Shapiro VP run could bring attacks over aide’s sex harassment case

What questions do you have about the 2024 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.

If Vice President Kamala Harris ends up picking Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, over the next three months he may find himself facing attacks over what has arguably been the only genuine scandal of his tenure in Pennsylvania’s top elected office.

Last September, news outlets reported that Mike Vereb, Shapiro’s liaison to the state legislature, had abruptly resigned after being accused months earlier of making inappropriate, lewd and sexually suggestive comments to a female employee he oversaw.

Vereb is a Republican from Montgomery County, where Shapiro started his political career. They had  overlapping tenures as legislators in the state House, and after Shapiro was elected attorney general he made Vereb his director of government affairs.

Shortly after Shapiro became governor in January 2023, Vereb allegedly began harassing the female staffer and making sexual advances, leading her to quit in March, according to complaints she prepared for the state’s Human Rights Commission and the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.

She alleged the governor knew about concerns about Vereb’s past behavior when he hired him, and failed to address the harassment or protect her from retaliation.

Shapiro’s administration has repeatedly declined to comment on the accusations. It paid out $295,000 as part of a settlement, which included a clause barring both sides from discussing the allegations.

Concerns about a Shapiro vice presidency

The settlement drew national attention at the time. Claims that Shapiro tolerated Vereb’s harassment of the employee and took too long to dismiss him “threaten to cut at the heart of the governor’s political identity,” given his previous high-profile work investigating sex abuse by Catholic priests and his strong pro-women’s rights positions, according to a Politico analysis.

Complaints about Shapiro’s handling of the incident surfaced again after Harris began considering the governor as a running mate in her bid for the presidency.

Erin McLelland, the Democratic nominee for state Treasurer, took a jab at Shapiro over the Vereb case last month. She endorsed North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, saying she wanted a VP pick that “doesn’t sweep sexual harassment under the rug.” Her comments were quickly picked up by Fox News and the New York Post.

The National Women’s Defense League, a group founded in 2022 to prevent sexual harassment in state government and to protect survivors, also expressed concern about Shapiro’s candidacy.

“The American people deserve to know that, if called to a higher office, Governor Shapiro will do more to ensure the safety and dignity of employees, volunteers and constituents in his office,” the group said.

Anger among Republican women legislators

After news of the scandal broke, the governor met with the state’s eight female Democratic senators, one of whom later said the group supported Shapiro’s handling of the matter.

State Sen. Lisa Boscola of Northampton County said she was “very confident that the administration is handling this as best as they can.”

However, some Republican women legislators were critical, saying the governor’s office should have protected the accuser from Vereb or dismissed him quickly, rather than letting him continue working in the office.

“It really makes me so angry that I have to stop talking because I’ll say things I shouldn’t,” Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward told the Inquirer. “It’s so infuriating that [Vereb] stayed in that position for months, one of the highest positions in the administration.”

When asked about some of Ward’s comments, Shapiro said, “Consider the source, when it comes to the president pro tem.”

He said his chief of staff and general counsel were women, and defended the confidentiality and integrity of the administration’s misconduct investigations. “We have an independent, robust process. That is one where any employee should feel comfortable coming forward, and that their voice will be heard,” he said.

Calls for legislative reforms

Ward and others also raised broader questions about using taxpayer dollars to settle complaints against public officials and including confidentiality clauses in such agreements.

State legislators and officials have come under fire in recent years for repeatedly authorizing payments to settle harassment claims against government and public employees, and for the frequent use of non-disclosure agreements.

In 2015, House Democrats paid $248,000 to resolve a claim against Rep. Thomas Caltagirone of Berks County, according to documents obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The settlement included a nondisclosure agreement.

The accusation alleged years of physical and verbal harassment, and followed a previous harassment claim against Caltagirone in 1994. The legislator maintained his innocence and said he settled to avoid high legal costs.

At the time, House Democrats had reportedly spent more than $500,000 over five years to resolve harassment claims and other staff disputes.

A subsequent analysis by the Inquirer and Gazette in 2018 found that at least $3.2 million in taxpayer funds had been spent over eight years to settle claims against legislators and workers in the executive branch, courts, and state-supported universities. The allegations ranged from inappropriate jokes to exposure to pornography to sexual assault, and in some cases retaliation for reporting the incidents, the papers reported.

The revelations led to legislative proposals to deny anonymity and taxpayer-funded settlements for elected officials found to have mistreated others.

After Vereb resigned, a bipartisan group of four female state senators introduced bills that would require the legislature and state agencies to use a third party when investigating sexual harassment claims, and mandate public reporting of the number of settlements with non-disclosure agreements, City & State reported.

Five Republican women legislators also proposed a package of bills that would strengthen House rules on sexual harassment complaints against members, expand reporting requirements on settlements, allow the state to seek reimbursement from individuals whose actions resulted in publicly funded settlements, and ban non-disclosure agreements.