This morning NRCC Chairman Greg Walden called Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones – currently mired in allegations of inappropriate sexual advances towards a former 26-year old subordinate deputy – a “terrific candidate.”
Even if they missed the news, it doesn’t change the fact that Walden and national Republicans are doubling down on a candidate known for mismanaging and wasting taxpayer dollars on a political pledge and a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
ICYMI [Because Walden Sure Did]: The costly bro culture of Sheriff Scott Jones
The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board [Excerpts]
- As reported last week by The Sacramento Bee’s Christopher Cadelago, a female deputy deposed as part of the suit, Tosca Olives, said Sheriff Scott Jones had made her life miserable in 2003 when she was 26 and he was a sergeant. Over two years, she said under oath, he abused his position as her informal supervisor to grope, kiss and make other unwelcome sexual advances.
- The sheriff, in a sworn statement, said the young deputy had been the aggressor, ambushing him with a kiss once and later removing her jacket and rubbing herself provocatively under her T-shirt during a period when he was mentoring her as she studied for law school.
- Jones and Olives declined to comment on the mutual allegations; in her deposition, she said she never formally complained because she was young and feared retaliation, and the statute of limitations had expired by the time she realized rules had been broken.
- Jones didn’t become sheriff until 2010, but he came up through the ranks. He’s a product of the culture. After the department lost the retaliation case and he came in for criticism, he sent out a memo saying his political opponents and the media were trying to “drag down the outstanding reputation of the Sheriff’s Department just to color me as disreputable.”
- The department’s frat-house, bully-boy reputation didn’t come from the media or Ami Bera or anyone else who has doubts about how Jones would lead if elected to higher office. It has been decades in the making.
- Whatever did or didn’t happen between Jones and the deputy from the court files, with every lawsuit and every “boys will be boys” revelation, that culture costs the rest of us just a little bit more.