County Council's Shank criticizes Democratic opponent for 30-year-old arrest involving prostitute
Erie County Council Chairman Brian Shank, who’s running for a second term in November, is blasting his Democratic opponent for being arrested and convicted of soliciting a prostitute more than 30 years ago.
On his campaign Facebook page, Shank, a Republican, appeared in a nearly two-hour-long video posted Wednesday, where he brandished court records to confirm that his opponent, Chris Drexel, was arrested in Florida in December 1990, and charged with a misdemeanor of prostitution.
The court records, which consist of a two-page case action summary from the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida in Miami-Dade County, were obtained by the Erie Times-News. The charge was verified by the online database of the Miami-Dade County Court Clerk's office.
The records indicate that the full case files for the arrest were destroyed by the court, which is a general practice after a certain length of time passes after a case is adjudicated.
Drexel, 50, confirmed to the Times-News that the charge was for soliciting a prostitute. He called the incident a “stupid mistake” made when he was 18 years old and living in Florida.
“When I was a teenager, I was talking to a woman without knowing her profession while out in Miami with friends. I was picked up, and within seven hours, the case was dismissed where I pleaded no contest,” he told the Times-News in a statement. “The case was sealed, and files destroyed, explaining why there is only a cover sheet, which my opponent is trying to spin into a scandalous story.”
Drexel added, “It was a stupid mistake I made 33 years ago that I’m not very proud of, but I am proud of the decisions I have made in the three decades since, like deciding to settle and raise my family here in Erie and running to serve my community."
Shank, in the video, also carried documents from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Western District of Pennsylvania that showed Drexel had filed for bankruptcy in 1999. Holding the documents to the camera, Shank said Drexel "can’t even handle his own budget."
Drexel responded that "like a lot of people in Erie, I have had some tough times in my past."
"Twenty-four years ago, while going through a divorce, I hit a financial rough patch and had to declare bankruptcy. I got my finances right, but that experience taught me how close so many of us are to economic disaster and inspires me to fight every day for a better life for my community," Drexel told the Times-News in a statement.
Video could lead to grittier campaign battle
Shank's video could be a sign of a grittier battle to come between the two candidates as they compete for the council's 5th district seat, which represents Greene, Harborcreek, North East and Summit townships.
Shank, in the video, said it was a “philosophical struggle” deciding whether to publicly discuss the court records but insisted he was “sick and tired of the lies and deception and gaslighting” from Drexel and Erie County Democrats.
"You people need to wake up," Shank told his viewers, urging them to check the backgrounds of every candidate running for office. "I got no convictions on my rap sheet."
The Drexel campaign has taken aim at Shank for being among eight people who received a citation from the city of Erie for carrying a gun at a rally in Perry Square in June 2013 in violation of a city ordinance that prohibited firearms and other weapons in public parks.
The state Commonwealth Court invalidated the ordinance in early 2014 and the city dropped the charges.
The Drexel campaign has also called out Shank for alleged misconduct committed in 2014 while he was a corrections officer at the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs, a minimum-security prison for female offenders.
Shank admitted to some of the allegations lodged against him by female inmates, including hitting inmates on the buttocks with a ruler on one occasion and intentionally discussing bacon in front of a Muslim inmate, which he said was part of a running joke between he and the woman, according to an earlier report by the Times-News.
"We all have things in our past where we've not made great judgment calls in our life," Shank said when asked about the allegations in an earlier interview with the Times-News. "And, you know, we move on, we learn from them."
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A.J. Rao can be reached at arao@gannett.com. Follow him on X @ETNRao.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Brian Shank criticizes Democrat Drexel for prostitution arrest in 1990
