The Georgia Senate Ethics Committee may have cleared state Sen. David Shafer of sexual harassment allegations, but the case has proved to be fodder for political opponents trying to derail his bid to become lieutenant governor.
More than a dozen big-money donors who had given to Shafer's campaign to replace Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle wrote checks to his Republican opponents in the race during the three weeks after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a lobbyist had filed a complaint alleging the senator harassed her for several years. Candidates are trying to use the case to break Shafer's hold on lobbyists, political action committees and institutional donors who have flooded his campaign with support.
And Shafer's opponents in both parties are using the allegations to raise questions both about him and the secretive process the committee used before dismissing the complaint.
“I don’t think it’s going away,” said Chip Lake, a veteran political consultant who works for one of Shafer’s opponents in the lieutenant governor’s race, former state Rep. Geoff Duncan. “I suspect there will be more to this story. The problem is, this is going to continue to drip, drip.”
But Kay Godwin, a Republican activist and co-chairwoman of Georgia Conservatives in Action, said Shafer’s GOP opponents “should be ashamed of themselves.”
“This smear has completely backfired,” Godwin said.
The committee dismissed the sexual harassment complaint against Shafer on April 13, with the announcement coming a day after the AJC obtained an investigative report raising questions about the allegations. The committee's chairman, state Sen. Dean Burke, R-Bainbridge, who's backing one of Shafer's opponents in the May 22 primary, said the committee found "no credible evidence" to support the allegations against the lawmaker.
The case marked the first sexual harassment complaint filed against a lawmaker since the House and Senate instituted new rules for making allegations. They developed those rules in light of big increases in the number of accusations against celebrities and politicians that surfaced last fall, developing into the #MeToo movement.
Shafer has been seen as a front-runner in the race for lieutenant governor because, as a longtime Georgia Senate leader, he’d long been a prodigious fundraiser. The lieutenant governor serves as president of the Senate and plays a major role in deciding what legislation the General Assembly considers.
The AJC does not name alleged victims of sexual assault or sexual harassment. The woman worked with Shafer at the Georgia Republican Party in the 1990s and later, as a lobbyist, sought his help to pass legislation. She accused Shafer of retaliating against her when she turned back his advances.
Both sides of the case — including Shafer — criticized the secretive nature of the committee's handling of the complaint. The gubernatorial candidates for both major parties said last week that they'd support expanding the state's open records laws to make the process of dealing with sexual harassment complaints and findings more transparent.
Shafer has contributed more than $30,000 to the campaigns of Republican members of the committee, so questions have also been raised about the fairness of lawmakers making a ruling on one of their colleagues, even though the panel hired on outside investigator to look into the allegations.
Sarah Riggs Amico, a Democratic contender in the lieutenant governor’s race, has been playing up the secrecy involved in the process and posted video interviews on social media talking about the possibility of taxpayers having to pay sexual harassment settlements.
“As lieutenant governor, I pledge to do everything in my power to make proceedings regarding claims of sexual harassment against state legislators transparent,” Amico said. “Georgians have a right to know that their government handles these accusations and settlements in a responsible manner. Furthermore, taxpayer money should not be used to settle claims of sexual harassment by our state’s legislators.”
Meanwhile, Shafer’s Republican opponents have been making an issue of the complaint both publicly and behind the scenes, helping them raise attention and money.
“Sadly, this story is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Senator David Shafer’s ruthless and disgusting style of politics,” Duncan posted on Facebook after the complaint was filed. “The Republican Party can’t afford another scandal-ridden, morally corrupt candidate who will embarrass our party and lose to a Democrat in November.”
Former state Sen. Rick Jeffares, another Shafer opponent in the primary, has seen his fundraising from big-money donors pick up since the AJC reported on the complaint March 9.
That's important in the race because as of the end of March, Shafer's campaign had raised $1.5 million and had almost all of it still in the bank to spend on TV ads. In addition, his state Senate campaign last summer gave $1 million in leftover campaign money to a political action committee run by lobbyist Don Bolia, a longtime supporter who spoke to the lawyer investigating the sexual harassment complaint and bolstered a key part of the senator's defense. At least some of that could be used to help Shafer's campaign.
Meanwhile, Jeffares and Duncan, combined, had raised about $1.6 million and had less than $900,000 in the bank as of April 1.
Between March 9 and the end of the month, 14 donors who had previously written big checks to Shafer’s campaign donated to Jeffares, an AJC review of campaign disclosures found. Three Shafer donors also gave to Duncan’s campaign during the same time period immediately after the complaint became public.
Included among the checks to Jeffares were those from the Georgia Highway Contractors Association ($5,600) and several road builders, including Marietta-based C.W. Matthews Contracting ($5,600) and Snellville’s E.R. Snell Contractor ($2,500).
The lobbyist who accused Shafer represented one of the major road-building companies.
C.W. Matthews is the state's top road contractor. State records show it was paid about $380 million for work in fiscal 2017, and the company was hired by the Department of Transportation when it needed somebody to quickly fix the I-85 bridge that collapsed during a fire last year.
Officials at C.W. Matthews declined to comment, but campaign watchers said the company, like some of the others who gave after the complaint was filed, were likely hedging their bets that the fallout would make Shafer vulnerable in the Republican primary.
Among those who donated to Jeffares shortly after the allegations became public was Burke, the chairman of the committee that would rule on the complaint. Burke gave $2,500 about a week after the complaint was filed. Burke had previously contributed $4,100 to Jeffares’ campaign for lieutenant governor.
Shafer told reporters the timing of the complaint — the day after he qualified to run for lieutenant governor — showed it was done to harm him politically. "The motivation was evident from the beginning," he said.
His lawyer, Jennifer Little, called it a “pure smear campaign.”
The lobbyist who filed the complaint said she did so at that time because new legislative rules made the filing possible.
Dan McLagan, a veteran campaign spokesman who works for Jeffares, doesn’t think Republican voters will forget the accusations. He said institutional donors who have given to Shafer are now returning solicitation phone calls to the Jeffares campaign.
“I think Republican donors are starting to realize that Shafer is a pretty sketchy guy and that a nominee under a cloud of suspicion of sexual harassment has liberals drooling,” McLagan said. “They are hedging bets and switching sides because they know that he would get creamed in a general election and that would be a disaster for conservative policies.”
But because of the committee’s dismissal, Kennesaw State University political scientist Kerwin Swint said Shafer shouldn’t be hurt too badly by the accusations.
Still, he added, “you’re never sure how much damage it’s going to do.”
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