HARRISBURG (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [Pittsburgh PA]
October 22, 2023
By Mike Wereschagin and Ford Turner
The Pennsylvania governor made a name for himself by exposing sexual misconduct and cover-ups
A sexual harassment scandal had once again consumed Harrisburg.
Allegations against a Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Mike Zabel, from both a lobbyist and a fellow House member had sparked urgent calls for his resignation and reignited widespread outrage at a male-dominated Capitol culture that seemed to let the powerful act with impunity toward women.
On March 3, Gov. Josh Shapiro weighed in.
“Let me be very clear where I stand. People deserve to be safe and free from harassment wherever they work,” the new Democratic governor told the Philadelphia radio station KYW. “I think it’s critically important for those who come forward to be able to share their truth and have it investigated fairly and properly.”
He said the investigation of the Democrat from Delaware County “should be done swiftly. And I think the [House] Speaker needs to take action.”
That same day, a woman in Mr. Shapiro’s office met with two human resources officials and reported that one of the governor’s closest, longest-serving aides — Legislative Affairs Secretary Mike Vereb — had propositioned and sexually harassed her several times in the previous three months. When she repeatedly rebuffed his advances, he allegedly retaliated, according to a complaint signed by the woman and obtained by several media outlets including the Post-Gazette.
After a subsequent meeting with top administration officials just days later, the woman — who the Post-Gazette is not naming because of the nature of her allegations — “understood” that she would have to continue to work under Mr. Vereb, at least until the investigation was complete, according to the complaint.
She left the administration soon after.
Mr. Vereb remained in his post for more than six months after those meetings.
On Friday, the Shapiro administration released a $295,000 settlement agreement with the woman that’s designed to bar both her and state officials from discussing what happened.
Mr. Vereb’s surprise departure last month has led to pointed scrutiny of how Mr. Shapiro’s administration handled the allegations. The unfolding controversy poses a grave political threat to a rising star in the Democratic Party widely believed to have ambitions for national office — one who made a name for himself by exposing sexual misconduct and coverups.
“He was lauded by me and by so many other people for what he did with respect to the Catholic Church,” said Julie Roginsky, a Democratic political consultant and advocate for civil rights legislation protecting women in the workplace. “For a lot of people, that’s how he came to national attention — and for very good reasons.”
At the time of Mr. Shapiro’s blockbuster investigation into crimes within the Catholic Church in 2018, survivors of sexual abuse and harassment had coalesced into the #MeToo movement and were driving a national conversation about sexual violence and harassment. During this historic moment of reckoning, Mr. Shapiro emerged as a champion of transparency and the rights of victims to be heard.
Mr. Shapiro’s report on decades of abuse inside the church was all the more powerful for the political risk it carried for him. Catholics make up a quarter of the state’s voting-age population and many harbored a grudge when Mr. Shapiro ran for governor last year — in part on his record of taking on the church.
His investigation and subsequent push for reforms included a plea, on Attorney General letterhead, to Pope Francis himself, in which the prosecutor implored the pontiff to “follow the path of truth wherever it may lead.”
“Your Holiness, I respectfully request that you direct church leaders to follow the path you chartered … and abandon their destructive efforts to silence the survivors,” Mr. Shapiro wrote that year.
The non-disclosure clause in his administration’s six-figure settlement with the alleged victim has raised alarms with survivors’ advocates and First Amendment defenders alike. It was finalized in secret, three weeks before the Sept. 27 announcement of Mr. Vereb’s departure from the governor’s office.
The official statement about Mr. Vereb gave no reason why he was leaving and included no comment from Mr. Shapiro about a man he’d served with in the state House, attorney general’s office, and as governor over the course of more than 15 years.
Mr. Shapiro didn’t address Mr. Vereb’s departure at all for more than a week. When he did, he declined to comment directly on the accusations or why his aide left, saying he was precluded from talking about it because it was a “personnel matter.”
When asked to respond to calls for greater transparency from Republican women in the Senate — particularly President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, of Westmoreland County, the first woman to lead the chamber — Mr. Shapiro said, “Consider the source.”
“I think he has really portrayed himself as a champion of women’s rights and victims’ rights,” said Rep. Abby Major, an Armstrong County Republican who earlier this year said she was harassed by Mr. Zabel. “The actions he has taken here cause us to question the sincerity of the words he has said in public.”
In the mediated settlement, Mr. Shapiro’s administration admits to no wrongdoing, and the accuser gives up any future rights to sue over her claims.
“Complainants and defendants often settle litigation for reasons not related to the validity of the underlying facts and claims. Litigation is expensive and can take years to resolve — and litigation outcomes are, by their nature, uncertain,” Mr. Shapiro’s spokesman, Manuel Bonder, wrote in response to questions from the Post-Gazette. “Cases frequently settle solely so that parties can avoid the tremendous expense of litigation, including the time, resources and costs to litigate a case for a protracted period.”
Citing the settlement’s confidentiality clause, Mr. Bonder declined to answer specific questions, such as when Mr. Shapiro found out about the accusations and what he did during the six months between the accuser’s meeting with human resources and Mr. Vereb’s departure.
The dearth of answers has led to growing criticism from women serving in the General Assembly, culminating on Oct. 11, when Ms. Ward said the Senate would call a hearing to investigate the allegations and Mr. Shapiro’s response
To some, the situation echoes a scandal that erupted just across the Delaware River in New Jersey, where Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was forced to answer for an alleged sexual assault by one of his aides and a culture of “rank misogyny” within his campaign.
“Rather than getting rid of him, the governor’s aides did everything they could to protect him, and only when the Wall Street Journal was about to run a huge, page-one story about it did this aide to the governor finally resign,” said Ms. Roginsky, a former top campaign strategist for Mr. Murphy who became a whistleblower as the scandal unfolded.
Lawmakers called bipartisan hearings to investigate. A re-election race years later in which Mr. Murphy had been expected to coast to victory turned into a nail-biter. Women across the state and country grew enraged by the way the alleged victim had been treated, Ms Roginsky said.
At the same time, the story drew national media attention that “probably has scuttled any chances [Mr. Murphy] has of running nationally, because he became, for a while, the poster child of what not to be in the #MeToo era,” Ms. Roginsky said.
“I want to caution Gov. Shapiro to learn from the bad mistakes of his fellow Democratic governor next door, and to get ahead of this right now because eventually there will be enough outrage where his hand will be forced,” she said.
Key to that is allowing the alleged victim to speak if she so chooses, Ms. Roginsky said.
“She may not want to speak. But if she wants to speak, she should be able to,” Ms. Roginsky said.
In other states, including New Jersey, a non-disclosure agreement involving such allegations would likely be illegal. In the wake of Mr. Murphy’s campaign scandal, he signed legislation banning NDAs when settling claims related to toxic workplaces. Two other states have followed suit, and at least two more are considering their own bills. President Joe Biden enacted a similar federal law in December, though it doesn’t go as far as the state laws.
Ms. Roginsky champions the laws though Lift Our Voices, an organization she co-founded with former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson. Ms. Carlson settled a sexual harassment suit against the conservative outlet in 2016 for $20 million. The settlement included an NDA.
“They’re used to cover up toxic behavior, typically — not always, but typically — to protect perpetrators at the expense of survivors,” Ms. Roginsky said.
She urged Mr. Shapiro not only to release Mr. Vereb’s accuser from any NDA she might have signed but to also support a law in Pennsylvania similar to New Jersey’s.
“He built his profile largely on exposing what the Catholic Church was doing — by the way, at great political peril to himself — and really became a hero for a lot of people by doing that,” Ms. Roginsky said. “It would be awful for him to sacrifice all that goodwill by preventing a survivor from telling her story.”
With an investigation of the allegations looming, a growing chorus of lawmakers is calling for more information about the Shapiro administration’s response.
“As a school board member, we tried to have as much sunshine and transparency as possible,” said Rep. Kristin Marcell, R-Bucks. “We would be well-served to do the same in this instance.”
That’s particularly urgent as Harrisburg continues to grapple with the “cultural problem” of permissiveness that enables sexual harassment, said Ms. Marcell, a first-term lawmaker who led a push to pressure Mr. Zabel to resign after the allegations emerged. Mr. Zabel, who denied the accusations, stepped down March 16.
“We have got to raise the bar in terms of professionalism as a state,” said freshman Rep. Marla Brown, R-Lawrence. “The governor should be leading by example.”
In a sprawling bureaucracy with more than 75,000 employees, no one person can be responsible for the behavior of everyone under the governor’s authority, Ms. Roginsky said.
“But,” she said, “you can certainly be responsible for how you behave when bad actions come to light.”
Mike Wereschagin: mwereschagin@post-gazette.com; Ford Turner: fturner@post-gazette.com
First Published October 22, 2023, 5:30am