If you're tired of all the heat coming down on men, you love this. If you want the stench of all this to keep falling on Democrats, you love this.
There just one problem: It sounds like a load of crap.
Kansas Democrat Andrea Ramsey had been seeking her party's nomination for the seat currently held by Republican Congressman Kevin Yoder. It's a somewhat red district now but it was represented by a Democrat as recently as 2010, so it's not completely outside the realm of possibility to think it could flip blue, especially in an off-year election with an unpopular Republican president. Ramsey would have had a chance.
She won't now, and while we're not eager to see any red seat flip blue, the "sexual harassment" accusations against her sound awfully flimsy and frankly pretty hard to believe.
Ramsey was working as HR director for a company called LabOne when she terminated an employee named Gary Funkhouser. Funkhouser then claimed that Ramsey had badgered him to have sex with her, and that when he refused, she began treating him badly and ultimately fired him. He sued LabOne, although not Ramsey personally, and the company chose to settle rather than fight the suit. That frustrated Ramsey, who had no say in the decision to settle because she wasn't a party to the suit:
“Twelve years ago, I eliminated an employee’s position,” Ramsey wrote. “That man decided to bring a lawsuit against the company (not against me). He named me in the allegations, claiming I fired him because he refused to have sex with me. That is a lie.”
Funkhouser worked under Ramsey at LabOne where she was an executive vice president of human resources. Funkhouser claimed Ramsey came on to him in 2005 during a business trip, the Kansas City Star reported.
“After I told her I was not interested in having a sexual relationship with her, she stopped talking to me,” he wrote in a complaint. “In the office she completely ignored me and avoided having any contact with me.”
Funkhouser claimed Ramsey had his work station moved out of her office.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission closed the case on Funkhouser’s claims, stating it was unable to determine if any “statutes had been violated.”
Funkhouser then sued LabOne in federal court and both parties agreed to dismiss the case in 2006. Multiple sources told the Kansas City Star that Funkhouser and LabOne had reached a settlement.
There are a number of reasons I believe Ramsey's denial:
Settlements in cases like this are common, and often have little to do with the merits of the complaint. Companies find it cheaper and easier to settle and make the problem go away than to fight it in court, where the accuser will get a forum for all kinds of claims and the company will be put through the wringer. It seems like there should be a legal method to allow a company to avoid such a mess without having to reward a false accuser with cash, but that's sadly the system we have today. The fact that they settled in no way means his claims were true, and there was never a finding that his claims had merit.
Her denial is uncompromising. "That is a lie." No Roy Moore-style equivocation about how it wasn't her "customary behavior" or whatever. Just flat out, "That is a lie." People who are really being falsely accused usually issue denials like that.
Per his LinkedIn profile, Funkhouser changes jobs a lot. That is usually a product of one's own bad habits and tendencies, regardless of how much you may want to blame others.
This is Gary Funkhouser:
Andrea Ramsey was burning with passion to sleep with that guy?
Believe what you want, I guess.
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This whole thing has gone too far, but that's a complicated proposition. In the sense that there are still people who have engaged in Weinstein/Lauer-type behavior in the workplace, they absolutely need to be exposed and brought to account for it. But what's happening now is that every organization is running so scared that even the most dodgy accusation from way in the past has become a pretext for running people off. The hysteria has grown so heated that everyone is scared to death to be part of the story, even if there is reasonable doubt about the accusation. It doesn't matter. The person being accused has to go.
From what I've read about Andrea Ramsey, I don't think I would want her in Congress. But I don't want her not in Congress because she fell prey to a false accusation, and that's what this sounds like to me.
By the way, some of you will probably ask: What kind of conservative am I to believe Roy Moore's accusers and not believe Andrea Ramsey's? One who looks at the facts and not the party label, that's what kind. Think that makes me something other than a "true conservative"?
I don't care.
At some point we have to move from hysteria to a fact-based approach on these situations. This seems like as good a time as any.
If you're tired of all the heat coming down on men, you love this. If you want the stench of all this to keep falling on Democrats, you love this.
There just one problem: It sounds like a load of crap.
Kansas Democrat Andrea Ramsey had been seeking her party's nomination for the seat currently held by Republican Congressman Kevin Yoder. It's a somewhat red district now but it was represented by a Democrat as recently as 2010, so it's not completely outside the realm of possibility to think it could flip blue, especially in an off-year election with an unpopular Republican president. Ramsey would have had a chance.
