So Patrick Brown claims that he has cleared his name and has entered the leadership contest called to replace himself.
This is simply bizarre.
The same day he announced his run (yesterday -- Friday), he was booted from caucus. Two days ago he claimed that he had never resigned. Yesterday a caucus audio recording emerged of him doing just that.
For those of you who think he has cleared his name of the allegations of sexual harassment/assault, I suggest that that is irrelevant when you consider what he has admitted to. An excellent column, entitled What Kind of Leader Is Patrick Brown? has this to say (you should read the whole piece):
In order to understand the problem with Brown’s conduct here, it might be useful to engage in a thought experiment. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the second accuser is lying; call it drunken memory, or partisan skullduggery, or what have you. Assume Brown is telling the truth. This, then, is what is left, based on what the accuser describes and what Brown has not refuted: as a thirty-four-year-old federal Conservative MP, he hit on an eighteen-year-old woman while travelling, tracked her down on social media, and then, months later, hired her to work at his constituency office. Within the year, she was invited to his private home. She got face-smashingly drunk, kissed him, and then he drove her home. Oh, and photos were taken and posted to social media of the debacle.
Would this version of events meet a standard of criminal wrongdoing? Certainly not. But those who want to test the point can feel free to send their teenage daughters over to volunteer at Brown’s constituency office.
(There are no angels in this world, but for comparison’s sake, consider this: I’m a thirty-three-year-old woman with a moderate public profile. Want to know how often I find myself caught at my home in compromising situations with drunk nineteen-year-olds who are in my employ? Hint: fat crickets.
Welcome to the world of being an adult with a career, real responsibilities, and a functioning sense of reality. If you have a more interesting life than me, good on you, I suppose, but do reconsider running for public office.)
At the very least, the parts of the allegations that Brown seems to concede set off the creep alarm. They demonstrate immaturity, indiscretion, and poor judgement. And Brown’s attempts to defend himself reinforce the point. To pursue the thought experiment further: If we assume both women are lying, does Brown not deserve some responsibility for putting himself in such compromising situations in the first place? What if Brown had come forward to defend himself by saying something like: “I don’t believe that I engaged in any sexual misconduct, but I was also this young lady’s boss, there was an age difference between us, and with the benefit of maturity and hindsight, I can see that it was inappropriate for us to be partying together in that environment. I’m sorry if I made her feel uncomfortable, and I hope we can both move on.”
He did not do that. Instead, he has engaged in a full-frontal political assault on the credibility of these women as part of what appears to be a well-organized and scripted media campaign. A little empathy and self-awareness would go a long way, yet Brown has provided us with neither. Instead, what we have is a former provincial leader who ripped a page from the Entitled Dudebro Playbook: Chapter 1, titled “Those Lying Women.” His defence—punctuated on Facebook by ALL CAPS SENTENCES FOR EMPHASIS, no less—is littered with self-pity and legal intimidation.
And this guy wants to be leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (I'm a member), and Premier of Ontario?
I like his platform more than any other of the leadership candidates, but there's no way I'm voting for the creep.
This political Party is not all about you, Brown.