t shown the temerity nor the integrity to take care of the enveloping sexual harassment scandal at the Capitol.
Emboldened by women across the country, finally making public their prolific stories of abuse, literally at the hands of professional and political associates, several women in the Colorado Legislature gave it a shot last year.
While women across the nation have gotten justice for being victims of cruel or callous abuses, all Colorado Senate victims got was Grantham.
Hemming and hawing for months, Grantham gave buddy Republican abusers like state senators Jack Tate and Randy Baumgardner nothing but a little winky, winky, nudge, nudge “punishment” for substantiated allegations against them. Grantham repeatedly has said the conclusive investigations were fabrications or hyperbole or just plain lame. Grantham brought down the curtain on this pathetic show of cruel partisan pranking late Monday in the Senate chambers, conceding to demands that he hold an expulsion hearing against Baumgardner.
At the end of pleas from Democrats for sanity on Monday, Grantham tripped through a cavalcade of contradictions, lamenting how awful sexual harassment is and how his own son has more guts and respect for women than he does. He said how horrible it is to ask, what if the victims were our own daughters or wives? He asked though, what if the perps were our own sons?
Senator, Baumgardner and Tate are someone’s sons, and they should resign.
Grantham simply didn’t believe the woman who said Baumgardner whacked her on the butt four different times and was generally a creeper. Grantham and other critics called out the investigation because the agent was a woman who used standard and respected techniques, terminology and approach, concluding he did it.
Grantham couldn’t be honest and just say that, in his opinion, and those of a dozen or so fellow Republicans, a little well-intentioned butt slapping does not rise to the level of expulsion, or much of anything else.
Aurora Democratic state Sen. Rhonda Fields was the sole voice of reason Monday night, marching up to the lectern and exposing the whole charade for what it is.
“Either we have a sexual harassment policy or we don’t,” Fields said. She conjured reality into the Senate chamber like a cold, biting wind.
An independent and credible investigation concluded that Baumgardner hit a woman on her butt on four different occasions, Field pointed out with incredulity. And rather than take care of the matter like all reasonable and modern governments and businesses do, Republicans have worked to protect the abuser, attack the accuser and effectively sanction behavior so abhorrent it would get you fired from any job in Colorado — except one in the state Senate.
If you’re confused about how it came to be that conservative Republicans are the political party that backs convicted butt gropers, you’re probably old like me. You remember Colorado Republicans as the folks who insisted the state have decent roads, decent schools and decent behavior.
That was way back in the day of Dottie Wham, Tony Grampsas, Al Meiklejohn and Norma Anderson.
If you knew any of those old-school Republicans, you probably couldn’t imagine them agreeing to a party line vote on protecting a fellow Republican found guilty of whacking the backside of a legislative aid and trying to pry another young thang with a little drinky in his office.
This is not a crisis of culture at the state Capitol. It’s a crisis of honesty, integrity and leadership. It’s not much better across the Capitol in the House, and on the other side of the aisle.
There, Democratic House Speaker Crisanta Duran clearly tried to keep a lid on the ghastly sexual abuse that expelled state Rep. Steve Lebsock inflicted on a host of women. Rather than confess, apologize and move on, Duran has perfected a similar embarrassing tap dance like Grantham, saying she sought nothing but justice — after the scandal became public.
These two legislative cowards have sought nothing but peace for their political parties and couldn’t muster an honest decision and response if the future of the state government depended on it, like it does.
Election Day is coming, Colorado. It’s your chance to throw the bum-whackers and their cronies out. Look past your party politics this year and do the right thing for those who just can’t figure out how that works.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com