contractors on the ground. people who knew the community. important to do that. that s right, we partnered with senate majority pac to do this outreach. they stepped up and understood it was important to invest in organizations of color and invest in black leadership. and we also worked with folks like john poe on the ground. we worked with other local elected officials. who is john poe? a is an active operative in alabama. eric, i remember talking to you abobefore the election. one of the criticisms that a lot of people, african-americans engaged was that the actual jones campaign itself was not necessarily conversant with how to mobilize black voters there was the infamous flyer with the skeptical-looking black guy. i don t know if we have that. to show hey if a black man after high school girls works anyone make him a senator? there were a lot of people offended by that. the campaign didn t know what to do. how important was it that more
issue. richard painter, you re constituent of senator franken who had said it was unfair that franken didn t get his day in court. this is what senator franken said himself in the speech where he announced his resignation. i of all people am i ware there is some irony in the fact that i am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the oval office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the senate with the full support of his party. that latter part of course referring to roy moore. are you of the opinion that if al franken was forced to step down in part because of women
members, one senator, resigned in one week because of these allegations. i think what happens next is, do more and more people s names keep coming? and more and more allegations and women keep coming forward? i think that, you know, you mentioned the alcee hastings. that story dropped friday night. didn t get a lot of attention, i think, because of the intensity of last week and all of the reporting that was done and all the other cases. we re going to start a new week tomorrow. there s going to be many questions. but the members of congress, the colleagues have a huge decision to make that is every single member that has allegations against them now going to be forced to resign, or are they going to let some sort of process play out? michael steele, you are nodding. what do you see as a difference, if there is one, between how the two parties are handling this? nancy pelosi earned quite a bit of blowback for seeming to defend john conyers on meet the
settle a lawsuit alleging harassment that involved florida democrat alcee hastings. hastings has denied the claims calling them ludicrous and told roll call he d not seen the settlement and didn t know until after the fact saying, quote, i am outraged that any taxpayer dlrps needlessly paid to a former congressional staffer. one republican congresswoman has called on blank farenthold to step down. he used federal tax dollars to settle a claim. he s drawn nine challengers in his upcoming election. joining me now is capitol hill reporter leigh ann caldwell. we have, obviously, you and i have been working on a lot of these stories. this was, i would say, a week where i couldn t we couldn t have made it up. what happens next here? i mean, yeah, you can t make tup. three members of congress, two
each case has to be evaluated on the merits, of course. we shouldn t have trial by newspaper. everyone should have a chance to adjudicate the evidence and advance their claim or defend their cause. franken didn t have to resign. there was clearly no due process. but when you have everybody coming after you, that s what he chose to do. there needs to be a due process. an investigation between somebody who pats somebody on the back side and somebody who commits terrible acts against women. and what you saw today was a lynch mob. let s not have due process. let s not ask anybody any questions. tloots let s not have a hearing. let s just lynch him because when you re done lynching him, we ll be so pure. we ll feel so good. this is a party which is losing its mind. what do you make of this? you did just have four, i think, was it middle aged or older than middle aged white men pronouncing sexual harassment and it may be different if we