The “Me Too” anti-sexual harassment campaign that quickly yielded several resignations by state lawmakers last fall appears to have hit a lull in Sacramento with Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, now seemingly on track for re-election this November despite scandalous allegations. But new twists may loom.

Garcia, 40, appeared doomed to a primary defeat two months ago. She took a voluntary leave of absence after she was accused of groping a then-legislative staffer four years ago; making inappropriate comments to a lobbyist; playing “spin the bottle” with staffers; and of using racist and homophobic language. The perception that she was a weakened candidate led the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California – which supported her in 2014 and 2016 – to oppose her primary bid.

But between a preliminary probe finding no evidence for the most serious allegation against Garcia – that she groped a staffer – and the strong support of Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, Garcia finished first in her June 5 primary. She got 29 percent of the votes to 27 percent for Republican activist Mike Simpfenderfer, a mortgage banker. The other five candidates in the race, all Democrats, split the remaining 44 percent of the vote.

Last week, however, saw two developments that suggested Garcia wasn’t out of the woods yet. The first came when the Assembly agreed to consider an appeal of its finding clearing Garcia of groping former legislative aide Daniel Fierro, who now works as a Los Angeles County political consultant. Fierro sought the appeal last month amid grumbling that the initial investigation of Garcia was released even though it was incomplete.

This concern may have been a factor in the second development: the call from two Democratic lawmakers for a much more transparent and responsive approach to allegations of misconduct involving state lawmakers and staffers.

Anti-gay, anti-Asian remarks could haunt Garcia

State Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, said existing efforts to respond to sexual harassment don’t go nearly far enough to take on a “toxic” culture in the Capitol. They propose establishing a new investigative unit that would focus only on discrimination and harassment complaints; would handle probes for both the Assembly and the Senate; and would rely on an independent committee of experts to recommend punishment for those found guilty of wrongdoing. Legislators, however, still would have the final say on what if any penalties were assessed.

But the Mitchell-Friedman proposal targets not just the behavior that Garcia has so far been cleared of but behavior of the sort the Assembly probe found she had engaged in: using homophobic slurs to describe fellow Los Angeles County Democrat John Perez, the Assembly’s first openly gay speaker, and of threatening violence against Asian-Americans after some Asian-American lawmakers balked at affirmative-action proposals that they thought would help some minority groups but not their own.

“The proposed policy … aims to spur a shift in how people in the Capitol community speak and act toward each other,” the Associated Press reported. “It encourages people to report minor incidents such as insensitive comments all the way through more aggressive acts of misconduct.”

Rendon’s decision to defend Garcia while still appearing strongly sympathetic to the Me Too movement has been complicated by comments that suggest he thinks Garcia’s larger record of legislative priorities and accomplishments should matter in judging her behavior. Similar suggestions made in defense of former President Bill Clinton and now-former Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, triggered a furious backlash.

Rendon entered this territory in April when he denounced the building trades unions for seeking to replace Garcia with other Democrats whom Rendon said would be more willing to challenge aggressive environmental policies touted by Gov. Jerry Brown and all the party’s legislative leaders. A spokesperson for the unions said their opposition to Garcia was prompted not by her strong environmentalism but by sympathy for her alleged victim and a belief another candidate would better reflect the values of the 58th Assembly District.

But Rendon rejected the claims in a blistering statement posted by the Sacramento Bee in which he called the unions’ maneuvering “a thinly veiled attempt by Big Oil and polluters to intimidate me and my members,” “ an affront to my speakership” and an “ill-advised political attack.”

Leading the push for the rare recall of a state judge was Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, whose daughter was a childhood friend of swimmer Brock Turner’s victim, a Stanford student who has not been named by news organizations which withhold the identities of sexual assault victims. Dauber and her supporters have depicted the light sentence as examples of both societal indifference to sexual violence and of white privilege; Turner (pictured) is from a wealthy Indiana family. In a series of interviews with sympathetic journalists, Dauber depicted a vote for the recall as a chance for Santa Clara County voters to show they stood firmly with the Me Too movement dedicated to fighting sexual harassment and even worse behavior by men.

But Dauber’s campaign went firmly against a central tenet of the criminal justice reform movement. It holds that harsh sentencing laws approved in the high-crime 1980s and early 1990s have destroyed the salvageable lives of hundreds of thousands of young people – especially African-American and Latino men. This explains the campus dynamic at Stanford detailed in a lengthy Huffington Post story by Julie Ioffe published June 1. While Turner’s victim is universally receives deep sympathy, the report showed Dauber has become an unpopular figure with many of her fellow law school faculty.

Professors, public defenders rip judge’s main critic

“Twenty-nine Stanford law professors have signed a letter against the recall,” the Post reported. “Robert Weisberg, who teaches criminal law and describes himself as a progressive feminist, grew visibly angry when he spoke about Dauber. The recall, he argued, was ‘a gratuitous and vindictive campaign’ and ‘an exploitation of the Me Too movement.’”

Further fueling the local backlash against Dauber: Persky’s outstanding reputation among public defenders who have appeared before him.

“My clients are all indigent and most of them are nonwhite,” Barbara Muller told the Post. “I have never seen him treat my clients differently than those clients who can afford private attorneys.”

A second public defender, Gary Goodman, made an even more sweeping case in Persky’s defense. He said California sentencing guidelines called for leniency for young defendants like Turner –  “a 19-year-old with no criminal record.” And in a claim substantiated by The Associated Press, Goodman said Persky’s sentence for Turner came at the behest of another wing of the Santa Clara County legal system: the probation department.

While Persky’s recall was celebrated by feminists nationally, recall critics are now going beyond the specifics of the Persky case to emphasize the danger of incentivizing judges to throw the book at defendants.

“What will happen when the rest of California’s elected judges, worried about mob scrutiny, decide that lenient sentencing is a one-way path to joblessness and begin to sentence even more harshly? The people most affected by that calculation won’t be the ones who look like Turner. They’ll be those who most often fall victim to harsh sentencing overall – minorities and the poor,” wrote Christina Emba, a Washington Post opinion columnist and editor.

But in an interview with the San Jose Mercury-News that was published Sunday, Dauber depicted criticism she faced not as principled but as part of a sexist backlash to women fighting for fair treatment. “I welcome their hate,” she told the newspaper. “I read it as a sign we’re being effective.”

The Mercury-News asked Dauber about the fears of Emba and others that the recall would end up haunting young minority men who come before judges who fear losing their jobs. She dismissed that idea as reflecting an “incredibly dim view of judicial integrity.”

The law firms – Gibson Dunn and Van Dermyden Maddux – concluded in a four-page summary of its findings that “it is more likely than not” that Mendoza engaged in “unwanted flirtatious or sexually suggestive behavior” toward six women who worked at the Capitol over the past decade. But the firm’s investigation cleared Mendoza of the harshest overall allegation he faced: the claim he fired three staff members in September in an attempt to squelch an investigation into his conduct. The probe found no evidence linking the firings and the filing of a report with the Senate Rules Committee that alleged Mendoza had repeatedly asked a young Senate fellow to come home with him to “look at resumes.” The investigation also found — except for one women who was kissed on the cheek — no evidence of physical contact between Mendoza and the women he hit on; and no evidence of retaliation against those who rejected his advances.

The Sacramento Bee broke the story last fall of allegations against Mendoza involving three former employees. Within a few days, state Senate President Kevin de Leon moved out of the Sacramento-area home he shared with Mendoza when the two Los Angeles County Democrats were in legislative session.

De Leon, who is running for U.S. Senate, has insisted he was unaware of any improper conduct by Mendoza, who is currently on paid leave.

The investigation included 51 interviews with 47 individuals. Mendoza, who is married and has four children, was among a few people interviewed twice. Last night, he issued a statement calling the investigation inadequate and a rush to judgment.

Report backs claim he gave alcohol to minor

While the report on Mendoza was far less damning than the allegations against Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-Pacoima, and Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Woodland Hills – who resigned late last year after being accused by several women of sexual misconduct – it contradicts Mendoza on the most serious harassment allegation against him. In 2008, according to then-19-year-old Jennifer Kwart, Mendoza provided the underage intern with alcoholic drinks from the minibar in a suite at a San Jose hotel that was hosting the California Democratic Party state convention. Kwart says Mendoza made plain he expected sex, leading her to concoct a family emergency and leave the following morning.

Unlike his responses to some of the allegations made against him, Mendoza dismissed Kwart’s claims as “completely false.” The lawyers hired by the Senate Rules Committee concluded otherwise, finding that it was “more likely than not” that Mendoza “offered and subsequently had alcoholic drinks with the intern in the hotel suite” and “engaged in unwanted flirtatious and sexually suggestive conversation with the intern.”

Mendoza, 46, a former elementary-school teacher, served as an Assembly member from 2006 to 2012. He was elected to the Senate in 2014 and was expected to coast to re-election this November. Even if the Senate chooses not to oust him, the allegations will be a headache for Mendoza going forward. The Los Angeles Daily News reported earlier this month that Rio Hondo College board trustee Vicky Santana, a risk manager with the Los Angeles County Probation Department, would definitely challenge Mendoza. The report also said Montebello Mayor Vanessa Delgado had pulled papers and was considering running. Both Santana and Delgado are Democrats.