Democrat Katie Hill, running for Congress in California’s 25th congressional district, was so opposed to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court that she traveled to Washington, DC, last July to protest in person. Ironically, Hill was caught on camera by Vice earlier this year making a sex joke about one of her staffers — and she refused to apologize.
Hill, who is running against incumbent Rep. Steve Knight (R-CA), said that her female staffer was sending “booty-call texts”:
The video provides a ticktock glimpse into the Hill campaign’s headquarters, and the off-color joke comes as the team works to raise $400,000 by the quarterly deadline that night.
“We are all doing like booty-call texts,” Hill says into a cellphone. “Well, Kelsey is. She is texting all of her ex-hookups.”
Hill goes on, saying into the phone: “You have 28 minutes. That’s probably longer than most of the times you’ve slept with them.”
The staffer is seen staring at her laptop during the joke. Another staffer exclaims, “Katie! You are on …” and abruptly stops.
Katie tried to brush off the comments, telling the Times she was just being herself: “It’s rare that voters get to see a candidate without any of those filters whatsoever … I agree that some of the language is pretty edgy but, with me, you get what you see.”
Hill’s excuse did not fly with some voters. One woman wrote to a local newspaper, the Signal of Santa Clarita Valley, calling Hill’s behavior “sexual harassment”:
I’ve lived in Santa Clarita 20 years and was excited to see our area being featured on HBO, but after viewing it I was extremely disappointed.
This behavior in a workplace is unacceptable no matter who does it. With the seemingly nonstop stories about sexual harassment, we can’t hold men and women to different standards. What Hill said isn’t OK in any workplace, and it’s certainly not what I want in my elected representative. We need to elect people committed to ending workplace harassment, not those who engage in misconduct themselves. I won’t be voting for someone who thinks it’s funny to laugh about a staffer’s sex life. That’s considered sexual harassment plain and simple.
Hill, undaunted, went on to trash Kavanaugh as a “serial sexual predator”:
I quickly opposed the Kavanaugh nomination because he is a threat to reproductive health, campaign finance reform, and our workforce. But now we’re talking about putting a serial predator up for a lifetime appointment in the highest seat we have in the U.S. That can’t happen.
— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) September 26, 2018
The accusations against Kavanaugh were never corroborated. Hill’s behavior, however, was caught on camera and broadcast on HBO.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.