Eric Swalwell and the Death of Accountability

At a Democratic Club meeting in West Los Angeles on Saturday, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) was asked the question that every mildly engaged Democrat in the state is asking each other right now: What is your position on the Eric Swalwell situation? Since Friday afternoon, when the San Francisco Chronicle detonated a long-rumored bombshell by reporting a credible sexual assault charge, and CNN followed on with accounts from four different women (with more weighing in by the hour), everyone tangentially associated with California politics has had to take a side, and they all are taking the opportunity to throw Swalwell overboard.

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All 21 members of Congress who had endorsed Swalwell had revoked that within 24 hours; the House Democratic leadership advised him to end his gubernatorial race; the head of the state Democratic Party did the same in a bit of an oblique way (“My call for all—repeat, all—candidates for Governor to ‘honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaign’ still stands. In fact, that call is more important now than ever before”); the California Labor Federation, which had ridiculously endorsed four candidates for governor including Swalwell, dropped him from their roster, and two big union endorsers (the California Teachers Association and SEIU California, the latter of which had just started a super PAC for him with a $2 million investment) suspended their activities; two fundraisers in L.A. scheduled for Sunday were canceled; you can no longer donate to him on ActBlue or his campaign website; and even Swalwell’s senior staffers—including staffers for his current gubernatorial campaign—have said in an open letter that people should stand with the victims, and that they are only staying in their jobs to fulfill obligations to the congressmember’s constituents.

Waters did not diverge from the general trend. She noted that Swalwell was gaining momentum in the dicey California governor’s race, but that now “he’s got to go.” She also said that Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who has personally asked Swalwell to drop out, had more stature to do so, because she “had been supporting him and raising money for him.” This is untrue; Pelosi never formally endorsed in the governor’s race and never fundraised for Swalwell, though he asked.

The endorsers could quickly unendorse because, whether consciously or unconsciously, there was an inkling that they might have to do so in the future.

The question that many have been asking is why the stampede away from Swalwell is happening so quickly, and there are a few different answers. First, in the wake of the Cesar Chavez revelations, there is absolutely no room to excuse away sexual assault, and the reporting is credible, thorough, and believable, enough to trigger an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, because one of the assaults described in the reporting allegedly took place in New York.

Second, California Democrats have been nervous about the large field of Democrats in the governor’s race anyway. This fear lessened after President Trump endorsed Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, which will likely pull him away from Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and give a Democrat a chance to reach the top-two runoff in the June 2 primary. In other words, as California Democrats looked for a leader to get them out of this largely self-created mess of a primary, they found one in Donald Trump. But Swalwell imploding also winnows the field considerably and will make a Hilton-vs.-Democrat general election more likely.

But there’s a third reason that Democrats are heading for the exits rapidly, and it’s one they won’t like to talk about. The truth, which will be available for all to see before long, is that Swalwell’s conduct with interns, young staff, and female fans was an open secret for a long time, and yet the party, if not Pelosi in this case specifically, had been supporting him and raising money for him. That speaks to a larger problem.

I HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF “BRAGGING” about being an “insider” for knowing this fact and saying it publicly in the wake of the revelations (triggered by some people intimating that the whole thing was an elaborate Republican plot, and by others asking this very question about the speed of politicians backing away), so let me be as transparent as possible. I was made aware of Swalwell’s conduct by a few people in the California political world shortly after he jumped into the governor’s race. I was told that stories about this were being produced when he was running for the 2020 presidential nomination, after which he dropped out and victims decided not to come forward. There are public claims on social media going back to 2020; this more recent one is from an aide to one of his opponents in the governor’s race, Antonio Villaraigosa. There are more private claims that go back all the way to when Swalwell entered Congress in 2013.

Unless and until you have a victim willing to tell their story, and unless and until it can be corroborated, these tips, even if told by credible people with no axe to grind, are just rumors. I tried chasing them down a bit and found out that victims were working with other reporters. At that point, there wasn’t much I could do in writing, though when people asked me as a California voter about the governor’s race, I would volunteer what I knew. Victims decide when the story breaks, and it would actually be monumentally harmful and disrespectful to jump out in front of them without the hard evidence.

That said, I’m a reporter on the outside. Members of Congress and people who raise money for Democrats and labor unions active in California politics have access to a lot more information. There is no believable way, given what I know about how news travels on Capitol Hill, that these people who backed Swalwell weren’t aware of at least rumors and more likely very credible information about this serial conduct, which as I understand it extends to many more than the four people who have gone public.

This information was suppressed by the congressman and a community of supporters in ways that make victims uncomfortable with emerging. But that’s not an excuse to sign up to embrace someone who is a neutron bomb waiting to explode. The endorsers could quickly unendorse because, whether consciously or unconsciously, there was an inkling that they might have to do so in the future.

Swalwell endorsers included Sen. Adam Schiff, a top Pelosi ally. It included a healthy chunk of the California House delegation, like Reps. Ted Lieu, Scott Peters, Linda Sánchez, Jimmy Gomez, Jimmy Panetta, Lou Correa, Gil Cisneros, Mike Thompson, Nanette Barragán, Adam Gray, Ami Bera, Doris Matsui, Kevin Mullin, Raul Ruiz, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, and Julia Brownley. It included Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who had previously called Swalwell his “best friend” on numerous occasions. The unions that supported him are among the most connected in the state. These are signals of establishment endorsement in a race that lacked a well-known establishment figure.

Any of these people who say they were blindsided by the Swalwell developments are not being entirely credible; perhaps they’re not even being straight with themselves. They wanted to believe that there was a savior to keep the governor’s mansion in the same mainstream hands it has been in since Arnold Schwarzenegger left the scene. They wanted to ignore the worst whispers about someone in the family. So they did, for over a decade.

That Swalwell had the hubris to mount high-profile campaigns with this in his past speaks to a John Edwards–like sociopathy. But if you are a politician who is aware of a serial harasser or even assaulter in your midst, there are steps you can take to encourage victims to speak out, warn your colleague about what he is doing, and so on. The very least you can do is not endorse his attempts for higher office. That was an available path not taken in a Democratic Party that has a real problem with accountability, the same way the rest of our country does.

Swalwell is now likely going to face an expulsion vote this upcoming week in Congress, and Democrats are prepared to fire back by calling for the expulsion of Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), who slept with subordinates, one of whom committed suicide. That could lead to an expulsion vote for Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), who allegedly embezzled COVID funds mistakenly given to a company she ran and used it to bankroll her House campaign, and that could lead to an expulsion vote for Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), who has been accused of assaulting a woman and threatening another with revenge porn. In U.S. history, only six members of Congress have been expelled; it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we’ll see four this week.

Maybe some will see this as indicative of the breakdown of comity and the tribal war between the parties. But the problem is that there are enough people in Congress on both sides to merit a back-and-forth of serious and possibly criminal allegations. It speaks to a larger rot with who wins higher office, how they get there, and what doesn’t get talked about in the process.