Former state Sen. Jeff Klein didn’t need to wait long to find a job after being voted out of office. In January, just after his term ended, he was named the co-chair of New York operations for lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs.
That a former legislator became a lobbyist is unsurprising, but it’s controversial because Klein was accused of sexual harassment by a former staffer. In January 2018, Erica Vladimer told the Huffington Post that Klein forcibly kissed her outside an Albany bar while she was employed as a legislative counsel for the Independent Democratic Conference, which shared power with state Senate Republicans. Klein vehemently denied the charge before the Huffington Post story was published and released an investigation courtesy of a law firm that asserted his innocence. An investigation by the Joint Commission On Public Ethics is still ongoing.
Klein is returning to the state capital as state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has announced sexual harassment hearings in the Legislature and legislators in each chamber are preparing to introduce new laws to deal with the issue. Klein’s hiring is being criticized by anti-sexual harassment advocates as proof Albany culture hasn’t changed, though they also see in it an opportunity to bring attention to legislation that could help harassment victims in the future.
Klein’s new job is a reminder that New York state politics has tolerated legislators and lobbyists with allegations of sexual misconduct. Past accused politicos who have hung around include Michael Boxley, former counsel to then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was indicted on rape charges in 2003 after a 22-year-old legislative aide accused him of rape. He pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct, a lesser charge than the first-degree and third-degree rape charges he was indicted for, and got probation. In addition, Boxley had been accused of rape by another Assembly aide, Elizabeth Crothers, two years earlier, a charge Boxley denied. No charges were filed in that case, and Crothers said in 2003 that Silver’s downplaying of the accusation was what set the stage for Boxley to commit another assault. Despite this, Boxley was employed by lobbying firm Brown & Weinraub for seven years, from 2011 to 2018, leaving of his own volition last year.
Sam Hoyt, an assemblyman whose affair with an intern resulted in the Assembly taking away his ability to employ interns in 2008, was brought on by the Cuomo administration to work for Empire State Development Corporation in 2011. Hoyt then left ESDC in 2017 after being accused of sexual harassment, a charge he was cleared of by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics in a decision that was criticized by good government advocates over the board’s perceived lack of independence and qualifications to investigate sexual harassment.
Last month, The New York Times reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s former chief of staff Kevin O’Brien, who was forced to resign following accusations of sexual harassment, had also been fired from his previous job at the Democratic Governors Association for allegedly sexually harassing a colleague. (City Hall said they were unaware of his previous termination.)
“There is certainly a through line from Michael Boxley to Sam Hoyt to Jeff Klein when it comes to tolerating and excusing sexual harassment and assault perpetrators,” Vladimer told City & State. Vladimer, Crothers and other self-identified sexual harassment or assault survivors in Albany have been working together as part of an organization known as the Sexual Harassment Working Group, an organization of seven former legislative employees in Albany who say they’ve experienced or witnessed sexual harassment and now advocate for better policies on the issue. “You have lobbying firms who care so little about this that they’re hiring someone who has admitted to (sexual assault) and then, in the case of Klein, somebody still under investigation,” Crothers told City & State. While JCOPE agreed to investigate Vladimer’s accusation, the body never revealed a conclusion, and the investigation is going on to this day. “(Lobbying firms) decide ‘Well, OK, it doesn’t matter, we don’t care as a firm. It’s not going to affect our clients or our clients’ interests, legislators will still meet with us,’” Crothers said.
Mercury defended its hiring of Klein. “We have full confidence in Jeff, who has been a tremendous addition to our team,” Michael McKeon, a spokesman for Mercury wrote to City & State in an emailed statement after multiple requests for comment. “We trust the process will validate our confidence in him.” Klein himself did not respond to a request for comment from City & State. Diane Savino, one of the founding members of the IDC and Klein’s girlfriend since before Vladimer made her accusation, defended Klein at the time and reiterated that defense in an email to City & State. “I believe in due process and the presumption of innocence,” Savino wrote. “I am available at any time to testify in front of JCOPE during their investigation, an investigation that then-Senator Klein asked for himself. I welcome the findings once their inquiry is complete. As I’ve already made clear before, I was present the night of this allegation and this incident never happened.”
Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas and state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, who defeated Klein in the Democratic primary last year, have sponsored a package of bills that would update New York’s sexual harassment laws governing private and public sector workplaces in a number of ways, including, among other things, a law voiding confidentiality agreements that stop a victim from filing a complaint or filing for benefits like unemployment, requiring employers to inform victims that they can still speak to authorities like law enforcement or the state Division of Human Rights even if an employment contract contains a non-disparagement or non-disclosure provision, and extending the amount of time to report a sexual harassment incident to the state Human Rights Division from one year to three years.
The gaps filled in by legislation, according to Simotas, can’t eradicate bad behavior entirely, but can at least put…
