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Episode Transcript
This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.
Alan Montecillo: [00:00:00] Hi it’s Alan Montecillo. Before we begin today, just a quick heads up, this episode contains descriptions of sexual assault.
Alan Montecillo: [00:00:14] I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Ericka Cruz Guevara, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. Until last week, Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from Dublin, was one of the leading candidates in a crowded race for governor of California. He had become famous for his confrontations with the Trump administration and promised that he would protect and defend California from federal attacks.
Eric Swalwell: [00:00:44] I’m running to be a fighter protector against a president who has chased Californians through the fields where they work, who’s put troops in our streets. I see it as table stakes to be considered in this race if you can’t convince the most vulnerable Californians that you can protect them.
Alan Montecillo: [00:01:03] But over the weekend, Swalwell’s campaign imploded. After reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN, describe detailed allegations of sexual assault and misconduct from multiple women, including former staffers. Swalwell says these allegations are false, but he has now ended his campaign for governor and resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives. Melissa Estepa, a resident of Hayward, says she feels let down by someone she saw as a potential leader.
Melissa Estepa: [00:01:40] I’m disappointed. I was really excited about him and thought he would be the prime candidate and he was someone I thought was a rising star and I was looking forward to supporting him but it’s just another man in power abusing women so it’s not surprising but it is still very disappointing.
Alan Montecillo: [00:01:58] The rise and fall of Eric Swalwell.
Marisa Lagos: [00:02:12] Eric Swalwell had a meteoric rise in politics and he fell just as fast last week.
Alan Montecillo: [00:02:18] Marisa Lagos is a politics correspondent for KQED and co-host of the Political Breakdown podcast.
Marisa Lagos: [00:02:25] He kind of burst onto the political scene as a city council member in Dublin. He made waves by challenging a guy who’d been in Congress for, I think, longer than he’d been alive. He really made this name for himself, taking on Trump, and became this national figure. And after entering the governor’s race, seemed like he was on a glide path to really kind of taking that top spot.
Alan Montecillo: [00:02:51] I don’t actually know that much about his backstory. How did he end up in politics, Bay Area politics, and eventually in Congress?
Marisa Lagos: [00:02:58] Yeah, so he was a prosecutor. His dad had been a police officer. And then he ended up running for the Dublin City Council. I would say was sort of ahead of the curve around issues of housing. He was seen as pretty pro-development, which back then was a knock in democratic circles, to some extent. In 2012, he ran for an East Bay district that includes Dublin and Pleasanton, and he won, beating out this incumbent who had been there for decades. As you all know, when incumbents get challenged, generally the kind of political establishment rallies behind them. And so I think that he was maybe a little ahead of the curve in terms of pushing a new generation of leadership and kind of calling out the fact that you had these people who had been there so long.
Eric Swalwell: [00:03:50] That new energy and ideas are coming to Washington, D.C.
Crowd: [00:03:53] Woo!
Eric Swalwell: [00:03:56] And we can proudly declare a victory as well.
Marisa Lagos: [00:04:04] I wouldn’t say in Congress he’s been a prolific lawmaker. He really made his name kind of carrying on his prosecutorial chops first as an investigator during the impeachment hearings of Trump related to his Ukraine-Russia dealings during the 2016 election, and then even more so, I think, raised his national profile during the second impeachment after January 6, where he was actually one of the house managers. So he was out there being a prosecutor. And he really became this kind of go-to cable news commentator for Democrats, right? MSNBC called him all the time.
MSNBC Announcer: [00:04:39] I’d like to get your reaction to the RNC’s idea of legitimate political discourse.
Eric Swalwell: [00:04:45] But, well, Jonathan, look, if your neighbor came over and stepped on your porch holding a knife, a gun, a machete, and said that he wanted to talk, I don’t think you would call the police and say, you know what, we’re gonna settle this. It’s a legitimate political discourse. No, you would say.
Marisa Lagos: [00:05:02] But I would say that he was a lieutenant of democratic leadership. He was seen as pretty close to Nancy Pelosi and as a serious person who could kind of bring the case to Trump in a way that was based on his background in law enforcement.
Alan Montecillo: [00:05:20] So Eric Swalwell runs for Congress in 2012, takes office in 2013, serves for a little more than a decade, and then he decides to run for governor. What was his platform?
Marisa Lagos: [00:05:32] It’s creepy now given the allegations against him, but his tagline is fighter and protector.
Eric Swalwell: [00:05:37] This great state needs a fighter and a protector, someone who will bring prices down, lift wages up.
Marisa Lagos: [00:05:43] It almost felt like he was running a national campaign. I mean, he announced his candidacy, not in a press conference in Sacramento or his district or Los Angeles, but on Jimmy Kimmel.
Eric Swalwell: [00:05:53] So, I came here tonight, Jimmy, to tell you and your audience that I’m running to be the next governor of California.
Marisa Lagos: [00:06:00] Which obviously has this like double and tundra given Kimmel’s fights with the Trump administration as well.
Jimmy Kimmel: [00:06:06] Well, thank you for being here and announcing this exciting news here on the show. And thanks for your support throughout our ordeal.
Marisa Lagos: [00:06:15] He really tried to cultivate this air of inevitability. And I would say that that started with that announcement. If you look at his policy platform, he wasn’t promising anything wildly different than the other leading Democrats, right? He wants to tackle affordability, make it so families can live here. He wants improve housing permitting and speed up the housing construction process. But there was no details on any of those proposals. Like there was not contours to these things. And I think, could I have told you a week ago or can I tell you now what a Governor Eric Swalwell would have actually looked like from a policy perspective? I don’t know that I could.
Alan Montecillo: [00:07:00] And until late last week, it seemed like he had become the front runner on the Democratic side. What was the Swalwell coalition, if there was one, before last Friday, and what did people like about him?
Marisa Lagos: [00:07:15] I mean, it was the establishment. It was dozens of members of Congress and state lawmakers. It was some of the biggest unions in the state. We saw just in recent weeks, the California Teachers Association, SCIU California, both endorse him. I think that it was, to some extent, the biggest players in democratic politics was the coalition. I mean, and interestingly, it did seem like he was about to pull ahead as frontrunner, but he hadn’t yet. I mean the polls had not shown him out sort of performing any of the top candidates, but I think getting that support from the kind of political insiders was giving him that air and allowing him to kind of create that and he had money to back it up.
Alan Montecillo: [00:08:03] So Eric Swalwell was, until very recently, a frontrunner for governor of California, until Friday afternoon when reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN describes detailed allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. What exactly is being alleged here?
Marisa Lagos: [00:08:26] So the Chronicles bombshell report really focuses on allegations by a woman who began working, first of all, well, first, I think as an intern in college, and then right out of college at age 21, first in one of his campaigns, and then in his district office, and eventually, I think, in DC. She alleges that shortly after they met, he started sending her. Kind of inappropriate, sexually explicit messages on Snapchat, that at one point, he basically pulled over his car and pulled out his penis and implied that she should perform oral sex on him. And then the core of her allegations are in both 2019 and 2024, that after nights of drinking where she was too inebriated to consent, essentially that he raped her. The first incident she alleged was in 2019 in Pleasanton. She was still a staffer at the time. Five years later in 2024 in New York City, these allegations were corroborated by the Chronicle through text messages, medical records, conversations with people in her life, family and others, who she had told at the times. A few hours later, CNN followed up with both an interview of this woman who has still chosen to remain anonymous. She was not identified in that interview. And then three other women who made allegations of sort of similar behavior in terms of unwanted touching or advances. And then on Tuesday, another woman came forward named Lana Drews. She says that. Representative Eric Swalwell drugged and raped her in 2018 and that she does plan to file a police report
Alan Montecillo: [00:10:18] How much of this alleged behavior from Swalwell was known in political circles before this story?
Marisa Lagos: [00:10:25] There was a lot of rumors over the years about him potentially maybe cheating on his wife. He’s a married father of three. And I think that there have been rumors, I hadn’t heard these, but of him maybe, yeah, acting inappropriately, flirtatiously with interns or other folks who he had power over. A lot of, I think, dots are being connected now in hindsight, but I’ll be frank, I’m struggling with this a little bit. I feel like there was a lot of rumors, and quite frankly, in the recent months, as he launched this campaign, a lot people within California politics, you know, at these labor unions, at these other groups he was trying to win endorsements from, apparently asked him very explicitly, like, about these rumors, and he just denied them flat out. I think that The power dynamics that exist within Congress, within the state capital, are real, and I think that it does take these survivors and victims to be willing to come forward. I’m sort of personally asking myself if we, as the press corps, should have asked these questions sooner.
Alan Montecillo: [00:11:37] How Eric Swalwell’s campaign imploded. Stay with us. This news was published on Friday. What was the immediate response?
Marisa Lagos: [00:11:54] I mean, it was a bombshell and people acted appropriately. I would say it was swift. He started, you know, losing support. I mean by that evening we had seen every single member of Congress risk in their endorsement, um, as well as, you know, the big labor unions. It was clear by Friday afternoon that Swalwell was going to have to end his campaign and resign from the House of Representatives.
Alan Montecillo: [00:12:19] And there was also a staffer letter, right?
Marisa Lagos: [00:12:22] Several, yeah. Some of his top advisors just left, but his current campaign and congressional staff did put out kind of an anonymous statement on Friday, basically saying, look, any of us who have chosen to stay here, you should not construe that as a supporting Swalwell. We’re trying to support his constituents. Some these staffers are young. They don’t have the sort of financial means to just be able to walk away from a job overnight. That was followed by several other statements, including one. That came out Sunday by former staffers who really just distanced themselves from Swalwell, made very clear that they believe these women, and actually apologized to these women and said, you know, we did not know this was happening, but we wish we had.
Alan Montecillo: [00:13:07] How did he react when the story came out on Friday? Was he also digging his heels and saying it’s not true?
Marisa Lagos: [00:13:14] Yeah, we should know, before the story published, Thursday night his attorney sent cease and desist letters to these women. A lot of rumors that started circulating online prior to these stories publishing, particularly by some online democratic women influencers. And even then, he and his campaign chose to very forcefully deny them.
Eric Swalwell: [00:13:38] A lot has been said about me today through anonymous allegations. I thought it was important that you see and hear from me directly. These allegations of sexual assault are flat, false. They’re absolutely false. They did not happen. They have never happened. And I will fight them with everything that I have.
Marisa Lagos: [00:13:57] After the story came out, he posted a video on Friday night where he specifically said the allegations of sexual assault are flat false, but he also acknowledged in that video he’s not perfect or a saint.
Eric Swalwell: [00:14:11] I’ve certainly made mistakes in judgment in my past, but those mistakes are between me and my wife.
Marisa Lagos: [00:14:22] So in that statement, and then again, when he announced on Sunday that he was stepping out of the governor’s race, he made some sort of nod to the fact that maybe some of this behavior did occur, maybe infidelity did occur. But he did not ever differentiate in these statements. He’s really focused and maybe understandably because there could be criminal charges potentially on the sexual assault allegations. We’ve also obviously seen no apologies or any sort of. Response directly to these women.
Alan Montecillo: [00:14:55] Eric Swalwell’s not gonna be governor. He’s also leaving the House. He still says, I’m gonna fight this. So what does that mean? Are there other possible consequences coming for Eric Swallwell?
Marisa Lagos: [00:15:05] Yeah, so we saw the Manhattan district attorney and the Alameda district attorney say that they were basically exploring whether there could be potential criminal charges in both of the sexual assault incidents, because, of course, one of them occurred in Alamedo County in 2019, allegedly, and one allegedly occurred in 2024 in New York. I would assume that those are the sort of most serious venues for anything to occur, although we don’t know what else could come out. Could also be civil cases moving forward, we really don’t know.
Alan Montecillo: [00:15:42] I’m thinking about Representative Swalwell’s constituents in the East Bay. I mean, what happens for them? It seems like they’ll have a new representative soon.
Marisa Lagos: [00:15:52] I mean, Swalwell wasn’t going to be on the ballot because he was running for governor. So there’s a race to replace him for the term that begins in January already underway. Governor Gavin Newsom could choose to call for a special election for the final months of his term. I believe the earliest that could occur would be August. Unless somebody won, you know, flat out, there would be a runoff in November. So that would be for a very short time. So I think that’s a really open question. How many of these staff members will stick around now that he’s leaving to help kind of still serve constituents and run the office? That’s not an unheard of situation. And we’ve seen this happen when people have died and resigned before. But certainly this is a loss in terms of just representation for his constituents in the short term.
Alan Montecillo: [00:16:39] I mean, in the meantime, we still have to pick a governor this year. And one of the leading Democrats is out six, seven weeks before the June primary. I mean where, where do we go from here? What might the next month and a half look like?
Marisa Lagos: [00:16:52] I mean, brace yourself. There’s going to be some political ads, right? We’re seeing a lot of money being dumped. It’s a really crowded field, and it does seem like most of the candidates have kind of failed to capture the imagination of voters. Even the top polling candidates, including former Orange County Representative Katie Porter and Democratic activist and billionaire Tom Steyer. Really are only polling in, you know, the low teens at this point, and the rest of the field is in single digits, low single digits actually. And then you have two Republicans who have been really actually topping Democrats in the polls, Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, businessman Steve Hilton. It feels wide open, and it’s pretty wide. I just want to note, I’ve been covering California politics since Gray Davis got recalled in 2003 and Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor. That’s the last time we had a truly open governor’s race.
Alan Montecillo: [00:17:53] Marisa, thanks so much.
Marisa Lagos: [00:17:54] My pleasure.
