If I weren’t so excited about Barack Obama’s campaign in Illinois, I might even feel a little sorry for the state GOP at this point.
After getting turned down by nearly every possible candidate, Republicans are more or less left with two options — Jack Ryan, who abandoned his Senate campaign after a sex scandal, or Andrea Grubb Barthwell, an unknown Bush administration official who has been deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington since 2002.
Yesterday, however, we learned that Barthwell has some baggage of her own.
A potential Republican candidate for the Senate seat from Illinois where the party’s nominee withdrew over sex club allegations engaged in “lewd and abusive behavior” while she served as a top official in the White House drug policy office, an internal inquiry found last year.
In front of her staff, Andrea Grubb Barthwell made repeated comments about the sexual orientation of a staff member and used a kaleidoscope to make sexually offensive gestures, according to the findings of a March 19, 2003, “hostile workplace memorandum” prepared by drug policy office staff. The Associated Press obtained the memorandum.
In an interview Wednesday with the AP, Barthwell said the memorandum overstates what happened, but she said she was wrong for participating in “inappropriate banter” at a staff birthday party.
Those Illinois Republicans sure are a wild bunch, aren’t they?
The lewd and abusive behavior finding stemmed from a Dec. 19, 2002, staff gathering. Barthwell made comments about a staff member’s sexual orientation after the staff member misspoke in an earlier conversation, the memorandum said.
“Dr. Barthwell made reference to this staff member sitting on men’s laps. A kaleidoscope pointed upward was placed on a chair by Dr. Barthwell as the staff member was about to sit down,” it said.
“Dr. Barthwell suggested that the staff member would want to cut the cake available for the gathering because the knife was ‘long and hard’ and he might ‘enjoy handling it.’ When the cake was cut, Dr. Barthwell referred to the pieces as ‘most’ or ‘beefy’ and she said to the staff member, ‘I know you like it big and meaty.'”
Barthwell said yesterday she’s confident this wouldn’t interfere with her Senate campaign, should she officially announce to launch one. No, of course not.
One of the funny things about the GOP’s difficulty is how long they’ve had trouble finding a candidate for this race. About 14 months ago, incumbent Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R), under pressure from his own party, announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. Ironically, Republicans in DC and Illinois assumed he’d be a tough sell for another term and thought another candidate would stand a better chance of keeping the seat in GOP hands. They really didn’t think this through.
The early money was on former Gov. Jim Edgar (R). Despite heavy lobbying from the White House, he declined. Attention then turned to State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, Illinois’ only Republican to hold statewide office, but she also said she wouldm’t run for the seat. Republican members of Congress including Ray LaHood and Jerry Weller expressed some initial interest, but then both announced they had decided against a Senate campaign. Then the GOP thought former state Attorney General Jim Ryan should jump in, right before he said he didn’t have any interest in the race, either.
In the world of sports, I think they’d call this a very weak bench.
Can we just let Obama enter his name in the freshman Senate office pool now and get it over with?