Kirsten Gillibrand Does Not Regret Calling for Al Franken’s Resignation
Some people blame her. High-level Democratic donors continue to penalize her. But two years after Kirsten Gillibrand became the first senator to call for Al Franken’s resignation amid eight allegations of sexual harassment against him—including one damning photo of Franken groping the breasts of one of the accusers, Leeann Tweeden, while she slept—the New York senator and 2020 presidential hopeful says she does not regret leading the charge against Franken.
“There is no prize for someone who tries to hold accountable a powerful man who is good at his day job. But we should have the courage to do it anyway,” Gillibrand said at Mic’s 2020 Town Hall Series on Monday in New York. “I do not have any regrets.”
Nor should she. She was hardly the only lawmaker disturbed by the Franken allegations: 36 more senators also went on to call for him to resign. And yet, the issue continues to dog Gillibrand in a classic case of blaming a woman for taking a man to task; for daring to question the entitlement of a powerful, well-liked man to keep his job despite multiple allegations of bad behavior. A lengthy and highly sympathetic (to Franken) story in the New Yorker on Monday furthered the Gillibrand backlash by attempting to characterize her as “opportunistic” in swiftly demanding Franken’s resignation: “It was like a vigilante thing,” a top Democratic donor who withdrew support for Gillibrand said. “It was so fast and so presumptuous.”
The article went on to further suggest that Gillibrand was self-serving because she repeated her call for Franken to step down while pushing for a new bill banning mandatory arbitration for sexual harassment claims. “She didn’t mention,” the New Yorker wrote, “that Franken had originated the legislation—and had given it to Gillibrand to sponsor, out of concern that it might be imperiled by his scandal.” Never mind that sexual harassment and assault have been core issues in Gillibrand’s platform, raising the stakes even higher: had she not condemned Franken in the strongest possible terms, she would have likely been branded a hypocrite.
Gillibrand dismissed the claims in the New Yorker article: “It only talked about one allegation...but what about the seven other allegations?” she said at the Mic event. “There was really no critical or investigative journalism or reporting on the other seven, and that certainly causes me pause.”
The bottom line, as Gillibrand added, is that there is a persistent double standard when it comes to female politicians. “Women are asked to hold accountable their colleagues. The men are not,” she said. “Who is being held accountable for Al Franken’s decision to resign? Women senators, including me. It’s outrageous. It’s absurd.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
