I jest.
Sort of.
Salt Lake County GOP Chairman Scott Miller has resigned his post after brushing off complaints from women in his party regarding Salt Lake County Republican Party communications director Dave Robinson’s pattern of harassment, body-shaming and more.
Miller, who was running for the state Republican chair, had trivialized the allegations as petty squabbling. It was pretty obviously more than that. For example, after Salt Lake County Council candidate Laurie Stringham created a campaign video for donors in which she said, “Support Laurie Stringham for Salt Lake County Council, so when Mayor [Jenny] Wilson says ‘more, more, more,’ we can say ‘no, no, no!’,” she said that Robinson called her to complain about the spot.
“You sound like you’re having an orgasm!” Robinson shouted at her over her car’s speakerphone. He then repeated her “more, more, more” catchphrase with obscene grunting sounds., and told her that if she wanted to “whore herself out, that was her choice.” Then, Stringham said, Robinson shouted, “I will make sure you never get elected! I will ruin you! And I will make sure the party never works with you! Get your shit together!’” and hung up.
Robinson, who is openly gay, was accused of similar abuse by several women, who said he referred to them in demeaning, derogatory and sexual terms, attempted to bully them, and even withheld important campaign resources unless they wrote opinion pieces about his favorite issues. Yet the party chair, Miller, refused to investigate or take their concerns seriously. To the contrary, he attacked Robinson’s critics on the county party’s official email last week, naming all of the women coming forward and questioning their motives.
“Are these persons and possibly their special interest backers attempting to embarrass and cancel me and our volunteers?” Miller asked in part. “I will not be CANCELLED.” Hilariously, after these remarks received condemnation from everyone (including Utah’s Republican governor) but Robinson, Miller performed a spectacular if unconvincing flip-flop, and tweeted,
“I applaud these women for coming forward and I have encouraged any accusers to come forward. I take these allegations seriously.”
Such cynical dishonesty alone justified his forced resignation.
Obviously, Miller’s withdrawal doesn’t fix the problem. Vice Chair Scott Rosenbush will serve as interim chair until the county party elects new leadership at its convention on April 10, and text messages and emails show that Rosenbush knew of the complaints about Robinson. He also did nothing. Meanwhile, Dave Robinson is still handling the party’s communications.
This is not a Scott Miller problem, it’s a Utah Republican Party cultural problem. But at least Scott Miller, unlike some other politicians, had the sense to resign after showing himself to be hopelessly obtuse regarding appropriate conduct and comportment in the workplace.
I must say, I know Utah is unusual, but I do not comprehend how any politician in the U.S. in 2021 can be so clueless regarding what is inappropriate conduct toward women. Having been raised to respect the opposite sex at all times by a father raised by a mother he regarded as the strongest and most admirable individual in his life, I didn’t comprehend male sexism when I was 12, much less now. How blind, deaf and stupid does one have to be to perpetuate the kind of culture the Utah Republican women are enduring?
______________________
Pointer: valkygrrl
Sources: Salt Lake Tribune 1, 2
Ethics Alarms 
Along the same lines Eric Greitens has announced his run for Senate.
Robinson is gay? Gay guys are beyond reproach, right? Toxic masculinity n a gay guy? I’m confused.
in
I mean…. Not much to say on this one. The party is better without people like this in it.
On the topic of the phenomenon in play here;
There is an emerging sentiment, one that needs to be smothered in the crib, that because the Republican Party has positioned itself in opposition to the often unconstitutional, sometimes illegal, usually overblown and always hypocritical responses to cases, real or imagined of whateverphobiaism, that as a party, Republicans don’t care about whateverphobiaism.
Democrats have believed that for a decade, they can be discounted. I’m talking about republicans who have been told this for so long that they believe it. You see Republicans of various levels of power that seem to be expressing surprise when they’re caught doing something that we all really know is unacceptable. “What do you mean I can’t yell at women and call them whores?!” it almost has an undertone of “Don’t you know that we’re the Republicans? We don’t care about this shit!” Maybe a whiff of “You idiots, I’m a Republican, find a Democrat to pick on.”
The thing is… Republicans do care about “this shit”, which is why these people are losing their jobs. But this attitude is coming from somewhere, and while it’s easy to handwave it off as a Utah thing, this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this…. I think if Republicans don’t start loudly and publicly wrangling the crazies and start talking about values and decency again, they might end up fulfilling every negative stereotype Democrats have of them.
I was actually wondering if all the screeching about republicans being horrible bigots wasn’t the reason why this guy was allowed to get away with being sexist. He is gay, so criticizing him or firing him might have been picked up by the media as homophobic.
His behavior obviously is unacceptable, and it is good he was fired.
No, he wasn’t fired. The person who did nothing about his behavior was fired. The main abuser still has his job. Remember the UNC athletics scandal? They gave athletes special writing classes where they wrote 1 paragraph, signed them up for more ‘independent study’ classes than allowed and let them graduate anyway, signed them up for classes for PREVIOUS semesters and gave them grades, etc. The athletics department told the accreditation body that all classes conformed to UNC guidelines (so the accreditation body didn’t need to investigate) and told the NCAA that all these classes were due to ‘rogue professors’ who were disciplined for violating UNC policies (so the NCAA didn’t need to investigate). This involved basically the entire athletic department, numerous deans and department heads, and a bunch of faculty. What happened as a result? The fired the chancellor who was unaware of this behavior. Everyone else remained in place.
Note: I know the former chancellor involved.
I keep seeing a disconnect between ‘management-type’ people and normal people. The ‘management-types’ are completely oblivious to the way 99% of the people think. Let’s say your organization is running a deficit. Travel budgets are cancelled, supply budgets slashed, salaries reduced, and people are being fired. At the same time, the budget people who caused most of the problem go for a 7-day conference in Hawaii and take their secretaries with them. When people complain about this, management gets mad at the employees for criticizing vital and necessary training for their ‘top’ people. I guess if you only surround yourself with people who all have power and resources, you lose touch (if you ever had it) with normal people.
I met a middle-class woman who went to Harvard. I asked her what it was like. She said it was great the first 2 weeks. All these people, children of Congressmen and business leaders asked her to lunch. They wanted to know about her and her life. At first it was flattering. Then it became strange. Then she realized that she was just there to let them meet ‘a voter’. She was essentially a zoo exhibit at Harvard, there so the ruling class could observe the people they would be ruling some day. I assume those ‘normal’ Harvard students grew up to be people like the leaders of the Utah Republican Party, as well as the leaders of all the Republican and Democratic Parties in the country.
I misread the article. Robinson and Miller both need to go.