Alaska governor candidate faces sexual harassment lawsuit
In an Alaska campaign where sexual harassment allegations have become the norm, one of the primary contenders for the governorship is facing a lawsuit alleging she groped a male reporter.
The lawsuit filed by a former reporter for the Alaska Dispatch News against candidate Steve Stucky, a former Alaska Senate president, accuses him of inappropriately touching her in the governor’s press office in Juneau while she was on assignment, and sexually harassing her soon after.
The lawsuit alleges the incident occurred on or about June 26, 2011.
The lawsuit was dismissed about a year ago after the state Supreme Court denied Stucky’s motion to dismiss the case. But the case is now being refiled in Snohomish County Superior Court.
The lawsuit accuses Stucky of sexually harassing the former reporter. The former reporter says Stucky’s misconduct occurred with “regular frequency,” sending suggestive text messages and calling her “hot as can be,” and that he told her, “I know you like me.”
After the complaint was filed, Alaska media officials notified the state Ethics Committee that Stucky had violated the state code prohibiting sexual harassment.
“I think that any kind of conduct like that has to be taken very seriously,” said former Alaska Senate President Mike Chenault, a Democrat and one of the primary Republicans running for the Republican-led Alaska Senate seat. “You cannot play the man card and say ‘Oh, well, he was the governor, so he had certain rights to do what he wants to do.’”
Chenault, a former political director at the Alaska Dispatch News who worked under former Senate President and GOP nominee Joe Miller, says his organization’s reporting on the case shows that the current governor and his administration are “absolutely on the wrong side.”
“This was a political appointee who was not elected by Alaskans,” Chenault said.
Chenault says the Alaska Ethics Board found probable cause to charge Stucky with violating the Ethics Code. And that, he said, is a felony punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of at least $10,000.
At the time of the incident, Chenault pointed out that Stucky was governor-elect at the time, but he was not yet sworn in. However, the Alaska ethics board has