Why politicians got away with sexual misconduct for so long
by Rachel Gorlin, a political media consultant at Tipping Point Strategies in Washington, worked for years on Capitol Hill.
My Harvey Weinstein was a U.S. senator. We were never alone together or even had a private conversation; he never harassed me. But Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon was a textbook case of “everyone knew” when I served as press secretary for his 1992 challenger, Les AuCoin. I watched with dismay as our campaign and the press corps covering the race grappled with the knowledge of Packwood’s sexual misconduct — well beyond the adulterous realm of Gary Hart — without knowing what to do about it.
Anyone wondering how Weinstein’s dealings with women could have been kept from the public for almost 30 years need look no further than the 1992 Oregon Senate race — and the 1991 confirmation hearings at which Clarence Thomas’s former employee Anita Hill accused the Supreme Court nominee of workplace sexual harassment. Together, they were a crash course in the politics of sexual harassment.
After the Hill/Thomas controversy, I assumed that Packwood’s predatory behavior toward women would be a major issue in his 1992 reelection race. Unfortunately for most of the voters of Oregon, it was not. They were kept in the dark. Packwood’s “skirt problem” — an anachronistic term for varieties of sexual misconduct ranging from adultery to rape — was as well known in political circles as Weinstein’s was in the entertainment world.
