No one spoke for Mary Jo Kopechne.
Sen. Patty Murray was quick to condemn Sen. Al Franken last week after he was accused of sexual harassment, but she took the opposite tack 24 years ago with another Democratic senator dogged by accusations of lecherous behavior.
She and the four other Democratic women serving in the Senate after the widely hailed 1992 “Year of the Woman” election used their newfound clout to come to the rescue of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as reports of drunken debauchery threatened to sink his re-election bid.
At a Boston fundraiser on Nov. 15, 1993, Ms. Murray was joined by fellow Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland and Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois in what marked “the first time the five senators have traveled together on behalf of a fellow senator,” according an Associated Press report.
“We’re going to be here for Ted because Ted has always been there for us,” Ms. Mikulski was quoted as saying in the Nov. 17, 1993, edition of the Lowell [Massachusetts] Sun.
They helped save Kennedy, who prevailed in his 1994 race against Republican Mitt Romney in Massachusetts; but in doing so, they set a precedent under which feminists proved themselves willing to suspend their outrage over sexual harassment in service of powerful pro-choice Democratic men.
Exhibit B came in 1999, when Democratic women helped President Clinton fight articles of impeachment stemming from a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones.
Of the five Democratic women who stumped for Kennedy, only Ms. Murray of Washington and Mrs. Feinstein still hold seats in the Senate. Neither immediately returned requests for comment.
Both have expressed indignation over the recent deluge of sexual harassment accusations involving celebrities and politicians, most recently Minnesota’s Mr. Franken, who is shown in a 2006 photo groping a sleeping Leeann Tweeden as they flew home from a USO tour.
Mrs. Feinstein predicted Saturday that “we are going to have another Year of the Woman,” thanks to the rash of sexual harassment accusations surrounding politics and the entertainment industry.
She joined the #MeToo campaign last month on Twitter, saying, “We will never end the harassment and abuse of women, especially in the workplace, unless we speak out and stand together.”[…]
The proclivities of Kennedy, who died in 2009, were more than just a rumor. In February 1990, GQ magazine ran a devastating piece by former New Republic and Atlantic editor Michael Kelly detailing the senator’s years of booze-fueled depravity, titled “Ted Kennedy on the Rocks.”