The findings may help the candidate, State Senator John Mannion, in his bid to unseat Representative Brandon Williams in a tossup race.
For more than two months, the congressional campaign of John Mannion, perhaps Democrats’ best hope to flip a crucial House seat, has been shadowed by accusations that he created a hostile work environment and berated top aides in the New York State Senate.
Now an outside investigation commissioned by the State Senate has ended quietly without reprimand, concluding that Mr. Mannion did not violate the chamber’s harassment and discrimination policy.
The conclusion, which can still be appealed, would provide significant relief to Democrats. They are counting on Mr. Mannion, a moderate former teacher, to provide one of the four pickups they need nationwide to take back control of the House. He is facing Representative Brandon Williams, a first-term Republican, in November in a district where Democrats meaningfully outnumber Republicans.
The investigation was conducted by Michael Murphy, an outside lawyer hired by the Senate, who completed “a detailed, confidential response” and transmitted his findings clearing the Democrat to the Senate on Aug. 16, according to a previously unreported letter addressed to Mr. Mannion and obtained by The New York Times.
Still, the letter was terse and provided little detail about whether Mr. Murphy, a partner at the law firm Barclay Damon, found the accusations to be credible when he interviewed several of the state senator’s former staff members.
Neither Mr. Mannion nor Mr. Murphy would comment on the investigation or share a copy of the report on Thursday. A spokesman for the State Senate Democrats declined to comment.
The accusations first surfaced in June when a group of former aides published an anonymous letter on Medium accusing Mr. Mannion of a litany of abuses and mistreatment during his brief tenure in the State Senate. The authors wrote that they had been subjected to “out of control yelling” and, in one case, retaliation after reporting that they witnessed a co-worker sexually harass a constituent.
“We have come together now to write this letter because there is still time to avoid elevating yet another abuser to high office,” they wrote.
Mr. Mannion has denied any wrongdoing. His allies privately dismissed the letter, which was published before a Democratic primary, as a politically motivated smear. Mr. Mannion won the primary anyway.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
