“Every Iowan, especially women, deserves to be treated with equal respect and dignity in every setting, and anything less will not be tolerated.”
Those were the words Fred Hubbell used when making statement about Nate Boulton during the Democrat gubernatorial primary. “Our elected leaders are role models, and that’s why,” Hubbell continued, “I believe Nate Boulton needs to make the decision to withdraw his candidacy for governor and resign from the Iowa Senate.”
Bolton ended his campaign after three women came forward with charges of inappropriate sexual conduct just weeks before the Democrat gubernatorial primary. Bolton was accused of grabbing one woman’s buttocks and repeatedly rubbing his erection against the two other women.
Nate’s still a member of the Iowa Senate if you are wondering.
Back to Hubbell.
Nobody would disagree with his statement that all Iowans, especially women, deserve to be treated with equal respect and dignity in every setting. But is that how Hubbell really feels. Obviously he didn’t that way when he was a thirty year-old man partying with the softball buddies at the Des Moines Club.
If Nate Bolton’s actions disqualified him from running for governor, how is the following really any different from that situation?
“The wildest it got Saturday was when one Mad Dog, this one wearing his full uniform topped by a World War II Nazi helmet, came racing across the room, dropped to his knees behind an unsuspected guest and bit her on the rump.”
Is it different because that was 1983, and times have changed?
Well, according to everything else going on in the news today there is no statute of limitations when it comes to alleging sexual assault. And lets not forget, in the case of the Mad Dogs, these are the actions of grown men, not schoolboys or even college students.
Well, maybe it doesn’t matter because the victim in the Hubbell Mad Dog case hasn’t come forward and complained?
Ironically, in the Mad Dogs incident we have an actual newspaper, the Des Moines Register, publishing the account of Hubbell’s frat party not once, but twice. One would think stuff like this would be right up Rekha Basu’s ally, but you’re kidding yourself if you think she would touch a story like this today, even though it was already published by her employer decades ago.
Or maybe its just water under the bridge? You know, boys will be boys.
Well according to Patti Solis Doyle, a CNN commentator who served as an Assistant to the President and Senior Adviser to then-first lady Hillary Clinton, and was chief of staff on Clinton’s 2000 and 2006 Senate campaigns, and Clinton’s presidential campaign manager in 2007 and early 2008, the “boys will be boys” defense no longer holds. She goes on to write, “Let’s be as crystal clear to all of our sons as my husband and I are to our 16-year-old boy: If you sexually assault a woman, you are committing a crime, and it will affect the rest of your life.”
I don’t disagree.
But the question is this, are Iowa Democrats willing to apply such a litmus test equally and fairly regardless of political affiliation? The mere fact that Nate Boulton remains a member in the Iowa Senate provides the answer to that question.
At the very least, shouldn’t Fred Hubbell be asked about that night in 1983, when either he or one of his buddies put on a WWII Nazi helmet and bit some lady in the butt?
Was it him?
And if not, did he just watch this all take place and do nothing about it?
Or did he find it as amusing as Chuck Offenburger and the editors at the Des Moines Register obviously found it?
