From Chavez to Swalwell, #MeToo Shapes Fallout in California Politics

[This column was reported for Political Breakdown, a bi-monthly newsletter offering analysis and context on Bay Area and California political news. Click here to subscribe.]

One of the striking things about Eric Swalwell’s meteoric rise and fall in the California governor’s race after numerous women accused him of sexual assault and harassment is how widely those women’s stories were believed.

“I am encouraged by how swiftly people acted,” said Adama Iwu, a former Capitol lobbyist who helped lead the “We Said Enough” movement in Sacramento in 2017, which called out a pervasive culture of sexual harassment in politics.

And it’s not just the reaction to the allegations against Swalwell, which he denies. Iwu and Christine Pelosi, a longtime Democratic Party activist and state Senate candidate who also helped lead the We Said Enough movement, pointed toward the public reaction to another shocking set of allegations: sexual assault accusations against labor icon Cesar Chavez.

A New York Times investigation published last month detailed numerous allegations against Chavez, including by two women who were young girls at the time of the alleged sexual abuse and by one of the movement’s most prominent voices: Dolores Huerta.

The fallout was immediate. A mad scramble to remove Chavez’s name from streets, holidays, buildings and other public spaces followed that report. Pelosi said that the swift response was due to the groundwork laid a decade ago during #MeToo, when women from all industries and walks of life came forward to detail what they’ve endured.

“I think it happened quickly because of the first round #MeToo politics. People were like, I am not doing this,” she said.

Both women said there’s still a lot of work to do — and it doesn’t stop with Swalwell and Chavez. The same week Swalwell stepped down, Rep. Tony Mendoza, R-Texas, also resigned after admitting to an affair with an aide who took her own life. Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, whose political career ended after allegations of sexual assault, recently shot and killed his estranged wife and then turned the gun on himself.

“Unfortunately, it’s not just one thing, not just one person, one incident,” Iwu said. “We keep seeing this with people we thought were better, we thought knew better, who we thought were capable of changing behavior. This whole thing has been really frustrating, and made us realize there are still questions that need to be answered, processes that need to be integrated, change that needs to be pushed for.”

The good news, both women told me, is that there have been changes in many institutions. Pelosi listed some of them: Lawmakers and staff members in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C. must undergo annual sexual harassment training; the state Legislature has a Workplace Conduct Unit where complaints can be filed; and any campaign that receives money from the national or state Democratic Party must abide by a code of conduct.

But that’s not enough. Iwu and Pelosi said those systems still have flaws — and they’re pushing for updates, noting that the digital age has created opportunities for new predatory behaviors.

To fix it, they offered five concrete suggestions:

1. Update codes of conduct for the digital age.
2. Define consequences in advance.
3. Mandate reporting by everyone — to take the pressure off survivors.
4. See something, say something — normalize hard conversations in the moment.
5. Create independent reporting pathways — and track patterns, not just incidents.

“Of course, there has been progress made, I don’t discount that,” Iwu said. ”But we really need to get down to some brass tacks at this point. We have not answered the questions: What is actionable behavior? And when you know something, who do you tell?”

That’s especially true, she said, for people who work in gray areas around politics: lobbyists, consultants, journalists and others outside of government.

“There’s a system in place if you are in the Legislature, if you are staff or an elected official or in an administration,” Iwu said. “But if (you’re not) — who do you go to? There’s a lot of gaps in the system.”

Before you go: We spoke with one of the reporters who broke the Swalwell investigation. Watch our interview here.