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Chris Mulick has worked for the Herald since 1998 and has served as the statehouse correspondent covering state government and politics since 2000. He works year-round out of the Herald's Olympia bureau on the state Capitol campus. Have a question? Send Chris an e-mail and he'll answer the best questions regularly. |
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closeTuesday, Mar. 18, 2008
Senate Republicans' messy dispute goes public
The News Tribune’s Political Buzz blog gives you the basic rundown of the explosive allegations Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, made against Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, today and the response from three other caucus leaders dismissing them. Here’s more to the story, which you’ll find in Wednesday’s Herald.
Roach, reached in a Denver airport this evening on her way to Honduras, said the event in question occurred at a caucus meeting on the night of March 7 organized to discuss the upcoming Senate campaign. Roach, frustrated by Senate Republicans’ inability to raise more money or recruit more candidates, said got engaged in a dispute over her request to receive voter lists.
She says at one point Hewitt moved toward her and that at one point she made an obscene hand gesture toward him. She said Hewitt responded by flipping up his coat jacket and bending over and saying “’hey, why don’t you kick me in the’ blank.”
“It all happened very quickly,” Roach said. “His rear end was about three feet from my face.”
Roach called back after boarding her plane to clarify that Hewitt “was bent clear in a perpendicular position, down so far his head didn’t show.”
Republican Sens. Linda Parlette, Mark Schoesler and Dale Brandland in their statement said Roach’s characterization in a press release sent Monday night was “factually deceptive and personally harmful.”
They further charge that “Sen. Roach has distorted events that happened off campus to distract attention from internal personnel issues for which she was disciplined.”
Roach, who lost to Hewitt in a bid to lead the caucus after the 2006 elections, said she recently was reprimanded for taking up too much staff time and has been instructed not to talk with staff, who have been instructed not to talk to her.
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