Column: Sexual harassment controversy continues to roil San Diego Democrats

Sexual harassment has become a national political issue, and it’s one that’s right in the middle of a nasty dispute among San Diego Democrats and organized labor.

“All these Sunday AM shows talking sexual harassment serves as a reminder that we have our own problem in San Diego,” San Diego City Councilman David Alvarez, a Democrat, said on Twitter last weekend.

The accusations against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ray Moore of Alabama and Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota — and others in the political, entertainment and media worlds — have rekindled painful memories among numerous San Diego women who were victims of former Mayor Bob Filner’s unwanted sexual advances several years ago.

But Alvarez was talking about the ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit against a top San Diego union official, which is part of broader political and labor power struggle.

This was a growing distraction last spring as the Union-Tribune’s Joshua Stewart reported, but it’s continuing at a more critical time as the election season comes to life.

Mickey Kasparian, the politically powerful leader of the the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135, has been sued by a former employee who claims he pressured her into a long-term sexual relationship and threatened her job if she didn’t comply.

Kasparian has denied the accusation from the very beginning and continued to do so despite specific and graphic claims in court documents by former employee Isabel Vasquez, as reported by the Reader.

Vasquez’s allegations surfaced along with other accusations against Kasparian, including those from a woman who filed a separate lawsuit contending she was fired for political reasons — which he also rejects. A handful of other women didn’t sue, but told the Union-Tribune of their experiences with what they called intimidating tactics by Kasparian.

At the time, Kasparian also led the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, a union umbrella group. He soon left that position and created a rival organization, the San Diego Working Families Council.

All this gained widespread media attention when it blew up months ago, but has publicly remained relatively low-key since. It’s still simmering, though, with protests of Kasparian and the Democratic Party for continuing to engage with him.

And if Alvarez and others have their way, it won’t die down anytime soon.

Filner redux: More to come?

When Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado came forward this past week saying she was sexually accosted by former congressman and Mayor Bob Filner years ago, it confirmed what many had thought: There are more out there.

Even though some two dozen women in San Diego in 2013 said Filner sexually harassed or assaulted them in one form or another, DeGette raised the prospect that there could be more accusations to come, even after all these years.

“He tried to pin me to a door of the elevator and kiss me,” she told MSNBC. The episode occurred years ago when Filner was in Congress, but she didn’t say exactly when.

She wasn’t the only one in Washington who had to deal with Filner’s boorishness, which eventually led him to pleading guilty to false imprisonment and battery and resigning as mayor. “Many women in D.C. refer to (Filner) as ‘Bobo,’ ‘Mr. Misogynist,’ ‘Nasty Narcissist,’ or simply ‘Filthy Filner,’” said two women who worked for or around Filner’s Washington office in an anonymous letter in 2012.

While they sought to warn San Diegans about Filner’s unwanted sexual advances before the mayoral election, they realized their need to stay anonymous might mean their letter would never get proper attention. Also, there was built-in skepticism because they sent it to the campaign of Filner’s mayoral rival, then-Councilman Carl DeMaio.

The Union-Tribune has strict rules limiting the use of anonymous sources, and like other media, tried unsuccessfully to verify the contents of the letter. But the U-T eventually published a story in July 2013 about the letter after similar widespread accusations against Filner had exploded into public, giving credence to the missive’s claims.

So there are others out there, possibly more members of Congress like DeGette. This raises the difficult question about why she and others didn’t come forward after so many San Diego women did, some taking incredible heat for doing so. But the decision to go public or not obviously isn’t an easy one, and those who didn’t have their personal reasons.

The laughable notion that Filner was a victim in all this — put forth not just by him but a handful of charlatans — was seemingly put to rest long ago. Given DeGette’s detachment from San Diego, the claim that the women here who accused Filner were somehow part of a Machiavellian scheme to get him out of office seems even more absurd.

In defending Filner, some of the deniers cast aspersions on the women who came forward, suggesting their stories were either fabricated or they were at least in part to blame.

Shame on them. They owe a lot of women an apology, though I suspect some of the victims don’t want to hear it now.

Tweet of the Week

Goes to Cathleen Decker‏ (@cathleendecker), national politics writer for the Los Angeles Times.

“There’s no sign the sexual harassment maelstrom will end soon. And we haven’t yet gotten to a corollary conversation: What about all the women whose ambitions/careers were thwarted because they didn’t fit the image desired by harassers?”