Six women accuse Florida Senate budget chair Latvala of groping, sexual harassment
Source: Politico
TALLAHASSEE — Six women who work in Florida’s Capitol say the state Senate’s powerful budget chairman, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Latvala, has inappropriately touched them without their consent or uttered demeaning remarks about their bodies.
The women, who include Senate staff and lobbyists affiliated with both major parties, told POLITICO Florida they did not want to be identified for fear of losing their jobs, getting a bad reputation in the male-dominated Capitol or running afoul of an influential politician who can kill their clients’ issues. The incidents, they said, occurred over a period of several years, happening in the privacy of Latvala’s Senate office or in public places like the Capitol rotunda, a bar or an elevator.
Latvala has denied ever sexually harassing anyone and, when asked a general question by a reporter on Thursday about whether sexual harassment is a problem in the Florida Senate, said he’s never even been formally accused of it. After Latvala made his remarks, five of the six women decided to speak with POLITICO Florida to say they were harassed. Five say the harassment was physical. One woman, a Republican Senate staffer, who spoke to POLITICO Florida earlier this week, cried in recounting her story.
Latvala, in an interview on Friday with POLITICO Florida, pointed to the fact that in 16 years in the Senate he has never had a complaint filed against him.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2017/11/03/six-women-accuse-florida-senate-budget-chair-of-groping-sexual-harassment-115479
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for associating with a bevy of young female lobbyists in his office and at bars and restaurants, Latvala, who is married, was under surveillance last spring by an undercover private investigator who snapped a photo of him kissing a lobbyist on the lips in public. In that case, Latvala and the lobbyist said the kissing was innocent and consensual.
I guess we know what the lobbyist is, since he's such a good lookin' studmuffin.
