* Just when you think the Republicans might have a shot at something big, stuff like this always happens.
I strongly encourage you to read the whole article, but the gist is that a young woman complained about a way too handsy president of the Chicago Young Republicans, Jeremy Rose…
When she tried to leave, it only got worse. “Jeremy and the other guy refused to walk me out, saying I needed to stay and hang out with them, and Jeremy took my phone away from me (I had been trying to call a cab) and sat on my lap, not letting me up.
“At this point I felt like his behavior was bordering on keeping me there by force. At last the girl who was there walked me out to the street and I hailed a cab and went home.”
After allegedly being briefed on the complaint, Cook County Republican Party Chairman Lee Roupas hired Rose as the county party’s political director, then promoted him to executive director. Roupas now claims that he didn’t really know much about what was going on, a claim that is challenged in a sworn statement.
And if that wasn’t enough, Roupas then attempted to foment a rebellion against Eloise Gerson, the chairwoman of the Chicago Republican Party, after Gerson and her chief legal counsel demanded that Roupas’ executive director resign…
Frustrated with his failure to oust Gerson, Roupas was allegedly overheard in an angry rant after the meeting, calling Gerson “boss b**ch.” And, despite objections by many committeemen that the new post appeared to undermine Gerson’s authority, Roupas announced the appointment of a Chicago Chair of the CCRP in an email on July 1.
“This is like the Catholic Church all over again, where the cover-up is worse than the crime, and there’s this concerted effort to try to shut down the whistleblower,” said CRP political director Tom Swiss in an interview. “He [Roupas] has a meeting and tries to vote her out and get her removed from her position, because she brings this complaint to him and he doesn’t want to be bothered by it.”
This scandal has been building on smaller blogs for weeks. Kudos to Huffington Post for ferreting out the full story. And it had results. Rose has resigned…
And indeed, though many details of the story remain to be unearthed, the inquiries have already caused one head to roll: within an hour of concluding his interview with Huffington Post Chicago, Chairman Roupas circulated a letter to Republican officials announcing the resignation of Jeremy Rose.
“I feel it is best for our GOP team that I step aside as executive director so you and the Republican Committeemen can continue without distraction the work needed to win in November,” Rose writes in his resignation letter.
Again, go read the whole thing. Rose may be gone, but Roupas apparently still has some explaining to do.